Working as Intended

I know I'm a good two years late to the party --which has all but departed for greener pastures, what with the sequel coming out in October-- but I finally seriously sat down and finished Demon's Souls this week. It was a very long, very challenging playthrough, but, man, I'm so glad I did it. Hence why I'm hear writing this in a cheery mood and didn't start this post off with "DSKDHSJDLSDAHGA GOD GAME IS SO HARD ME HATEY HATE HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!" Or something along those lines.

I just thought I'd spend some time this evening writing up about this crazy ol' game and why I feel it's just the bee's knees. For the uninitiated, Demon's Souls, aside from being very awkward to pronounce, is a game on the PlayStation 3 made by From Software. Probably better known for games like Armored Core and Chromehounds, From looked at the video game industry this generation and apparently deduced that it was nothing but wall-to-wall pansy games made for the pansiest pansies to ever pance their way through this pansy planes of Panconia. To try and bring some damned fun back rekindle players with the difficulty of the games of yore, they created Demon's Souls. It's a 'Survival Action' game, and dear god above does it ever live up to that totally made up genre.

Now, I really don't like hard games. Whenever a game throws a stupidly obnoxious or hard boss/level my way, I'm the first person to throw the controller on the ground, swear and usually give up on that line of playing for a good while. Demon's Souls, however, kept me constantly entertained and enjoying myself through the entire 20-30-something hour jaunt in it's creepy, dark world of creepiness. This, my friends and whoever else is reading this tripe, is because I don't actually think Demon's Souls is 'hard' in the slightest. I think it's challenging.

The word 'hard' to me, aside from the usual innuendos, means that a boss or level or whatever has kicked its way into a game and was specifically designed to piss the player off. Like there's suddenly a boss who teleports behind you and insta-stabs you. Or there's now an underwater, timed escort mission where you have  to dodge mines and laser sharks for no goddamned reason. You know, crap like that? Demon's Souls, to me, isn't that in the slightest. What it is is a game that isn't afraid to tell you that, yes, you actually are kind of a moron, aren't you? But that's okay, because it's here to help you. It hurts you because it loves you. It knows you can succeed! And what better way to show that then to throw you head first into a fire-breathing dragon's mouth!

My thoughts exactly.

Speaking of thoughts, as I mentioned above, I thought I'd just write down a few of my favourite experiences on my first complete playthrough of the game. Both to show just what I feel makes the game so special, and to hopefully maybe excite some of my Xbox 360-owning friends for when Dark Souls gets its shiny multi-console release in October. Then we can all cry and suffer together. Just like a family. OF PAIN.



Moment #1): The Tutorial, and First Steps into the World.

Your very first few moments into Demon's Souls are rather jarring if you're so used to current games and their ways of slowly coddling players into the mechanics and general world. There's usually some voice barking tutorial jargon at you, and then you're given a consequence-free few hours or so to learn the whole one or two commands the game asks of you. Not that there's anything especially wrong with that or anything, it's just that it's a whole 'nother beast compared to how Demon's Souls handles it. Basically, the game puts down little markings in the first level that say things like, 'Press L1 to block', or 'You can use items by pressing the Square Button'. I hope you have that memorized, because you're not getting told it again. You read it, then you're expected to commit it to memory to help against the untold horde of nasties.

Demon's Souls tells you what you need to know to make your way in the world. Anything beyond that is for you to discover, since there's so many different classes and ways to tackle any given situation. The game couldn't explain them all, and frankly, rightly doesn't even bother. You're told how to block, swing a weapon, cast a spell (if that's you're thing), and then you're immediately booted out the door. Once you finish the tutorial level where you die rather horribly (a nice nod to what you'll spend a majority of the game doing from now on) you're brought to the Nexus (the main hub of the game) by a stange woman called the Maiden in Black.






