With that in mind...
Dark Souls
So for the past couple of days I’ve been playing Dark Souls,
a game of some renown amongst the so-called “Hard Core.” For the rest of us,
Yahtzee sums up the core of the game quite well: “[You] must best a series of
castles, dungeons and bosses by doing the equivalent of firing yourself from a
cannon at them an infinite number of times.”
It’s true; the game is very hard. Horribly unforgiving, it
doesn’t suffer fools or their mistakes. This action/horror RPG is frustrating
to play, depressing to experience and has probably by now caused several cases
of advanced delusionary schizophrenia.
And do you know what? I love it.
I’ve played most of the RPGs for the Xbox360 and a
significant number of them for the Xbox and other systems. The high-fantasy
swords and sorcery
basically-the-same-plot-each-time-but-with-slightly-different-controls are
enjoyable enough for the first few hours but get a bit samey after a while,
when you realise you’ve been playing for two hours and made absolutely no
progress in the game.
Dark Souls is different. Its setting is of a dying world
largely populated with undead, lending itself to its dark, oppressive
atmosphere straight away. There are no elves, dwarves, orcs or equivalent: Here
you’re a former human, now an undead soul, trying to battle your way for
something remotely resembling a purpose. I say this because I know no better.
There’s not much exposition that explains the plot, and such that there is
comes from talking to the VERY small number of NPCs you happen across on your travels.
It actually is your story.
It also does away with a lot more of the common RPG tropes,
which is very refreshing. For a start, the Tutorial - such as it is - explains
the game mechanics and that is it. No button prompts, no hand holding. It will
take you up to the first boss, and then you’re on your own. There’s also no
village you use as a home base. Sure, there are bonfires, which is about as
good as it gets for the purposes, and there are NPCs and Merchants scattered
around the gaff, but nowhere you would feel safe or even free from the imposing
environments. There’s none of this tedious mucking about with crafting, no lore
explained to you in 24-page long books you can’t be bothered to read, no
‘relationship’ mechanic. It does a good job of keeping the focus where it needs
to be: On the aforementioned Castles, Dungeons and Bosses.
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| Yes, this caught me out first time... |
On that subject, there’s plenty going for it here as well. A
lot of the regular enemies are easy enough to kill but can still make very
short work of you indeed if you are careless. Anything tougher than a regular
hollow man (who makes up the majority of enemies in the earlier section of the
game) really does need thinking about in order to come up with strategies for
beating them. The fact that I’m playing The Sorcerer adds to this, since I’ve
got to decide whether to use my very limited magical resources for an easy
kill, or risk attacking up close with my melee weapons and taking more damage.
Dying – which I do a lot – sends you back to your last bonfire without any souls
(awarded after you kill enemies, and brilliantly used as both currency and
experience points) and though you do have a chance to recover what you’ve lost
if you manage to get to the same point on your next run-through, it does shut
down anybody who thinks they can get through the game by scum-saving.
So while it is perfectly possible to play this game for two
hours and not get anywhere, it’s not because the game is designed with faffing
around in mind. If you die, it’s because you’re rubbish. Or you’re careless,
which is the same thing. Or it could be because you haven’t analyzed the attack
patterns of the enemies yet. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s something
very old-school about this – and a welcome change of pace from the games I’ve
been playing for the 360 this year!
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