Demon’s Souls is easily, for me at least, the best launch title ever made. It’s so utterly incomprehensible for hours but then things start falling into place, equipment burden, item burden, what rocks are needed for what upgrades, who sells what rocks, who’s got the healing grass, what the fuck is world tendency and so on. It’s the exact same game as the PS3 mechanically but it’s so different from the Dark Souls staples that came that you have to learn it all over again.
Oh it’s so difficult and punishing and it really fucking is. Each level has a single checkpoint and some of these areas are bloody massive. It took me a solid hour to do the first level and I didn’t die once. And lord knows how much I spent rinsing level 2-2’s giant map and I died a lot. But then you figure out the kinks and suddenly you’re chopping heads and rushing past those sections you think you can safely do so.
And the age old Dark Souls technique of running through chunks of the level will just get you absolutely fucking wrecked on occasion. It can work, but, man, do you have to be careful.
It helps a great deal that this look the fucking bizness. The sound effects are great and the haptic feedback is nice and complimentary.
And I played this reasonably soon after it came out on the PS3 over here and I had ZERO fucking online action. Nothing at all. Now I can play coop with my mate, invade worlds finally and do some friendly cooperation. It’s the complete version of the game finally.
I’ve only been disappointed on one occasion at the minute: Flamelurkers boss level is one of those fantasy forge wankfest that seem trite by now. Just lava pouring all over the place. Running through the floor and lighting up the church which now has this wanky dragon skull decoration. The original was a quiet cave filled with dragon bones in front of a church lit by candles. It’s lost a bit of the mystique. It’s still an alright fight and the flame effects are generally just fucking stunning. There’s some areas where I don’t know how many shades of red reflecting lava were on screen but I’m thinking it had at least all of them. The flames are wicked too as those twatty fire lizards set fire to wooden structures they pass near which spreads up the wall and they even light up corpses on the floor.
Oh and the atmosphere is brilliant. That second world, had my balls in a vice it did during the tunnel section below the mine. All of its been terrific.
Best launch game ever.