Dark Souls: Initial Impression

Believe the hype. Dark Souls is harder than a porn star on viagra. Before purchasing the game, I’d been joking on twitter about drinking raw eggs and shadow boxing in preparation for this sordid exercise in masochism. The truth is, I had been mentally psyching myself up. The word-of-mouth buzz, the breathless, reverential reviews, the ‘prepare to die’ marketing blurb – it all coalesced into something rather exciting. The last time I remember feeling this way was just before I watched The Exorcist. That same queasy thrill turned my stomach as I fired up my Xbox and prepared to play Dark Souls.

Like many action-RPG’s there’s a Character Creation screen to navigate before the game begins. Gotta confess, I’m not a fan of bespoke protagonists. The more choice I’m given, the more I’m convinced that I’ve made the wrong choice. After selecting my gender (male) and class (knight) I then had to choose a ‘gift’. Just to give you some idea of how baffling the choices are, one of the gifts available is a Pendant, which has ‘no effect, but fond memories comfort travellers’. Eh? After plumping for something named Twin Humanities - a ‘tiny sprite sometimes found on carcasses’ - I was ready to play.

You start in a tiny dungeon cell. A corpse is unceremoniously dumped beside you from an opening in the ceiling above. Searching the shrivelled cadaver rewards you with a key with which to unlock the cell door. As you proceed through the dimly lit corridors, you’re slowly drip-fed tidbits of information from engravings on the ground. For example, ‘Left Stick + Hold B: Dash'. You soon pick up a shield and a sword, and the few undead you encounter pose little threat: a few swipes and down they go.

That’s not to say the combat is easy. Hell no. Movement is slow and sluggish, as though your character is moving through syrup. Below your health bar is an additional stamina bar. If you so much as sneeze your stamina takes a severe hit. When it’s depleted, you’re utterly vulnerable to attack. Thankfully, stamina recovers as quickly as it empties, but it’s still something you’re constantly weary of.

The overriding sensation as you press on through the dank dungeon corridors and the empty stone courtyards is one of overwhelming loneliness. Everything wants to kill you. And they will kill you. Over and over again. It’s bleak. The first time you encounter an Asylum Demon is a humbling experience. This huge, green, club-wielding brute literally fills the entire room. There’s hardly any free space to manoeuvre. When one of his wide-reaching swings connects – and it will connect, over and over again – you’re sent crashing to the floor, health bar all but decimated, and before you’ve got a chance to dust yourself off, another blow, this time fatal.

That green bastard has killed me over twenty times, and I’ve yet to knock his health bar below the half way mark. Yes, it’s fucking hard, insanely frustrating and, if I’m being entirely honest, not particularly enjoyable. And yet, as I’m writing this, I know I’ll keep at it until, eventually, I fell that murderous douche bag. I just feel sorry for the poor bastards who had to review this to a deadline.