The Maiden gives you the gist of what's going on. There's bad guys, they're Demons, you need to kill them to stop some Old God from destroying the entire Universe. You know, the usual Friday night shenanigans. After this, you're given five different worlds to go from, which you can tackle in any order you want. For the sake of my organs, I tackled World 1 first.

What ensured was about an hour of the game going, "You are a bitch. You're in my game, motherfucker, and you will learn to play by my rules! Oh, what's that? You died again? Good! Now pick yourself up and try it again until you get it right!" Unlike what an unhealthy and constantly dying section of the playerbase would have you believe, Demon's Souls is not a hack-n-slash adventure game. If you go into a fight swinging your weapon around like a spaz, the enemy will kindly respond to this by ripping it out of your hands and shoving it up your hindquarters until you learn what the word Defense means.

This being said, it's not like the game will insta-kill you the second you cock up, or anything ridiculous like that. The problem a lot of people seem to have with the game is that they think it's some sort of needlessly excessive torture device designed for only the most masochistic of players. While, yes, Demon's Souls certainly doesn't hold back in the difficulty department, you're given plenty of chances you improve yourself. When you die, it isn't because the enemy was being a cheap little so-and-so. When you die, you'll know why you died and how you can improve upon it. For the vast majority of the game, the only thing you need to improve when trying again is your plan of attack. After your first few deaths, which'll most likely be in 1-1, you start to get the feeling that the game is knowingly and proudly nodding its head at you every time you advance beyond your last unfortunate blood splatter. Yes, good. You're learning. Go forth, young one!

Honestly, by the time the game's nearing its end, you'll barely be dying, even though you'll be fighting enemies much stronger and more complex than the ones you began with. Not that it stops being a challenge, because it most certainly doesn't, but those first few deaths in the game will teach you so much about the later paths you'll traverse down if you keep your chin up and take the batterings like the non-pansy you oughta be.



Moment #2: World 3-1, or: How I Learnt that Online is a Giving and a Curse.

Online in Demon's Souls is a very strange thing. It's most certainly not required at particular point, and yet it just makes the game feel so much more whole. Multiplayer in DS isn't the bog-standard 'Multiplayer/Co-Op Menu Option' affair, it's tied directly into the main game in a very quirky fashion. The most obvious way you'll see the online influence in your game is with the strange markings and blood splatters that will appear through the levels.

When I first entered 3-1, I was completely lost. I had brought a friend in to do the level co-op with, which works relatively easy enough, but neither of us had any idea what the level involved, or the nasties partroling it or anything. We were completely blind, which made the online markings a godsend. Other players wrote down on the ground the locations to keys, potential falling-to-your-damned-death areas, and possible enemy ambush spots. Looking at the blood splatters would show you the final moments of an unfortunate player. It wouldn't show you what was attacking them, but rather where they were and what they were doing to this crazy, invisible foe. You could learn how they died, and maybe even what style of combat clearly wasn't working.

While the initial reaction to these things might be that it takes the challenge out of the game, I think they're actually a really awesome mechanic. Even with the markings and blood splatters, you never truly know what you're going to face around that next corner or in the next room. You can certainly guess, and that's just assuming that the player online who put down the hint was actually telling the truth. In the massive, creepy prison-maze that is 3-1 there were more than a few occasions where people left intentionally misleading hints, or hints that made sense to them, but were complete nonsense to everyone else. Now while players can't write whatever they want, they can choose certain words in a variety of phrases to put down that other players will see. So even with the 'hints' in play, it can often lead to more unpredictability than it would if you took them away altogether. Caution is the name of the game here.

During the travels of my friend and I, my friend accidentally tumbled off a caved-in section of one of the prison walkways and fell to his death, because it was too dark to properly see the hole. Something I was rather guilty of doing earlier in our run. Being the nice guy I am, the first thing I did was put down a message saying basically, "There is a hole ahead!" The next day, as I was rerunning the area for shits and giggles, I came across my message and saw that quite a few people had recommended it, which is basically just slang for, "Hey! This message helped me. Thanks, dude!" I felt rather chuffed about it, honestly. I never saw these players for an instant, or even knew who they were, but somewhere across the European servers I had helped make a handful of in-game lives just that much easier. Hooray!

