18 Action Video Games You Must Play Before You Die

15. Dark Souls

You must experience: The indescribable feeling of beating a boss. Maybe it's the visual of having a life bar slowly deplete that subconsciously effects the flow and intensity of battle far more than any other game - of course it could easily be the scorchingly unforgiving levels of difficulty that make you earn every drop of blood you'll spill too - but there's nothing like surmounting the challenge ahead of you in Dark Souls. Whilst Bloodborne and the remastered Dark Souls II are far more graphically polished than this entry, it's the world the original takes place in, the perfect layout of bosses you encounter at just the right time, the placement of items and the overall sensation of being a lone adventurer that makes this the best choice for fans of either the action or RPG genre. The games have gotten quite the amount of flak for being completely unforgiving, and although there are a few places where you'll bite the big one for the sake of developers FromSoft establishing an unremittingly bleak tone, it's all in service to push you to the limits of acceptability, making every victory you snatch from the jaws of defeat one of the most euphoric feelings in all of gaming.