So The World Might Be Mended...
Demon's Souls is an amazing game. An amazing, crushingly difficult, death-prone, seemingly unfair one, but an amazing game nonetheless. Go buy it.
Published: October 8, 2009
I've been praising Demon's Souls for so long now -- and with increasing frequency now -- that the notes I took while reviewing the game weeks ago seem almost... hollow. How can I possibly condense all of the advice that I've given over the past month or so, how can I recount all the advice that was given to me while playing through the game. How can I describe the breadth of environments or the way the game's atmosphere is at once awe-inspiring and subtly depressing while offering just the tiniest sliver of hope?
I can't, honestly. I know it's my job to sit here and explain why a game is good, and I'll certainly attempt that for you, but the short version is simply that you have to play this game to understand its appeal. And, at the risk of going back on my mantra of giving a game it's due 15 minutes and then letting the verdict fall where it may for someone not reviewing it, you'll have to play it for longer than it'll take you to meet your first death... which will probably happen about five minutes into the game.
You'll have to keep playing past the next death. And the next. And the next. And the next, past the hours and hours of dying and trudging through the same depressing, claustrophobic areas, past the seemingly impossible numbers of enemies that can kill you in just a few hits. You'll have to play past the inevitable cheap falling deaths, past the enemies that ambush you while you run back to get the game's only universal currency -- the only way you can level up, or upgrade weapons, or buy new equipment -- past all of that. You simply must keep playing Demon's Souls until you've finished the first boss fight and the majority of the game finally becomes revealed to you.
Why? Because in that moment, when you've taken out the Phalanx monster, a glowing, pulsating mass of shielded enemies that protect the defenseless core, you will feel a kind of rush and relief that absolutely no other game can deliver. It's like a high, a kind of serotonin blast that sweeps through you as you realize you'll never have to run through that stupid area again. That felling this huge creature and banking all the spoils that come from doing so are yours now, and as soon as you make the short trip back to the Nexus, the hub world where you'll visit many a time throughout your dozens of hours in this game.
And then comes the best part: you learn of the backstory to your adventure, you gain the ability to upgrade your character and you gain the tools to join others that are playing online. And then, just for kicks, you go back to that first level that took you hours to get through and you proceed to spank the ever-living sheeite out of every enemy you feared just a few hours ago. You already know where they are before they even start to attack; you've memorized their positions upon dying so many goddamn times. And, as you power through them, their souls added to your coffer, you emerge from the "end" of that first section that took you so many hours and deaths to get to... and you've done it in about 20 minutes.
That is the appeal of Demon's Souls, that "a ha!" moment where it all clicks, where all the deaths and frustrations and cries of "fuck this game, I'm never playing it again" come rushing back. They were all lessons, all ways to illustrate that the only thing separating you from mowing through every enemy that presents itself, every former one-hit kill, is just simple knowledge and experience. This is a game that teaches by the heavy-handed means of pure, unflinching punishment, and as you'll quickly re-learn when proceeding to the next area, the second you forget those core tenets of patience, awareness and care, the game will happily and unceremoniously end your life and send you back to the start of the level.
I can't, honestly. I know it's my job to sit here and explain why a game is good, and I'll certainly attempt that for you, but the short version is simply that you have to play this game to understand its appeal. And, at the risk of going back on my mantra of giving a game it's due 15 minutes and then letting the verdict fall where it may for someone not reviewing it, you'll have to play it for longer than it'll take you to meet your first death... which will probably happen about five minutes into the game.
You'll have to keep playing past the next death. And the next. And the next. And the next, past the hours and hours of dying and trudging through the same depressing, claustrophobic areas, past the seemingly impossible numbers of enemies that can kill you in just a few hits. You'll have to play past the inevitable cheap falling deaths, past the enemies that ambush you while you run back to get the game's only universal currency -- the only way you can level up, or upgrade weapons, or buy new equipment -- past all of that. You simply must keep playing Demon's Souls until you've finished the first boss fight and the majority of the game finally becomes revealed to you.
Why? Because in that moment, when you've taken out the Phalanx monster, a glowing, pulsating mass of shielded enemies that protect the defenseless core, you will feel a kind of rush and relief that absolutely no other game can deliver. It's like a high, a kind of serotonin blast that sweeps through you as you realize you'll never have to run through that stupid area again. That felling this huge creature and banking all the spoils that come from doing so are yours now, and as soon as you make the short trip back to the Nexus, the hub world where you'll visit many a time throughout your dozens of hours in this game.
And then comes the best part: you learn of the backstory to your adventure, you gain the ability to upgrade your character and you gain the tools to join others that are playing online. And then, just for kicks, you go back to that first level that took you hours to get through and you proceed to spank the ever-living sheeite out of every enemy you feared just a few hours ago. You already know where they are before they even start to attack; you've memorized their positions upon dying so many goddamn times. And, as you power through them, their souls added to your coffer, you emerge from the "end" of that first section that took you so many hours and deaths to get to... and you've done it in about 20 minutes.
That is the appeal of Demon's Souls, that "a ha!" moment where it all clicks, where all the deaths and frustrations and cries of "fuck this game, I'm never playing it again" come rushing back. They were all lessons, all ways to illustrate that the only thing separating you from mowing through every enemy that presents itself, every former one-hit kill, is just simple knowledge and experience. This is a game that teaches by the heavy-handed means of pure, unflinching punishment, and as you'll quickly re-learn when proceeding to the next area, the second you forget those core tenets of patience, awareness and care, the game will happily and unceremoniously end your life and send you back to the start of the level.