Now, on to the dark side of online playing.

Although you can set up co-op easily enough while prancing about the PlayStation Network, it's also true that people can 'invade' your game just as easily, with the intent of hunting down and killing you. Y'see, when you die in Demon's Souls, that's actually not the end of it. While enemies respawn and you take a hit in HP (You're at 50%, or 75% if you equip your handy-dandy Cling Ring) you're still very much up, walking and don't lose any progress you've made in the level (like opening doors, getting items, ect). That always stays the same. However, if you want to be brought back to life and get your full HPs back, you need to resurrect yourself. This can be done in one of three ways.

• Killing any boss.
• Using a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes item.
• Killing another player.

Now bosses and stones are of limited supply, but players are unlimited as long as the servers are up. If you're alive and running a level you haven't completed before, you may get a warning that someone in the same level range as you has invaded your game. What was a challenging dungeon crawl now becomes a challenging dungeon crawl and game of cat-and-mouse. There is now someone, somewhere in your game that is hunting you down like an animal. They want to live again. They need to live again. You are the only thing standing in their way now. Likewise with you. You want to live. You want to complete the level. This... this invader has come to your world and intends to stop your progress. Are you going to take that kind of shit? Hell no!

My first invasion came on 3-1 as I was waiting for my friend to join my merry jauntings in the prison of misery and woe. Now, from my friend's end, I imagine the whole thing must've been hilarious, because I was swearing and insulting this phantom player like a goddamn sailor for the entire fight. On my end, it was a rather tense fight. I don't know what his overall plan was, but it seemed his goal was to find me and then hope I suddenly dropped dead out of sheer shock or something. He would ping me with magic (mighty annoying ones too, I might add) then he'd take off down the prison hallway and cower somewhere to heal. The fight came to an end once I figured out what his 'plan' was, dodged his magic, rolled passed him, blocked his entrance to the hallway and promptly chopped his bollocks off.

Then he put down a message in the ground that he was looking for a co-op run through the level for anyone willing. I had a mighty hearty laugh over this, got my friend into my game, and we continued onwards!

So, yes, online in Demon's Souls is a very weird thing.

Like climbing up an ominous spiral tower staircase, seeing a message engraved in the floor, slowly walking over to it, dreading what it could possibly fortell, only to have it just say, "Hi!"



Moment #3: World 2-3, and One Severely Pissed off Dragon God (King).




Hey, kids! Meet the boss for World 2.

He is not your friend.

While Demon's Souls certainly has its fair share of boss battles, and many of them are quite the doozies, World 2-3 stands out to me because it's my favorite kind of boss fight; in that it's so much more like a giant puzzle than a fight. A giant, giant, magma spewing, multi-mouthed puzzle.

This is more of a rant about the nature of fights in Demon's Souls rather than anything overly specific about this boss -- it's just that it's a great example of what I love about fighting in DS. In their own strange way, really, every fight is a puzzle in this game. It's less about getting the enemies HP down to zero than it is about getting through an encounter in the most survival-ensured way possible. When you see a group of enemies, very few players (you'd have to be built for it) would just blindly rush in and start swinging wildly. You could do that and maybe survive, but you'll have to spend supplies (Items or MP) on healing your stupid self, and you could very well be risking dying and loosing so much more than just that one battle. Most players look at the enemy's surroundings (or lack thereof), look at what they themselves have available, and what can be done to get through this situation as smoothly as possible. Death is around every corner in this game, and the most deadly thing is underestimating your opponents.

While you get used to fighting an enemy, fighting that same enemy on completely different terrain (sometimes something as simple as a staircase) can create an entirely different fight. For instance, out in the open your polearm might be able to help you keep distance while dealing damage, but you could soon find yourself dead in moments if you try and use that to fight the same enemies that are now in a packed corridor later on, because your polearm kept bumping into the wall, stalling your attacks.

