I’ve been slowly working my way through Demon’s Souls, Atlus’s third person Action/RPG on the PS3, for a couple of weeks now. I really want to like this game, so much so that I keep coming back to it like some self-loathing masochist, even after throwing the controller across the room in a fit of technocidal rage. I actually threw the controller. I’ve been playing video games all my life and had never succumbed to such a fit.
I keep coming back because the “Game of the Year” and “RPG of the Year” awards make me feel like there’s something wrong with me if I don’t like the game. The 5 star, 9.5-out-of-10 reviews tell me I should enjoy being immersed in this frustrating binary prison of recurrent death.
One might argue that I’m simply bad at the game, and maybe that’s true. Unfortunately, I like being good at the things I do, so that leaves me coming back for more, wondering if maybe I could tweak this or approach the challenge from a different angle. This tweaking and changing of play style leads to tweaked and changed methods of excruciating character death, as I see hours of playtime and soul collecting wiped away in a single misstep.
Don’t get me wrong. All those hot reviews and awards are certainly deserved. It’s a beautiful game. Or at least I’m pretty sure it’s a beautiful game. The sections of levels I see as I run back and forth between the Nexus and my bloodstain look beautiful. The pictures that I see online as I search for why I keep dying a gruesome, premature death are stunning. There certainly is an unexplainable allure that has me itching to pop in the disk even as I write about the vexation that awaits me if I do. But hey, maybe if I use a longsword instead of a scimitar on that last enemy, I’ll be able to get back to my bloodstain and regain some of my lost souls, if not the lost hours spent playing this game…
Nice, I loved that game, but I found it got a little boring towards the late game. A lot of the same stuff, running around trying to maybe collect some materials to make a better weapon. Most of the baddies become pushovers when you get good gear, and then the few that are a problem are sort of like puzzles. Difficult until you learn their patterns.
Hey Mike, I see you’ve found my new site! Thanks for dropping by and giving your two cents. I just put Demon’s Souls back in the mail and am hoping Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood comes next. If it does, the next post gaming post is sure to be on that game.