Club409

I'll be really upset if the fedora ends up being a trilby keep us posted

Here’s the teased really long write up for Dark Souls:
I beat it a couple days ago around 100 hours logged. If you’ve heard anything about it you’ve probably heard that it’s hard which is true if you like simplifications. If you lose focus mess up or get impatient you’re gonna have a bad time. Any standard baddie during any point of the game can ruin your day if you’re not paying attention. Enjoy the serene menu music while reading this write up and know that it’s offered as a juxtaposition for the harsh and uncaring atmosphere of the rest of the game.



The basic idea of the game is it’s a dark fantasy world action RPG. You run around whacking things with weapons shields bow and arrows and spells whichever you choose. If you want you could even just run past everyone except for a few necessary encounters I suppose. But defeating enemies is how you get souls which are the universal currency. They’re used for leveling up to increase your stats buying equipment repairing equipment getting favors just about everything. So you beat some enemies and you get some souls. But then when you die you drop all the souls you’ve collected and respawn at the last bonfire you rested at (checkpoint). If you can make it back to where you died you can pick up all the souls you just dropped. But if you die again before you get there those souls are GONE man. Getting back there isn’t easy because every time you use a bonfire all the enemies respawn except for a few major and mini bosses. I lost plenty of souls along the way and I knew when I played the game that would happen but it still got a few expletives out of me. The thing is when all the enemies respawn you have to get better because if you tried what you just did it’s obviously not going to work. You’ll die several times in a row start rushing to get to the place where you keep having problems and find out you’re having problems earlier now because you’re being impatient. Or you’ll do something dumb like fall off a ledge. So in that way it’s kind of like golf or something where a big part of the game is playing against yourself. When you find yourself at something that seems insurmountable how about trying something different? These gargoyles were whipping my butt over and over. I decided to try something different ended up with a buddy and they died. So gratifying. Oh and there’s no save/load slots. The game auto saves as you move along and that’s it so if you do something and it’s bad for you son I got 99 problems but second guessing isn’t one. You just keep trying to move forward because that’s all you can do for better or worse. For example I was going to buy something from this merchant and so I collected enough souls and went up to him. I accidentally rolled into him and he went aggro and tried to kill me. I had no choice but to kill him and so I did but now I can’t get the thing that I wanted dang. But wait he dropped this sweet katana…aw yeah.

Here’s what I think is good about Dark Souls: The level design is great. Most of it is one continuous world not really open world. I think I prefer that because open world games I feel like a lot of time is spent running through a lot of uninteresting terrain. The paths in Dark Souls give you specific challenges along the way and they work out in clever ways. You’ll be moving along on your last bit of health holding a huge pile of souls knowing that the next bonfire is just around the corner. You’ll enter the room hopefully and get your face smashed in. The bonfire was actually downstairs or something. Once you make some progress you’ll see how the level connects with itself and other areas and you’ll come up with optimal paths for getting places which makes you feel smart. Several of the areas look great and there are varied environments even if they are standard/cliché (forest sewer ruins etc). The levels can offer some cues as to what’s going on. For example you’re creeping along and you come to an area and you’re like why is this floor all charred and burneOHGODIMDEADANDONFIREFROMABOVE. I found those amusing because I’d notice most of them and then die as I figured out what they meant. Also good some parts of the story. Most of the story elements are hidden from immediate view but there’s some good writing if you look in the right places and put the pieces together. The basics of the story are most everyone including you are cursed undead which means they die then come back to life. Narratively if this goes on long enough for a character they lose their humanity and go hollow (zombie/ghoul type state). The overall story is to remove the undead curse from the land (or is it?). Here’s some of the story sections I liked with some spoilers:

<SPOILERS>

How about this: you keep encountering this sleepy but polite foreign knight along your travels. Every time you run into him he’s baffled by some obstacle: a gate enemies whatever. You help him out and he continues along his journey each time. Towards the end you both come upon an impasse and he volunteers to draw the enemies away while you escape in light of all you’ve done for him. You save him from that and he’s politely grateful. But you run into him later and his daughter has slain him. He went hollow because he lost his strong willed edge because you kept helping him out along the way asshole. Or how about this: you’re killing all these demon gargoyle dragon bosses along the way. Then you come upon this boss fight with a white wolf a jarringly noble looking creature. You’re trying to get this item from a grave that will allow you to get to this place called the abyss. The looks at you consideringly like he recognizes you then begrudgingly attacks. (He killed me a lot). You finally are able to make some progress against him and as his health gets lower he gets sluggish and pathetic. It seems tragic. He is defeated and you get the thing you need to get to the place and move on. Later on you go back in time because this town is being swallowed by the abyss. A knight named Artorias tried to stop it but failed. He was messed up by the abyss and you have to defeat Artorias. You make your way to the source of the growing abyss and you run into a little young version of the wolf from earlier. He’s stuck behind a barrier because he was Artorias’ wolf and he placed the barrier around the wolf to protect him from the abyss before he got messed up. You release the wolf and he escapes and you clear the abyss problem. Turns out when you met the wolf earlier (later) he recognized you and was trying to keep you from going into the abyss because he saw what happened to his buddy Artorias and didn’t want it to happen to you. But you slayed him and took the thing anyways asshole.

</SPOILERS>

There’s more interesting story stuff but you have to look for it and if you miss a detail you might miss the whole rest of the chain of events.

Here’s what’s not good about Dark Souls: Since the gameplay and environment is designed to give you the sense of being on your own the game lacks directionality at points. I didn’t know where to go. With enough time I could have figured out if I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be but that probably would have added 30 hours to the game for no real reason other than adding to the feeling of isolation. So I used the internet to look up a few things. A little more in the way of pointing you in the right direction would be helpful. Graphically it can look really nice except when the frame rate drops (xbox360). In some areas in really chugs. After a while the combat can feel sort of samey: my strategy for a lot of it was to run around and whack the baddies in the ass until they die. I suppose this is more a factor of developing stats and play styles that seem to work best at the time but it can get a little repetitive.

tl;dr: I can think of 4 reasons why you shouldn’t play Dark Souls: don’t like video games don’t have time don’t want a challenge don’t like the style. The game isn’t for everyone but I enjoyed it and found it fun challenging and unique. 4.5 out of 5 single player rage quits

Up next: Mass Effect 3 with all DLC (finally) and thoughts on the whole series