Or, say, you get the feeling (or read a hint) that there might be enemies hiding beyond the next doorway. Obviously just blindly walking out would be a terribly stupid thing to do, but what do you do? Well, you could either step outside, let your presence be known and then quickly dive back into the room you came from, and let the enemies come to you. Or you could aim for the ground just outside and cast a poison cloud spell, which'll teach those dirty campers what for! Or you could stand directly in the doorway, slam your shield out in front of you and stab the incoming enemies from behind it with a spear or rapier. Or something else entirely.  Point is, there's many different ways to tackle even the most 'standard' of fights, and it entirely depends on your playstyle and how you decide to make your character. It becomes a sort of puzzle game where the goal is to make everyone but you exceptionally dead. No easy task in a game like this.

World 2-3 makes a jolly good case of all this, since you're facing up against a god only knows how tall magma dragon that can squash you like the insignificant little worm you are. Somehow, someway, you've got to break through the broken pillars here and man the conveniently placed cannons that'll gravely wound him. The most logical choice for many will be to hide behind the pillars as he scans the area looking for you, and break the broken pillars from a distance with arrows or magic. Some others decide to go, "Fuck subtlety!" and take the far riskier route of charging at the pillars with their shield or weapon draw and break the stupid things through sheer force. Lastly, the completely goddamn insane players can actually make the dragon smash the pillars blocking the way, by moving and diving about when they learn the dragon's general movement patters and have completely lost their marbles.

Even when/if you manage to fire the cannons, the job isn't over yet. You've got to go down and deliver the final blow to the all-but-dead dragon yourself. This is actually very easy, which is funnily enough what kills a lot of people. They see the dragon lying there defeated, go, "That's it! I've won. Yes! Time to strike you down," completely ignore the fact that this is a magma breathing dragon and instantly roast themselves to death when they charge at his face, laughing like idiots. Much like how the game probably is now at them.

No fight is as simple as it seems in Demon's Souls. That doesn't mean every single one of them is this beautifully complex display of form and function, but it means that if you think something is going to be easy, you've most likely already lost. The game's immense fun and feeling of satisfaction comes from knowing that you've earnt your victory. Not every fight is a death-imminent duel of the fates or whatever, but rarely is a fight ever simple.






Speaking of satisfaction, actually...



Moment #4: World 3-2 and 3-3: Earning Your Spoils.

World 3, especially the later two-thirds, seem to be very well known amongst the Demon's Souls community for providing some of the most challenging fights in any already especially challenging game. The levels themselves aren't too bad, except making sure you keep your footing. It's the bosses that give this world particular notoriety.

Let's start with 3-2. I had heard to be very, very prepared for the fight, but I had no idea what it actually entailed when I walked up to the giant mist gate that separated me and potentially gory demise #392. When I walked through that gate, I was greeted by the Maneater, who was as polite as its name would imply. Its a bizarre gargoyle/chimera fusion that absolutely adores leaping right at you and swinging its disturbingly sharp claws for all they're worth. After losing a few unfortunate, but thankfully non-vital, organs, I started to adapt to its attacks. Dodging like a madmad, unleashing a Soul Arrow or Firestorm when I had the chance, or just straight up getting in close and stabbing the angry-fangy bits of its person. This was when the shortest bout of confidence ever experienced came and went. When its health got down to around 20%, I started to feel confident I was going to win this for all of about three seconds. Which, incidentally, was the time it took for it to bellow into the night air and for me to hear a second, distant bellow.

Oh, shit.


