Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition

Dark Souls is probably one of the best games I've played.

Most games are only a challenge to figure out, rarely do you have a game that was a challenge the whole way through.

I always have a moment of sweaty hands at the beginning of a tense game, I blame Resident Evil 2 for having a beginning where you immediately have to sprint out of the center of a horde of zombies.  But once I learn the mechanics of swinging the baseball bat into undead face technique, it becomes a matter of lining them up and finding a good supply of bats.  Dark Souls kept my hands sweating up until the very last encounter with Gwyn, the Lord of Cinder.  In fact, I remember distinctly in one of my failed attempts my fingers slipping from the thumb stick and coaching myself mentally not to clutch the controller so hard.

The game mechanics are such that you're in control of your left and right arms independently and you have a stamina bar that could be used to help you reinforce your shield, dodge or be used at your attack.  Positioning and facing are important, as you are completely unprotected without a shield or a way to parry - so even simple creatures become hazardous if you don't have your shield up or are flanked.  One of the more hazardous traps in the game is a room full of about ten basic hollows.

Perhaps I had a malicious 'follow the rules to a fault' game master, but back in lets call the good old days of pen & paper RPGs, an epic encounter was the single bugbear you stumbled across, and if you were able to survive it was cause for celebration.  The modern gamer slays umpteen thousand creatures before calling it a win, but it kind of white washes them all.  Dumbing down games dumbs down the players, you adapt to the skill level.

That said, I don't think this kind of "let your guard down a second and your dead" hazard would be very easy to recreate in a shooter.  I've ramped up the difficulty on COD and it just means more random head shots, sure my reaction times got quicker, but I was really just twitch killing and memorizing levels.

Dark Souls had amazing and epic boss battles - I kept thinking I hit a brick wall, and a few attempts in I might get in a lucky attack.  Nerd I am, my brain in perfect Arnold-speak says, "If it bleeds, we can kill it."  I've fought lava creatures, demons, dragons, undead and the progeny of the gods.  This game outdid itself.

Souls and Humanity are currency in this game, if you die - you keep your gear but lose your unspent currency unless you can make it back to the spot where you died to reclaim it.  You can use a point of humanity if you die to return to human form (better resistances and better loot), but it makes you susceptible to other players invading your world to kill you and steal your humanity.  It's a brutal and hazardous trade-off, because you might drop your souls in a bad spot if killed.  I got in the habit of running to a "safer" area if I was invaded, that way it would only cost me a little bit of progression.

If I had played this game when it came out, I would probably play through it 2-3 more times as different character types, make a pvp build, "save" every NPC you encounter.  As it stands, Dark Souls 2 should be out in a couple months ...

Enjoy the opening cinematic if you haven't seen it: