Dark Souls 2

My Christmas whisky hangover is finally over, let the weekly updates re-commence!

I’ve really only been playing one game recently and that’s Dark Souls 2 on the personal computation machine. It’s infuriating to the point where you’ll take several bites out of your monitor but at the same time, it’s a magnificent game which will teach you how to dance.

There are five significant qualms I have with the game:

• The user interface is ugly and cumbersome.
• You cannot easily compare equipment you are wearing with items you are viewing in a shop.
• The icons for stats are confusingly similar to one another.
• Some stats have ridiculously abstract names (Poise? What the hell is poise?)
• Punishment for death is excessive. Punishments include:
  • All enemies respawn
  • Your maximum HP is lowered
  • If you die once then die again without reaching the point of your original corpse, any currency souls you’ve collected are pissed away forever

Besides the issues above you are never told if you are in the wrong place for your ability level, or if you need to use an item to progress. You just have to figure it out or you have to find out how to progress from an internet guide like a great big idiot baby. If your personal honour code forbids consulting guides, the first few hours of the game can feel like being frequently punched in the face from a giant with wasps for hands.

I usually consider the need to check FAQs and guides to be slothful design but in Dark Souls, the lack of information is intentional. From Software want you to talk to people about the game. Not just internet goblins either (although the online community is vast), you’re meant to ignore the repulsive smell of strangers and cohorts and actively discuss the game. You’re meant to have conversations with your even your most hideous neighbours. Exchanges like this:

“Hey did you blow up that wall on the corner in the forest of giants”

“No! I didn’t know you could do that! How can I find it? Can I touch your hair?”

“It’s where there’s a hollow guard throwing firebombs. Please let go of my hair sir.”

There’s real joy to be had learning about some secrets and missed opportunities from social interaction. Even in the game itself there are messages left by other players which literally litter the floor. They inform you of hidden paths, items, and useful cliffs to commit suicide from. It’s a wonderful mechanic which is surprisingly devoid of deviant-speak as players can only use words from a preset list. If only this were the case for all online conversations.

If you’re too useless to make any progress whatsoever, you also have the option to summon in random plebs to help you which is great but pretty much nullifies the extreme difficulty. However, you can return the favour by joining some other poor sod’s game. Ding so can reward you with the prize of returning to full health, assuming you don’t arse it up and let the poor sod die (or die uselessly yourself).

It really is a belter of a game. Every time I get crushed by a mace the size of a horse, I feel like I’m learning something. Usually, I learn fear. Stamina management and fear. The trick to succeeding is to hang back and slowly nip at enemies until they die from 1000 papercuts. There’s considerably more depth to it than that but the natural learning and adapting is a refreshing change from big neon arrows telling me what to do and glowing paths telling me where to go. I have to think, and try stuff for myself and fuck up to progress. That’s brilliant.

Learning to kill the run of the mill chumps is one thing but ridding the world of bosses is another. Bosses have patterns which you must learn but unlike Zelda games, the punishment for failure is swift brutal death. Which is what makes killing them so damn rewarding (apart from all the actual awards that is). Coincidentally, I killed the first boss on my first go so I felt like Zeus for a good 5 minutes before promptly losing everything to the the next enemy with a large pointed stick. I needed a new controller anyway, it’s fine.

Oh and my favourite aspect of the game is that you can kill everybody. Want to kill the shopkeeper? Fine. Want to kill the lady who lets you level up and make the game impossible for yourself? Go for it. Want to bump someone off to take their sweet sword? Do it. Oh except don’t do it if you don’t mean it, people who you kill don’t come back. Ever.

In many ways, Dark Souls 2 is a metaphor for life. You can basically do what you want and you can achieve great things that seem impossible but you will be given very little help and might well get decapitated a few times before you succeed.