TEH. BEST. GAMES. EVAR.
By Andr'e Swartley

Issue #12
Demon's Souls
Developer: From Software
Publisher: Atlus
Platform: Playstation 3
Rating: M for Mature

Demon's Souls hates me. And it hates you too. The world in Demon's Souls will poison you, monsters will gang up on you, and the characters who actually assist you will say things like, "Do come back alive. I need your business." The game doesn't even give you the escape of a game-over screen when you die. Instead your character's body vanishes, leaving a glowing soul with only half a life bar. And when you do finally beat the game, you immediately get tossed back to the beginning only to face even stronger enemies.

If you've ever wanted to feel like a knight or magician in an Arthurian Legend, but didn't want the real-life risk of death by sword or plague rats, Demon's Souls is the game for you. You play as a nameless (and hapless) person who gets dragged into a spiritual war over a decaying world. You will trudge through castles and dungeons, mountain caves, rocky cliffs, poison swamps, and a prison tower out of HP Lovecraft's most opium-laced nightmares.

None of this is new for video games. But what makes Demon's Souls unique is that each location, despite being filled with impossible horrors like silver skeletons that sommersault toward you like spiky cartwheels of death, simply feels real.

Adding to the "realism," Demon's Souls offers a 1-to-1 ratio of control input to onscreen action. This means that when you press one button your character performs one action. In this day of automatic combos and Quick Time Events (timed button presses), a game that gives you complete control over your character is almost scary. If you die in other games you can always blame cheap enemies, lousy camera, etc. If you die in Demon's Souls, it's your own fault.

And oh my, how you will die. You'll fall off stony ledges while backing away from a pack of trolls; you'll get speared in the back by a pikeman you didn't see because you were concentrating on a thicket of archers up ahead; you'll get swatted down by a massive, capering fire demon or blunder into a lava pool in his lair...I think you get my point. And when you die, you get tossed back to the Nexus, a ghostly cathedral where you will be able to talk to the few somewhat friendly characters inhabiting the game world. Just make sure you don't accidentally hit anyone there because they will either fight you or refuse to help you until you finish the game, which resets the Nexus.

Not all of the odds are stacked against you though. For every monster you dispatch, you will accumulate souls, which you can use to increase your character's stats (strength, dexterity, endurance, etc.) or purchase weapon upgrades. But remember that you must also continuously repair whatever equipment you are using, which costs-you guessed it-more souls. You won't be able to sell any of your old junk to buy new, either. All decisions in Demon's Souls are final.

As if figuring out how to spend a single currency on three necessary categories weren't challenging enough, every time you die you leave all accumulated souls in a shimmering stain at the spot where you died. Say you make it to a level's boss and get squashed to a fine paste. To retrieve all your souls, you must navigate the entire level from the beginning, fighting all monsters that were there the first time, and touch the spot where you died before the boss squashes you again. Fail and all of those souls vanish forever.

If you play online, you will have three additional advantages. Just as you leave a shimmering stain on the ground when you die, so do all other players. When you come across the place where another player has died, you can watch the last ten seconds of his or her life in a grim instant replay. Hopefully you will see something that helps you avoid the other player's mistake.

The second advantage I mentioned is based on other players' generosity. Any player can leave messages printed on the ground in glowing runes. You might see, "The next enemy is susceptible to magic," or "Do not attempt this section until level 30." But other players can also lie to you. For example, some stages require you to navigate platforms of differing heights. You might see a message at the edge of a platform that says, "Just run forward." It might be the right answer, but there's also a good chance that someone's messing with you.

The last advantage comes in the form of two stones. One lets you join another player's game to help him or her through a difficult stage or fight a boss. If you succeed, you receive whatever souls you and the other player accumulated as well as your body form, which if you'll remember comes with a full life bar instead of half of one.

The other stone allows you to invade other players' games to fight them. If you are invaded, you will be notified that some other player has broken into your game, but not where he or she is hiding. Few other experiences in gaming can get your palms sweating like seeing the Invasion message pop up on your screen.

The last thing I want to talk about is loot. Demon's Souls is a treasure hunter's dream. The five game worlds have five levels of World Tendency, from Pure White to Pure Black, and some items and enemies will only appear at either extreme. But that's not all. Your character's tendency can also run the gamut from Pure White to Pure Black. Playing at Pure White gives you the highest health and attack power, whereas Pure Black gives you access to some rather dastardly sidequests and valuable treasures.

Coincidentally, Atlus (the game's publisher) is holding a special World Tendency event starting today, Valentine's Day. The in-game World Tendencies will be Pure White until Tuesday, and Pure Black for the rest of the week. Atlus has created similar events for every major holiday since the game's release.

Demon's Souls is a niche game for patient and intelligent players. It is a game of logic, skill, and persistence. You cannot "kind of" like Demon's Souls. This is a game you will love or absolutely despise.

Final Grade: A or F (but nothing in between)