I survived two separate save files of 40 hours each on Demon’s Souls, I never completed it – I loved every minute, but it conquered me. New games came out tempting me with their recharging health and satisfying, popping, XP hypnosis. Each time I returned to Demon’s Souls I wanted to start afresh but it got me nowhere. I will not make the same mistake again, Dark Souls is a commitment – I’m fully invested, I even had a chat with my girlfriend to explain the situation.

‘Sorry honey, I’ve just got to finish this.’

Something I like about the Souls games which not a lot of people mention is the story and art. There’s nothing else quite like this level of very dark and minimal fantasy in videogames. The CGI cutscenes are a spectacle to watch, featuring very well characterised voice overs. Nothing is fully explained – it feels very ‘Silmarillion’, ancient and abstract. Part of what I enjoy about progressing through the game is learning more about the world, a lot is told through the environment and much is left to the imagination. It’s much like how in Shadow of the Colossus, when riding up to a ruined temple you start to question what it once was, how it crumbled, what it looked like etc. Not a lot of games do this, it shows that the developers respect their audience enough to know that they’re able to draw their own meanings and conclusions to the world instead of having story forced and laid out like a child’s story book (I’m looking at you Fable).

From Software pull this minimal narrative off by soaking the game in a dense atmosphere. Sound is especially important in this game, during play there’s rarely music outside of a boss fight (what music is there is often ridiculous and brilliant), instead there’s brooding winds, crackling torches, the breathing of your enemies and subtle signals to what may be around you. There’s a desolate stillness to the world. It feels close and intimate but also epic and limitless. It’s fantastic sound design indeed or at least it’s fantastic usage of sound design, the actual sounds used are a mixed bag.

Everything in Dark Souls is understated, the game never sells itself to you. It’s only after a few hours you start to realise the incredible achievement that’s been made here. While Dark Souls isn’t trying to create a living, breathing world, what it achieves is remarkable, but again none of this is ever explained. Part of its beauty is its emphasis on exploration and discovery. Using messages left on the floor in-game by other players the same area you slowly start to decode the mystery of the game. You might see a message to say ‘treasure here’ or ‘ambush’ to give you helpful tips but in contrast you may find a message which says ‘jump’ only to mislead you to plummeting down a cliff to your death.

Every player in the game is learning off each other, you sometimes see ghostly flickers of other players, when calling or joining other players in coop you can be shown valuable lessons in navigation or combat and bloodstains on the ground replay the unfortunate demise of the player who left them which can indicate trouble ahead. Don’t rely on the scattering of mostly depressed and defeated NPC’s to explain how the world works, you need to play this game on-line.

I have not even mentioned the crippling difficulty which seems to be the major talking point of the game. While the difficulty is essential to how the game works and how the player learns, I think it’s secondary to how successfully this game pushes expectations in the mechanics and presentation of its world. Death is important however, an easily frustrated person may not be able to get past it. With each death comes a lesson, knowing when to doge, attack, heal and rest. Knowing what foe is ahead and how to properly prepare for it, in many ways this game is a lot like Ninja Gaiden, each enemy re-spawns in the same position every time you die or save at a checkpoint (bonfire). And much like Ninja Gaiden a careless move can lead to half a health bars worth of damage.

Death is essential to how the game works and how you level up, you could repeat one small section many times but provided you don’t die twice in a row, you can collect a large amount of souls (the in-game currency) by doing so. Everything from vitality to repairing weapons is spent in souls and you quickly realise that loosing 2000 souls isn’t really a big deal. If you connect with your bloodstain from death you can regain your dropped souls but die before you get there and the souls are lost forever. When you’re carrying around 30,000 souls things get interesting and immeasurably tense.

I’m currently rolling with a boat load of inventory items and I’m not sure what half of it does. I tried out one of them earlier which turned my right hand weapon into lighting, it was amazing – but that’s just scratching the surface of this incredibly deep and consistently engaging videogame.

So far: [9]

About the author

Michael Manning

Michael is a sound designer and composer working in the games industry. His portfolio can be found at www.manningaudio.com