My fears came to fruition when the shadow of a second Maneater covered my own. I don't know what exactly it did, but it must've looked at the fight going on below, gone "'ello. What's all this then?" and then decided the most appropriate course of action would be to dive out of the sky and slam me into the ground with a sickening crack that could only come from my poor character's spine shattering. Still, I wasn't about to give up. I dived behind a nearby pillar, quickly healed up and spent the next few minutes dodging and going "OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK"

Suddenly, inspiration hit me! Or that may have just been the Maneaters. In either case, I decided to try and separate the Maneaters by casting on, and intentionally missing, the second, healthier one and while it was in the air flying about trying to not get burnt alive by the magic, I would dive towards the first, weaker one that was still on the ground and do my best to take it out without risking further organ puncturing. It took a few times to get the timing and positioning down, but I eventually killed the first Maneater, and its mean brother soon went down afterwards. I'll tell you what though, that game couldn't fucking save my progress fast enough when all was said and done.

That's how you make a boss battle.

With 3-2 under my belt and more years taken off my life then I would have preferred, I marched onwards to 3-3. Now, offline, 3-3 is actually a joke in difficulty. Especially after 3-2's horror show. What makes 3-3 challenging is an unmentioned quirk that occurs when you're playing it online. Y'see, as mentioned before, players who are dead can invade your game to try and bring themselves back to life by killing you. When you climb the staircase to the boss battle in 3-3, there's a very good chance you'll see the message, "Player X Has Invaded Your Game!" Which, thanks to the short level that is 3-3, usually means you dash for the boss arena; as once you reach there, the invading player can't progress any further and is booted from your game.

When I got the invaded message in 3-3, I immediately scrambled up the staircase and towards the arena. I really didn't want to fight another player at the moment, since I was so close to ending this world, and just defeated the Maneaters. I dove through the fog that leads to the boss battle, sighed with relief and then instantly disregarded that feeling that when I discovered that in 3-3, invading players become the boss.


Oh, double shit.


They keep their weapon, items and whatever else they were carrying, but now you have to defeat them, or they defeat you. The player I was paired up against was actually rather polite. We couldn't chat or anything, but I think he realized that I was shitting myself at the moment. He bowed politely and just stood there while I buffed myself and cursed quite a bit. When he saw I was ready, he instantly threw his shield up and charged at me. He seemed to be a pure melee build, possibly a Soldier class or something. I was a Mage/Melee Royal build, but there's no way I could tackle him in close combat. I know, since I'm pretty sure my character is still missing their liver from my one and only attempt at that. Instead, I decided to pretend I was rushing in, then when he swung I would fling myself backwards and cast Firestorm, which did a surprising amount of damage.

Unfortunately, this guy wasn't stupid, and caught on the second time I tried that. While Soul Arrow was all well and good, with its range advantage, it wan't doing damage that he couldn't just heal up from a moment later. Long story less long, after much dodging and not dodging in time, I managed to take the guy out by unlocking my camera from him, charging to his very close left (the arm he held his shield in, not the weapon), dived when he want to attack, quickly locked back onto him when I was behind, backstabbed him and then cast Firestorm when he was reeling. I bowed to him as his vanished in a puff of red mist, feeling kinda bad for the guy, since he wouldn't be coming back to life in his game yet.

A few moments later I got a cool friend request from him and that was the end of World 3.

It's thing like this that made Demon's Souls for me. Two fights that took me completely by surprise, yet at no point was I ever out of my league. While stats and weapon upgrades certainly do help on your path to hopefully not dying horribly, what you truly need is the ability to think and adapt to any changes. Not just in boss battles, but when traversing the regular levels too. You never know what's going to happen between now and when you end the level. Especially when you're online. Demon's Souls, once you get it down, is intuitive, yet unpredictable.



Moment #5: Storm King.



JUST LOOK HOW FRIGGING BIG IT IS.



Moment #6: Below the Nexus.


There's plenty of other moments in my playthrough of Demon's Souls that I'd love to babble about, but I'd probably have to end up including some form of almost every level in the game. It's just one of those games. Instead, I've decided to focus on the final event in the game, and just how must of a contrast it is to everything that comes before it.

