Dark Souls

So clearly I've kept up with what I intended and am writing regularly on here. With that being said, I'm going to talk about Dark Souls! The game that ate my life the last few weeks.

In short, it's a fantastic game that I would like to recommend to everyone but know that the game is NOT for everyone.

The game is brutal and has a really steep learning curve, so already, we can see why this isn't for everyone. That being said, Dark Souls has so many fantastic features that warrant a look themselves.

The first thing to talk about is scope and cohesiveness of the world. Dark Souls continually impressed me with how large it is and how well designed the world is itself. There are shortcuts back to places that make you realize how interconnected all the areas are. It's so impressive that 90% of the places you can see that have some form of geometry are reachable sometime in the game. There were several times during the game that I had been going for a while and said to myself, "well the end of this area should be ahead" and usually I was right, only to be put into another area that went even deeper.

There are so many other small things that make the game stand out. The NPC's themselves are pretty interesting (you can even kill any of them if you want to, but I wouldn't recommend it...) and most have a few of them have storyline and quests associated with them that are really interesting. Another piece of the game that is amazing is the amount interesting and unique weapons and armors that you'll come across. The number of unique weapon animations astounds me and I loved coming across a character animation I hadn't seen before. You'll play through the game more than twice just to collect all the gear.

The bosses are fantastic as well, all of them extremely unique. All of the enemies in the game have certain tells to their moves and you have to learn them to play well. Even on my 3rd playthrough bosses were pulling moves on me that I had never seen before.

These are just a few of the things that make the game so great. With that being said, the game also has some really unique pvp and co-op play as well as some interesting lore and legend to the world. That and it has a new game plus feature that lets you keep your character with its current stats to continue going through the game over and over so it gives you a lot of replay value. Plus its really interesting to watch your friends play the game when you know what's coming and they don't!

So recapping everything, the game is hard, but after getting beat down hundreds of times you learn to love every minute of it because it is such a fantastically built game with so many interesting aspects that I believe it to be a must have in any serious gamer's collection.