Lord Of Smashed Controllers and Arbiter Of Frustration, Dark Souls is a PHENOMENAL franchise, and one that has spurred some really old school gaming vitriol from both sides of the love/hate divide. It's truly a wondrous experience through and through, as although the game literally forces you to unlearn everything you think you know about 3rd-person action-adventure games, if you let it's ridiculously minimalist approach envelop you, a beautiful system of give and take emerges. Think you can just go up to a creature and attack them? Wrong. You need to study their animations and wait for your perfect time to strike. The game will nearly always kill you in one attack if you mess up and are wailing on the attack button hoping for a kill, as not only will you run out of stamina and be left shield-down, but damage is enhanced significantly if you deliberately go against the rules of combat. Dark Souls' reputation precedes it though, as there is a difference between incredibly hard and just plain unforgiving. Aside from a couple times in the game where developers FromSoftware seem to want to remind you of the bleakness of the world you're playing in and others where character models may get stuck or glitch through surfaces, 99% of the time you'll only die in Dark Souls of your own accord. Therein lies the rub, as there has barely been a game in years that handles the exquisite sense of progression and achievement as Dark Souls. As if the cumulative little victories weren't enough along the way, when you finally topple the last flame sword-wielding enemy and watch the credits roll, you'll dive straight back in and do it all again, picking a different class or weapon just to poke and prod the world some more, knowing that this time around you've gained a little bit more of the precious knowledge to survive, and that's the unique beauty of it. Replay it specifically for: The heart-attack-imminent, sweaty-palmed feeling of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat just as you're teetering on the edge of a full mental breakdown. Beating a boss in Dark Souls is like nothing else, and is a sensation that you'll chase through the game and its sequel.
