'Dark Souls' Review?

     So I had missed out on a lot of games last year due to lack of funds. However, now that my wallet has somewhat recovered from the fall gaming season, I decided to get some of the games I had missed out on. The first I decided to try out was Dark Souls. Whoops...

EDIT: I'm quite the idiot. This game is one of the greatest games I've ever played, and I did it an injustice by not giving it a chance. I've since bought the game for PC and have completed it, and I'm very much looking forwards to Dark Souls II. I'm quite ashamed that I didn't give Dark Souls the chance it deserved, and I urge you to have patience and give it a chance. I've done a few edits to fix my stupidity...

A severe lapse in judgement on my part...

     Let's just say I don't actually have it anymore. In fact, I had it for less than a week. I'll be the first to say that Dark Souls is really not my type of game. Even so, it really didn't have a lot going for it:

    1. Dark Souls suffers from the same thing Castlevania 2 did. Now before you ask, no, I haven't actually played Castlevania 2. I've heard enough about it to know that I should stay well enough away from it. I have, however, watched a lot of video reviews of the game. So, let's make an analogy: Castlevania 2 is to hearts what Dark Souls is to souls. In Castlevania 2, you have to buy special items using hearts as currency. The same can be said for Dark Souls, using souls for currency. In Castlevania 2, you eventually end up farming for hearts so you can buy the item so you can progress to the next part of the game. Ditto for Dark Souls. Okay, maybe it's not exactly the same, but I can see where someone would end up farming souls in a (relatively) safe place in order to level up enough to make progress in the game. I don't do farming, be it for souls or any other thing, and I gave up on the game long before I ever had to.

EDIT: Once I realized that "souls" are essentially "experience", everything kind of fell into place. The Souls games are unique (as far as I'm aware) in the mechanic that you can lose that experience if you die before you spend it, which would turn away a lot of people... until you realize that those lost souls really aren't worth crying over. You can still beat the game even if you only use the souls gained from boss fights and those picked up as consumables. In fact, it's possible to beat the game without leveling at all. Not recommended, but possible.

You and I, Mr. Checkpoint, shall become best buddies over the duration of this farming session...

     2. What do I do? Where do I go? No, I don't want someone to hold my hand through the whole thing, but I would like an inkling as to what I'm actually supposed to be doing. I went to a certain spot, got the quest, then fumbled around for four hours trying to figure out where that quest actually started. Perhaps I'm spoiled with the quest system in Skyrim, which does basically hold your hand the entire way. Then again, it could be a little clearer on which way I'm supposed to go. You know, maybe the occasional road sign. That would be nice...

EDIT: I truly was spoiled by the "hold your hand" nature of Skyrim's quest system. A key aspect of any souls game is the idea of exploration. If you go one way and get killed immediately, try another. Eventually you'll find a path that is less difficult than the others, which is the game's way of saying, "this is the way you're meant to go". Even then, exploration is key, and should be the main focus of anyone trying to play a Souls game for the first time.

Well, that's obviously not the right way to go...

     3. I opened up my inventory system once and almost had an aneurysm. There are far too many numbers and stats. Again, maybe I'm spoiled with the elegant simplicity of Skyrim's inventory system. All I want to know is if the thing I just picked up can kill bad guys quicker than the one I'm using now...

EDIT: If you also think this way, slow down and take a moment to look around the inventory system. It's not as ridiculous as I originally thought, and I'm an idiot for griping over something that could have been easily understood had I spent some time reading.

I'm going to be needing a bigger weapon, perhaps something along the lines of say... a nuke?

     4. You want to what? Pause the game? PFFFFT! There is no possible way to actually pause the game. Even when you press start to bring up the menu, you're still stuck in real time. They say this is because of the "multiplayer" aspect of the game, but I'll get back to that shortly. Even when you try to check your stats, change inventory, or mess with your settings, you can still run around in game. Which means my character is never safe when I have to go to the bathroom...

EDIT: This is possibly the easiest of my ignorant grips to fix: QUIT TO THE MAIN MENU. The game loads back up exactly where you left off, and no one can invade you if you're not actually in the game.

I take it you guys are taking a dump as well?

     5. I couldn't figure out the multiplayer, not that I really wanted to anyway. Multiplayer in a game like this can go two ways: co-op, the way I hope it would go, or griefing, the way it would inevitably end up being. By griefing I mean another person busting into your world and trolling you. By trolling I mean killing. And by killing I mean stabbing you dead and consuming your soul. No thanks...

EDIT: Personally, I think this is a valid complaint. The co-op and invasion system isn't well tutorialized, nor is the process for engaging in either of them. Luckily, there is a massive online community that works hard to figure these things out whenever a Souls game is released. When in doubt, Google it.

You're not going to stab me in the back while I go AFK, right?

     6. The controls are clunky, at least for the Xbox 360 anyway. I can see where they would be decent for a PS3, but they don't seem to have thought about how awkward it is for an Xbox controller. The bumpers (awkward) are your main attack, not the triggers (comfortable). You can perform a roll to evade an attack, but every time I tried it I would get caught up on the enemy I was trying to avoid. The button combo for rolling was also really strange, having to press the way you want to roll and the "B" button at the same time, instead of holding the thumbstick the way you want to roll then pressing the button.  Running was pretty awkward too. The whole control scheme was ridiculous, and made this game even harder than it was meant to be. Which brings me to...

EDIT: I have come a long way since I wrote the above. Had I gone back to my earliest gaming roots and taken a moment to press all the buttons and figure out what they do and how they work, I would never have made such an ignorant argument. In fact, some of the above is downright false. Now that I have a new outlook on how I approach playing video games (thanks in part to Dark Souls), I can honestly say that I think the Souls games have some of the best fantasy melee combat I've ever played in a game.

I would attack you, but my control scheme forbids it...

     7. THIS GAME IS FRICKIN' HARD.

EDIT: No, no it's not.

"Nintendo Hard" my butt. I've played Nintendo games and they ain't got nothing on this... Well, maybe Battletoads...

     In the end I figured I wouldn't actually be able to enjoy this game. I had made it to the second boss, and I couldn't get any further. He'd kill me then I had to fight my way through 20 dudes in order to get back to him. One time I got so fed up I decided to skip the 20 other guys and ran past them all the way to the boss.

EDIT: In hindsight, this is actually the best way to play. Fight through everyone the first time through an area while exploring, but once you've found the boss there's no need to fight everyone every single time you have to run back to them. If you die to the boss the first time you find them (which is common and should be expected), experiment and find the path of least resistance back to the boss. This can make a five to ten minute "fight back" into a one minute "run back".

After about five times of losing to him, I decided enough was enough and took the game back. Luckily I was able to get a full refund and turned around and bought Far Cry 2, an older game which I had played before and enjoyed, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which is another game from 2011 that I had been interested in giving a try. I'd say it was a good deal... EDIT: UNTIL I REALIZED DARK SOULS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST GAMES EVER CREATED.

MY RATING: UNDECIDED FANTASTIC

      I said earlier that Dark Souls wasn't really my type of game, so I'm having a hard time rating it. I personally would rate it a Blech, but I feel kind of bad rating a game that I never really gave a chance. I only played it for a couple of hours, and to be honest I didn't really have the patience for it to begin with. Then again, I did have all of those grievances... Still, it's been rated highly in almost every review I've read about it. Maybe it's just not for me...

(I take no credit for the pictures, except for the "Goongala Rating" picture. I do however take credit for the clever captions. All other pictures were found via Google Image searches.)