If it's somehow evaded your grasp, Demon's Souls is a very grim, challenging game. It's atmosphere and music are as dreading as they come, and the game never holds back on wanting to throw you curveballs. When you defeat every boss in the game (the last of which would probably be 1-4 for most people, which is a bloody hard fight), the final area in the game unlocks, with all the ominous chanting and plot musings that one would expect. The Maiden in Black speaks to you about how it's time to send the Old God packing from whence it came. As you fall through the brand new hole in the middle of the Nexus, all that'd probably enter your mind is how this final boss is going to be the ultimate son of a bitch to end all son of a bitches, and how he'll be deep in some magma-soaked hell-hole and you'll probably be going through this sequence about a million times due to all the deaths. Soon , the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter and suddenly you find yourself on a bright, relaxing beach.

Wait, what?

To make matters even stranger, as you walk across the beach and into the ocean, bright blue sky above you, birds chirping in the background and eventually come across the final boss... it turns out he's a limbless abomination that can only gurgle and pathetically wheeze and slap his torso around at you. The only way you could lose this fight is if you disconnected your controller and fell asleep for a few hours. The last ten minutes of the game are the complete opposite to the rest of the game. If anything, this is where the game should start.


This is where Demon's Souls other charm comes into play. Before the final event in the game, you could be forgiven for thinking the game had absolutely no plot whatsoever, but it's here where the observant players are rewarded for their paying attention. Throughout the game, from the musings of NPCs in the Nexus to the descriptions on almost every item are constant hints and nods to the backstory of the game. It wants to tell a story, but it doesn't want to hammer cutscenes into the players head, as that would be at direct odds with the gameplay direction. Demon's Souls pulls, honestly, an almost Silent Hill 2-level of ending on the player. Those who were just in it for the gameplay got their big final boss in the form of the 1-4 battle, but even then, they probably didn't even care who it was or, most importantly, what it was. Not to say Demon's Souls plot is amazingly complex or deep or anything, because it isn't, but it's great to see the observant players get their reward too.

Which, really, seems to be what the end of the game is about. Every player gets something. People who were in it for the battles, as said, got their 1-4. People in it for the rewards get many souls (monies) and a new sword to take into New Game+, and the story fans get to see what corruption and an obsession for power and influence did to the man who brought a blight to the land of Boletaria. The Endgame isn't meant to be about proving yourself. You're there. The game recognizes that. There's nothing left to prove. You're given an ending sequence that lets you reflect on everything you've done that brought you here.

And, that's the end of that. You're a hero/horrible human being, depending on your choices, and the game is now over.

I was honestly surprised by Demon's Souls. I was expecting a really hard, grueling affair that I most likely honestly wouldn't finish. What I got instead was a no-hands-held, challenging affair that, while I certainly did get angry at from time to time, never once made me feel the game was being unfair. Planning and being cautious got me, and many others, through to the end, and that's basically what the game was all about.

It's definitely not a game for everyone, or honestly even most people, but it's a type of game I honestly think we need to see a lot more of. Games that don't passive-aggressively act like their players are retarded by holding their hand and coddling them for 80% of the trip, but instead games that almost flat out tell their players they're retarded, but that's not a bad thing. You will get better. The game knows that. Hell, by the time you're at the end, the trials you faced at the start of the game will seem incredibly trivial and stupid. Because they were.

Just don't get cocky, lest the game teach you a painful lesson in complacency.

Despite all the wordy-words shown above, there's something about Demon's Souls that just really shines to me that I can't properly explain. I think it might be up there with Saints Row 2, Final Fantasy XIII and the like as one of my all-time favourite games that came from this generation. Though, DS and FFXIII... Now there's some interesting contrast in JRPG design!

Anyway, with Dark Souls coming out soon-ish, and supposedly planning on being even more challenging, it'll be very interesting to see. Here's hoping it all turns out for the best, especially since tweaking difficulty is a very fragile and messy affair. It's got a sword... wolf.. thing, so that's definitely a big plus!