Demon's Souls - one out of one

By: Sergio

Game: Demon's Souls

Score: one out of one

I seem to always pick the worst games to look forward to.

It happened with Kane & Lynch: Dead Men when someone described the story as being a pair of characters trying to fix their increasingly wrecked lives, but with guns. I bought it, beat it in two days on the hardest difficulty and questioned why the developers decided that one billion zillion expletives could in no way be seen as being over the top or less than subtle. It happened again with Alone in the Dark when I saw a trailer with the main character hanging from a burning building and throwing McGuyver'd cans of explosions. That game was universally panned for being broken and nigh unplayable. And it happened AGAIN with Persona 4, which I begrudgingly sunk nearly 100 hours into after deciding pretty early on that the creators obviously put more effort into MO-AY than character development and game design principles.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it happened again. It happened before I even owned a PS3, when I saw a trailer for this game. It was strange because it seemed like such a no-brainer for a video game. Why hasn't anyone cornered the guy-in-knight-armor-fighting-demons-in-macabre-medieval-setting genre yet? It's like Zelda meets Ninja Gaiden! I waited breathlessly for a North American launch date, planning to import it first, buy a PS3 second. I wanted this game that bad.

I almost learned another language for this.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it takes place in a fantastic Medieval Dark Fantasy setting (think Berserk and you're close) where you are just a stranger to the strange land of Boletaria, a nation shrouded in evil fog that has propagated demons and wickedness and heralds the end of the world by way of the Old One, the greatest demon to ever demon around the block. The main task in the game is killing all the demons and liberating Boletaria of it's Silent Hill sickness. But beyond that there isn't really a "plot". You take on sections of the game, accessed from the hub-like Nexus, at your choice and leisure with no guiding hand or urgency. Despite this, the game is absolutely steeped in backstory. There are enough gods and demons and fantastical names thrown around to rival Tolkien, and it's all fed to you piece by piece if you pursue it.

And now that Atlus has graciously brought the disc to America all the mainstream games media can talk about is its difficulty. That is, parroting the fact that this game is motherfucking hard. While it isn't to me the main appeal of the game, it's a cool aspect and there is certainly something that needs to be said about the difficulty.

Every gamer has their paradigm perfect game by which all others are judged, and mine is Ninja Gaiden Black for the original XBOX. The creator of the series, Tomonobu Itagaki once called God of War a half-assed game because it's reliance on quick-time events (it might've been Heavenly Sword actually, but no one remembers that game, so whatever). It rips you out of the experience and you're no longer this person fighting demons or stabbing harpies or what have you. You're suddenly just the sap holding the controller.

Demon's Souls never does this to you. You are this guy (or girl) in this suit of armor (or lack thereof if you're a badass) at all times. Every step and slash, dodge and sidestep, it is all you. Nearly any creature in the entire game is very capable of killing your stupid head off, almost regardless of level. But from your modest set of skills and tools you have at the beginning, you are completely on your own to grow into someone better. You will likely die along the way. You will likely die many times, and yes this means losing all your progress since your last visit to the Nexus(if you screw up really badly). But if you die you aren't blocking right, or you aren't attacking at the right time. You die because you haven't been growing, because you haven't been learning.

Education.

Which brings me to another point. Last year gamers balked at the new Prince of Persia game because it was too easy since you never “die”. Or rather, it was death without consequences. Demon's Souls is a similar scenario, you may die but you can easily get all your stuff back and be on your merry way, its just a matter of making it to where you died and recovering your bloodstain. If you die a second time (read: screw up really badly) well the previous bloodstain disappears and... there's your consequences! Apparently this minor alteration is the difference between easy casual game for babies, and the hardest motherfucking game you will play this year.

But the game really isn't as hard as everyone has made it out to be. You dodge when you have to, slash when it's wise, maybe cast a spell. The game piles on healing items and you can find weapons that suit you by world jumping pretty easily. The game is essentially an action-RPG though, a lot like if Dragon Quest had beat-'em-up style combat and the party was only one member, so it's easy to see why someone would choose a knight class, buff strength stats, run headfirst into every challenge, die, and call the game hard. This is where the game gets really cool though.

See, Demon's Souls was made to be withholding and secretive. As a result it is this beautiful symphony of secrets and lies. The online component lets you collaborate a little with fellow warriors through a messaging system, but if you have someone else playing the game or a good forum to discuss on, then the game truly opens up. It's a game made for those kids (or, ahem, totally mature adults like myself) that play all night and run to school the next day to tell everyone on the blacktop how they beat this one boss, or where they found this one sword. Characters get matched against characters, where who stacked their stats and what they're equipping for what. It's just a really great game where possibility fosters creativity, not by means of a blank canvas like, say, Little Big Planet, but by necessity. You get creative because you want to kill skeletons better, or avoid getting stabbed through the chest by gooey phalanx creatures.

All of these elements, the story, the vulnerability, and the synchronization you begin to feel with your character all come together really well when you're in the thick of gameplay, roaming a castle or underground mine. This is even further compounded by something that took me a while to notice, there is almost no music. It seems insane, I mean, there's even a soundtrack released with the game, but while you creep slowly through a prison level listening for the bells that herald the mindflayers you're too preoccupied with being terrified to notice. The danger is somehow amplified through the tension.

When Shadow of the Colossus meets YOUR NIGHTMARES.

Demon's Souls is very stoic. It is content with what it does, and this makes it hard to reprimand any single point because everything that seems like a flaw, could also have been done intentionally. Like the lack of a true pause. You press start, your inventory and stats appear, but you can still run around and be killed. I can see people screaming bloody murder over this. How DARE a modern game lack a pause button to accommodate my busy schedule!? Well, it makes sure your on your toes, and that you think about your equipment constantly. It's there for a reason. It's all there for a reason, and that reason is absolutely precious when people were yelling about how Prince of Persia was way too easy because it never jarringly ripped you out of the driver's seat (never mind the insane abundance of QTEs).