Dark Souls review

Formats: PS3, Xbox 360
Format reviewed: PS3
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: From Software
Made2Game Dark Souls review score: 10/10

Sculpting by hand has to be one of the hardest and most arduous practises in all of art. Taking a massive slab of hard and heavy material and then slowly chiselling away at it until it resembles the shape you want it to is a huge and mentally taxing endeavour. It takes years of practise to sculpt anything reputable, years of building essential knowledge, learning the craft, and then working on harder and harder projects until you eventually create that masterpiece you can be proud of.

Dark Souls is gaming’s hard and heavy material and we are all sculptors in training, the controller is our chisel, and our brain is the hammer.

In Dark Souls you play as a branded undead (the ‘branding’ being the ‘accursed Darksign’). A short, beautiful introduction gives you insight into a doomed world, both saved and brought to its knees by the endeavours of several legendary dragon killers, humanity now holds onto its last threads of life through the immortal, branded undead who are trying to find a way to undo humanities eternal darkness.

The narrative is threadbare, but tantalisingly so. Left with enough hints you'll push through the sometimes gorgeous, sometimes abhorrent locales and interact with some of the most downtrodden and depressed NPCs in all of gaming. Lordran is a word of unknown danger and questionable characters in which you're fighting for an unknown salvation, yet you push on regardless.

Inner Demons
Before this review goes any further I may as well address the nagging fact that Dark Souls is the spiritual sequel to PS3 exclusive Demon's Souls and that it plays rather similarly. This is a fact. The combat is very similar and it features the same idea of punishing death. The game has a few key differences however, one of which being that its world and level construction owe more to Metroid than to Mario 64.

Demon's Souls was created in a rather classic design mould, the Nexus being a safe haven and five levels were accessible from portals within. The closest thing to safety in Dark Souls is the Firelite Shrine but danger is hardly ten seconds walk away as the world spreads out from here. Like Samus’ ship in Super Metroid the Firelite Shrine is where you land in Lordran and it is from here that you press on into the bowels of its cruel world full of unlikely twists and hidden turns, friendly faces cowering in unfriendly corners, and lots of big bosses with an eye to filleting you for dinner. This is one of the most intricately crafted maps in all gaming.

Progress, then, is measured in blood. You move around the world killing off enemies, with larger and annoying foes staying dead once dispatched. Mostly. Lesser minions respawn if you venture too far away or use one of the incredibly important bonfires. Bonfires act as checkpoints where you can level up, restock on healing flasks, and when you die - and you will die - the last bonfire you visited acts as your respawn point.

As you slowly push through the game’s countless demons you’ll often find secrets, pick up keys or open shortcuts meaning that while progression is slow, it’s notably frequent and constantly rewarding.

All’s Fair in Love and War
So yes, there’s a lot of fighting, so it’s a good thing it’s brilliant. Everything you do in Dark Souls is measured in stamina - blocking, rolling, attacking - the stamina bar refills quickly if you’re not doing anything so combat soon becomes a task of circling and measuring your foes’ abilities, looking for the chinks in their armour, leading them to geography in which you’ll have the advantage, and working out when you can attack with your weapon of choice

Be you a ranged magician, a counter-heavy rogue or a club-wielding barbarian, the game is tailored for all styles of play and you can chop and change constantly.

Yet even though the game is 90% twatting things in the face, it never gets old. New enemies are constantly introduced and provide fresh challenges, but so does each new environment. One minute you're fighting adept soldiers on castle ramparts, the next you're tackling shambling corpses on strung together wooden walkways with death - yours or your foes - only one misstep away, and then the next minue there's a pair of living gargoyles trying to flambé you as you use the slant of the roof to misdirect the fire.

The reason you’ll want to succeed in combat is because death is often devastating. As you kill enemies you earn souls, which act as both experience for levelling and currency for upgrades and equipment, but death will mean you lose all your accrued souls and unless you can make it back to the spot you died before dying again you’ll lose all those souls for good, and losing a 20,000 soul stash is one of the most harrowing experiences any gamer can face.

Yet the beauty of Dark Souls is that even when you do die you’ll often have seen how to succeed, worked out a new strategy, and already come to terms with the fact your death was your own fault. Stand up, brush down, try again.

