Dark Souls Review

How the HELL did I not post about Dark Souls when I finally--?? This game is easily one of my favorites. Ever. My friends find it a little odd that I enjoy a bit of a masochistic challenge every now and then, but I don't care because, hey, I BEAT THIS F&#*ING GAME!

Fellow gamers who have played Dark Souls may understand the duress I went through. Slogging through this game alone, encountering impossible bosses, getting sidewinded by swinging axes, stepping on traps, stepping on mimics, stepping off cliffs, stepping on ambiguous allies and then running away screaming as they two-shot me...the list of horrible, HORRIBLE atrocities I had to put up with is almost never ending. But that's why it's so unique! Too often nowadays, I experience little to no real challenge in video games. It's always "respawn here", "facetank there", "flail around in the shadows while enemies stumble drunkenly around to find you, then give up, saying it must have 'been a rat'". At worst, I've always felt like if I fucked up, all I'd have to do is load up an old save point, sprint back to where I was, then hurl myself into unnecessary combat again to brawl my way through the storyline. And this, in it's own right can be extremely fun (don't get me wrong, I LOVE games like Borderlands). However, I'm a kid who went through Devil May Cry on Dante Must Die mode with Alastor and no items saved up, so I'm used to having to deal with subtleties to bully my way through a game.

Okay, I'm getting sidetracked, sorry. Basically, this game is a game designed to make you die as many times as possible by giving you extremely unfair situations to have to deal with. Instead of stacking the odds in your favor, it does almost anything it can to stack them against you. Fighting a boss who can penetrate your defenses, smash you into the ground, takes little damage, has massive area of effect attacks, burning breath, and could simply nudge you off the building if it wanted to kill you? How about fighting TWO of those motherfuckers at once? See a shiny treasure you think might be a valuable piece of armor that will give you strong enough defenses where you can survive a couple hits? Surprise! It's a fucking trap. You're dead.

While practically any situation from Dark Souls sounds absolutely dickish when described without any real context, what makes the game good is that you can LEARN from your mistakes to come back and tackle the situation with (hopefully) mastered finesse. There is always a pattern to the traps. There is always a hint to look out for in areas. A cast shadow, a low rumble, the muffled shuffle of footsteps around the corner. Everything (well, nearly, almost, maybe everything) that could lead to your demise is given to you with a perfect path for you to continue onward. Any mistakes that lead to your death are mistakes that COULD be avoided in the future. You learn to approach shadows cautiously, to scout areas with item drops, to equip situational armors, to run away from monsters that are obviously stronger than you, and to not take chances in the dark. Your character is only human. He can only block from the front. He has limited stamina. He can't wield heavy weapons without proper strength training. You are given so little, but asked to do so much in return.

But that makes it all the better.

The grandiose conflicts that are encountered in the game only add to the intense euphoria after the sense of achievement and furious air-fisting have subsided. The moments you encounter and look back on stay with you, no matter how much time has passed. I'll never forget that moment where I battled a monstrous spider-witch to a standstill or that rapidly rising sense of dread as two legendary giants I had heard about took up arms against me or that time when I dove at JUST the right time to narrowly avoid a golem's earth-sundering swing.

This game was painful. It is not for the weak-hearted, or for the casual among us. Though not the most streamlined game due to its inherent proclivity for making things frustratingly difficult, it is one I'd personally recommend to any I call friend. Not only is it a game harkening back to the challenges of older days, it is a game that will give you a great feeling of accomplishment for every step along the way.