(360/PS3) Dark Souls

[Trynant]

INSERT TRAILER WITH MODERN MUSIC CONTRASTED OVER GAME


Wasn't that great? No, it was horrible? Okay, here's a trailer without the stupid song.


Anyways, Dark Souls is the sequel spiritual successor to Demon's Souls, a game that is known for difficulty and awesomeness. Dark Souls is even harder and even more awesome.

Things to know:

• It's hard: Okay, maybe I've said that Demon's Souls isn't that hard. Well, if you haven't played the previous game at all you should know that Dark Souls will probably kill you. A lot. Even if you've played the previous game you should know you'll probably die. A lot. Not as much as the newbies, maybe, but still!
  
• It's fun: Demon's Souls plays like a 3D Legend of Zelda game with less story and puzzles and more fighting. Dark Souls is basically Demon's Souls with a new story and setting and instead of 5 different levels it's all an interconnected open world, reminiscent of Castlevania or Metroid. Except with more of you dying.
  
• It's big: Demon's Souls was more or less a 30-hour game with about 30 different enemy types. Dark Souls is going a 60-hour game with about 100 enemy types.
  
• It's online: Online in Demon's Souls was weird. Online in Dark Souls is weirder. In addition to Demon's Souls message system and ghosts-that-are-players and bloodstains-that-are-player's-deathspots, Dark Souls will have a faction system wherein players can align themselves to factions that bestow various benefits. One faction will let you invade other players worlds on a whim, but beware: other players can put you on a bounty list which can lead to you being invaded by a player from another faction wanting to dish out justice. My favorite item known about so far is a Gravestone: you plant this gravestone and it will make other players' games harder by adding enemies. The only way to get rid of this added difficulty is by finding where the gravestone was planted and warping to the world of the player who planted the gravestone and killing that player. NOTE: Online in Dark Souls is unfortunately P2P instead of on a master-server, so it kinda is broken for some people. It doesn't ruin the game, but it's kind of a downer.

ITT hype Dark Souls. It's be amazing. Prepare to die.

[Vaskadar]

Question is, which system are you getting it for? D:

inb4 lolconsoletitles

I'll be getting it on the PS3.

[Trynant]

Rumors are the PS3 is the native version and it's being ported to the 360, with compressed audio (maybe textures as well). I ordered it for PS3 as well.

[Trynant]

So the game is out in Japan, or at least people are breaking the street date. This means that a lot of streams are popping up on twitch.tv and showing off the game.

It looks amazing. Open-world, solid gameplay, and brutal as hell. Definitely looks harder than Demon's Souls ever was.

I know some of you ****ers have a 360 at least considering your blabbering on about Gears of War 3; check this game out when you can. It looks better than Demon's Souls and Demon's Souls was amazing already.



That's the tutorial.

[Capt.Toilet]

Beware early adopters

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/119/1195770p1.html

[Trynant]

Originally Posted by Capt.Toilet

Beware early adopters

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/119/1195770p1.html

In order to punish those who have the game early, From Software will take advantage of a feature that allows players to move into other worlds. The publisher has sent max-level Black Phantoms into the worlds of early gamers, confronting them with an enemy that's impossible to beat.

Best punishment for breaking street dates ever.

[Vaskadar]

Shroomin'

Game does look pretty ****ing boss.

[Trynant]

Here's another trailer in the same vein as that "Bartholemew" trailer in the OP. These things are growing on me, even if it's not my kind of music normally.



There is so much Dark Souls footage out right now it's insane. Some guy streamed the entire game and a little of New Game + (yes this exists). That being said, nobody seems to have uncovered all the game's secrets yet. Tons of hidden content here.

[Trynant]

So yeah, the game is out. Updated the OP to reflect this. About a 89% average on GameRankings and Metacritic.

I'm not that far in, but so far the game is pretty damn awesome. AWESOME. But like the game before, this is not for everyone (and there are some bugs ). Anyways, has anyone else been playing?

[Vaskadar]

I'm going to wait till December to take the plunge. Just not enough time right now.

[Sjosz]

I just went and got it. It'll be a terrible idea, but I got past the "tutorial" dungeon and it's not that bad really. I quite like it so far.