The scales are perfectly weighted so while failure is a soul-crushing headache, success in Dark Souls is a triumph you’ll celebrate by leaping out of your chair and shouting out loud before gripping your chest and willing your heart to get back in inside it.

Into The Abyss
Combat is just one example of how deep Dark Souls’ design goes; it’s beautiful and punishing but never punitive or throwaway. Every part of this game is sculpted exactly to the designer’s ideas and is always massive in intention. Dark Souls contains a massive world, a massive art style, and is a massive challenge.

But challenge isn't bad, quite the opposite in fact. The way Dark Souls creates a genuine, fair and rewarding challenge means it’s a design that effortlessly crawls under your skin, roots into your brain, and claims your every thought.

Every idle moment after you first set foot in Lordran is drawn to Dark Souls. While buying milk you're working out routes to explore later, short loo breaks are spent recalling missed treasures, while pretending to read a book you’re actually strategising a move against a particularly pesky enemy and time apparently working is better used wondering about what secrets the next boss is guarding.

It's the game's steadfast and individual attitudes to design that let these seeds take root and grow into a beautiful, twisted shrubbery. The game has no map, so your mental atlas glows brighter. Locations have no pre-told story so your narrative fills in the gaps. The game rarely tells you anything so you endeavour to discover its secrets for yourself and discuss with other players.

Yes you read that right, the game gives you next to no help, but it’s so elegantly designed that it gives you everything you need to succeed and because of its hands-off approach you invest yourself more completely into the world and on account of this it becomes incredibly engrossing.

You’re Not Alone
Except there is help, online. Play Dark Souls while connected to the web and it evolves from a traditionally lonely and imposing Metroidvania into a shared and imposing Metroidvania.

Player notes hint towards unseen dangers and secrets or provide a little mirth in a dingy trap filled castle. Bloodstains can be clicked to show other adventurers meeting a grisly end to unseen forces, a terrifying forewarning of what lies around the next corner.

You can work with other players as well, but there is no voice chat. You can leave signs to be summoned to another world or, after regaining your humanity, you can summon allies to your world. You’ll always be working with voiceless illusions but this lends an ethereal companionship to this temporary ‘teamwork’, faceless spirits warming your soul and helping you tackle the world’s harshest challenges.

Their departure always comes too soon and serves only to emphasise the lonely terrors of the world. You’re all in it together, but ultimately you're all alone. You can’t invite friends and while some may see this as a negative point, others will understand that Dark Souls is a true artist’s vision taken from paper to screen with no compromise for expectation.

Yet then it grows even further. Restoring your humanity also opens up the game’s PVP elements in which other players can invade your world and stab you for fun, and to restore their own humanity. Yet you can also report these players so that strong, judicious warriors can track them down and punish their sneaky backstabbing ways.

Taken online Dark Souls is a gargantuan rabbit hole waiting to suck you in with its amazing hero/villain/helper/hinderer multiplayer concepts.

End of Days
Played offline Dark Souls is an often harsh but arrestingly compelling, massive, labyrinthine action RPG with a gorgeous twisted high fantasy art style with hordes of cunningly placed secrets and the best sword, shield and sorcery combat around. To add to all this praise it’s got ladles full of atmosphere and that quintessential harsh but fair gameplay that makes a Souls game shine..

Played online it becomes one of the most unique and absorbing games ever on top of all those previous accolades, seeing other players shades and reading all the messages becomes an experience in and of itself before you add all of the co-op and competitive aspects to the mix.

Within its own design intentions, Dark Souls is practically flawless

Sure, there's a little bit of slowdown in a few sections and ok, the AI can sometimes do odd things but these are minor quirks in a game that, Demon's Souls aside, is peerless in terms of visual design, combat, and in the execution of its unique and stunning ideas.

Dark Souls is gaming’s hard and heavy material and we are all sculptors in training. The controller is our chisel, and our brain is the hammer. It deserves a place in everyone’s collection as a game to slowly chip away at, a game to practise, a game to learn, and a game to invest in until you beat it, and you’ll have created your own gaming masterpiece in the process.

Words: James Bowden (Twitter: @Dalagonash)

Please register or login to post comments