Demon's Souls

While I have the soap box--after all that's what using a blog is all about--I'd like to take a moment to talk about the new(ish) PS3 game Demon's Souls. Aside from the grammatical oddity, Demon's Souls is a fantastic game.

It's been a long time since I poured some 40+ hours into a game. The last one I can think of is last year's Resident Evil 5. RE5 wasn't the greatest game in the world, but the combination of co-operative play with Spencer, a horde of unlockable secrets, and classic RE4-style gameplay--I was pretty hooked.

Demon's Souls is a whole different animal than anything that has come out recently. It's a (mostly) single player action/RPG that relies on a very D&D-based stat and equipment system. With a medieval/fantasy setting, it uses the same staples of the genre as just about anything else--sans elves and orcs. What makes Demon's Souls so appealing is that the game has absolutely no qualms with kicking your ass, even to the point of breaking your controller in anger (Spencer). Why is this appealing? Games these days tend to hold your hand, tutorials and user friendliness have taken the place of challenge and brutal difficulty. I realized this while recently playing Megaman 9--another game that will have you cursing your creator after about an hour of play.

In addition to the standard RPG elements, Demon's Souls takes an online approach that is a welcome change to the genre. For one, while the game is technically a single-player experience, you can add up to two friends in co-operative play to take down some of the more challenging stages and foes. This has proven to be the key to the game's hook--for me anyway. With Spencer on the other side, leveling and getting further, I have to make sure my character is within his limits to play with, as there is a +/-10 level gap in playability. Meaning, you have to be within 10 levels of eachother to play together. The co-op play itself adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay. I'm prone to playing Thief/Ranger characters in RPGs. It's just how I roll. As a result, I'm constantly skulking around corners with my Thief Ring equipped trying to get backstabs and avoiding close encounters. Spencer, however, has taken a somewhat more brutish approach to the game as a Warrior type. When we play together, now he can take the heat in combat on the ground while I provide sniper support from the ledges of rooftops. He can keep the enemy dancing with him while I sneak around and stab him in the back (for a huge bonus of damage). The gameplay changes completely, and makes the challenges of the standard levels much more fun to deal with.

In addition to that, the online functionality of the game extends into single player experiences as well. You, or another player, can write notes on the ground to warn other players playing through the same stage--or to fuck with them--of impending doom. It's anonymous, and it's helpful. As well, other players playing through the stage will leave a blood stain when they die. By pressing X over it, you can see a little holographic replay of how they died--thus warning you of something big or learning to not do what they did. While these players don't actually play with you, you're all still playing in the same online realms.

Part of the game's hook also lies with what most games make extremely annoying. When you die--and you will--you leave a bloodstain... that contains all of the souls you've collected up to that point. Souls are important because they let you buy levels, weapons, armor, items, or upgrade equipment. Losing them sucks, however, you can retrieve them from the bloodstain, which will sit about 10 seconds ahead of wherever you died. Therefore, you must go get it. So there you go, repeating the same level to (hopefully) get to the same spot you died so you can retrieve your valuable souls. This will turn a 1 hour session into a 3 hour session easily. This may seem annoying, but like the Megaman games of the NES days, it makes you memorize the level to a T and will make the game much smoother over all for you.

It's hard for me to explain why that kind of repetition is appealing. Other games, like Splinter Cell for example, make you die or "fail" a lot and it just pisses me off to the point that I turn it off. In Demon's Souls though, you die, get pissed off, go kill whatever killed you, get back your 32,000 Souls you dropped, and you feel more accomplished than you would have before. I can't say the game's brutality toward the player is always fun, but at least the game stays challenging from start to finish.

Anyway, I think the game is great. It's great to have another PS3 exclusive that is worth the hype. While I own all 3 systems of this generation now, I will say that the PS3 has much more appealing exclusives than the 360. While I like HALO as much as anyone else, I can't think of any other reasons, besides Left 4 Dead, the 360's exclusive titles would be appealing. All of the major games like your Call of Duty's and your Rock Band's are available on both systems--while the PS3 maintains some of the best games of the generation as exclusives like MGS4, Killzone 2, Little Big Planet, and now Demon's Souls. The only reason I'm getting Modern Warfare 2 on 360 is because I know everyone else is.

So... yeah with that I'm done. I kind of gave up gaming for a while after I joined the Marines. It feels good to be a nerd again. Aloha!