[Trynant]

Sjosz, don't worry; the tutorial is the easiest part of the game. From here on out it's all ass-kicking. At first, at least. The cool part about Demon's Souls and Dark Souls is the huge potential for mastering the gameplay--I'm not talking about just building up avatar strength by leveling up. After playing for a while, you can start a new character and utterly crush what was destroying you before.

EDIT: An example, someone cleared several bosses that took me like 6-10 hours to beat in under twelve minutes.



Crazy Japanese players.

[Sjosz]

Oh I'm not worried about it not being hard, I'm worried that this game will eventually frustrate me into spiking my controller and walking away from it.

I was merely commenting on the mechanics and overall feel of things not being bad, and the few deaths I've had to endure felt like they could've been prevented with a more measured/careful approach on my part.

[Trynant]

Don't play the 'Souls games angry. In fact, don't play the games expecting to get anywhere. Then you'll be pleasantly surprised when you do rather than disappointed when you don't.

Also, this trailer. Holy ****:

[Balton]

so is this ninja gaiden hard or just what?
what's the gameplay like? just mashing the x button or is there a deep combo system?

[Lruce Bee]

Character animations look a bit clunky to me and the gameplay looks a bit tedious.
Artwork looks really decent though but I still think God Of War3 is king of the hill imo.

[Trynant]

Originally Posted by Balton

so is this ninja gaiden hard or just what?

Difficulty is hard to explain with Dark Souls. Ninja Gaiden is hard pretty much because it's all twitch-skill focused solely on kill monsters don't die.

Dark Souls is hard for several reasons. It has twitch-difficulty, sure, but there's also the need to strategize, observe, plan, and experiment. Ninja Gaiden is pure action game. Dark Souls is an action-adventure, specifically a big-ass dungeon crawler. You have to watch out for traps, figure out how to proceed, AND kill monsters don't die.

But really, the main reason people say Dark Souls is 'hard' (along with its predecessor Demon's Souls) is because of something else: Dark Souls punishes your failures. Despite auto-saving the game constantly, the checkpoints you go to when you die are infrequent. You can lose a significant amount of progress if when you die in Dark Souls. But with each death comes a lesson, and with time you learn to become a god in this game.

what's the gameplay like? just mashing the x button or is there a deep combo system?

Neither. You know how FPS games have mechanically simple controls and gameplay, but good design can make those mechanics have a lot of depth? Demon's/Dark Souls is a lot like that. Simple controls, complex interactions with those controls thanks to clever level/item/enemy design.

Really, the game controls more like a console FPS (or console Elder Scrolls) than a hack-and-slash. This actually can being off putting since you might go in thinking this is Ninja Gaiden and say "WTF why is x not attack?" but the controls are solid.

Originally Posted by Lruce Bee

Character animations look a bit clunky to me and the gameplay looks a bit tedious.
Artwork looks really decent though but I still think God Of War3 is king of the hill imo.

The pacing of gameplay in Dark Souls is a little slow, but far from tedious. The most glaring fault of Dark Souls is graphics. This is not a 1080p technophile's dream here. The artwork is great, but technology is not. Doesn't stop me from loving the **** out of this game.

Level design in this game is brilliant. Enemy placement, use of all three dimensions when crafting geometry (the amount of z-axis in Dark Souls is mind-boggling), and aesthetics are all top of the line. A lot of glaring technical hiccups though (lolhavokphysics, clipping, dumb AI, one area with really poor framerate), but no deal-breakers.

And I'm not sure in what aspect you're calling God of War 3 "king of the hill." Artwork, well, yeah God of War 3 is super-good. But if you're talking about gameplay; Dark Souls is in a totally different genre from God of War.

EDIT: Here's some gameplay footage from early on Balton,

[Lruce Bee]

Artwork and the general accessibility of GOW3 as a whole proved to be two great combinations for me personally.
We've got some guys playing Dark Souls here in the studio but most are walking away frustrated and cursing the game for it's high level of difficulty - that's hard-wired in, so you can't crank it down to just get past the first level.
Some people love to grind through this stuff though.

[Trynant]

I won't argue about accessibility, but

Originally Posted by Lruce Bee

Some people love to grind through this stuff though.

Sad thing is that grinding is actually a bad strategy in Dark Souls. Killing the same few monsters over and over to level up takes more time than actually playing the game at its natural pace and trying to explore.

Still, hell of a learning curve.

[Mozi]

I may rent this down the road, right now too busy with Gears 3 MP, Batman tomorrow, and work.