Demon's Souls

Magnificent and hair pulling difficulty could be two characteristics given to Demon's Souls as a title. The game brings you back to a day when video games had unforgiving difficulties punishing you for making a single or at most two mistakes before sending you to the beginning of the level. What begins as what could be characterized a frustrating experience in the early learning curve quickly turns into one of the most satisfying game experiences of this console generation.

The game combines RPG elements with that of a dungeon crawler/adventure game. It gives you 10 classes to choose from ranging from the melee oriented knight to the spell casting magicians. You're set off on what seems an impossible quest of freeing a kingdom from a horde of monsters and citizens who have lost their humanity. Story and game style aside, it is undoubtedly one of the most difficult games to come out in quite some time. With most enemies being able to kill you in just a few hits (and with some doing that in just one or two), the game will quickly make you aware of your surroundings at all times lest you fall complacent and get punished by a trap or a surprise attack. But don't get me wrong, the difficulty is what drives this game, it makes you engage it in a different way than a game like God of War would where you can slash unabashedly without much consequence.

Defeating bosses becomes almost a cathartic action as the culmination of a brutal level comes to an end with the capturing of the bosses demon soul. There's also plenty of items to acquire and to upgrade which makes it so all types of weapons are represented for the appropriate afficianados. Perhaps one of the best innovations is the multiplay, allowing you to leave messages in your game world for other players to read within their own. Also being able to be invited/invite other players to help when a particularly difficult section of a level seems to overwhelm you is a nicely added touch. The game holds much replayability because once you beat it the first time, you can carry your character over into a new game+ for even more added difficulty but also much greater rewards.

Overall, I believe this is a must own game if you want to own a definitive dungeon crawler for this generation. It's a purchase I made rather blindly without knowing too much about the game but in the end, I'm very satisfied with what it has delivered.

This game is one of the best games to come out this decade. This no walk in the park, hold your hand through cutscene after cutscene RPG. This game is tough, but in the best way out there. You will die, a lot. What makes this game so good is that it makes you want play even after your 12th death or 120th. One of the good things that Demon's Souls has for it is that it makes you addicted to the game much like Diablo 2 & WoW. The online is very unique. Sure you can team up with up to 4 players, but the real joy is playing this game solo, but also watching how other people played it before you. See a blood stain? Touch it to watch how another online player died there a few minutes ago, but you only get to watch their last few minutes, not what killed them. Leave messages and hints for other players, or read what other players left behind as well. Every now and then you will see a ghost of another person as they are working through the same area you are in. You don't have to play online, but it's fun and free. The game is very customisable, from the way you look, to the way you play. After the "training" mission (which is actually fun unlike other game's tutorials) you can go anywhere and explore everything. Hidden treasures and loot abound. This is the RPG that hardcore fans have been waiting for. It is an Action RPG that borrows from a lot of different games, but perfects everything it used. Just keep in mind that it is frustatingly hard, but once you're hooked, there is no turning back. This game will be talked about as a revolutionary title ten years from now.

It will also make you lose some hair off the top though. I've just started playing it. Let's just say that the difficulty level is brutal, and you have no options. For Pete's sake, the tutorial ends by putting you up against an unbeatable monster, just so you experience death. There is no re-load from an earlier save; it runs on auto-save. But it looks gorgeous, it's not a button masher, promises hours and hours of fun (and frustration) + replay value (try it again with a different class), has a really interesting take on online play (you can review other players' last seconds before death, leave and read hints and warnings, jump into other people's games or have others jump into yours). It's a PS3 exclusive, rated 90 on metacritic (average critic reviews out of 100), and at least in Canada, you can only get it on Amazon and at EBgames, unless of course it's sold out. Don't hesitate when you find it, get it! UPDATE: Futureshop is now listing it on their website.
I'm loving it already, and I've barely scratched the surface.

UPDATES: ugh! managed to collect some 5,000 souls through grinding (and about half a dozen deaths) and lost them all going against the first boss without the proper equipment. This game's like a really hot girl that's completely crazy, treats you like s&%t, carries a knife and may or may not get stabby on you; not that I've ever experienced that. And let's face it, if you're reading video game reviews, that analogy refers to what may as well be an urban legend to you.

Aha-ha-ha, killed my first boss, got my first trophy in the game . . . but . . . the satisfaction was short-lived, as the next 2.5 hours were wiped clean by a stubborn knight--I ended the gaming session worse off than I started... I need about a week off from work to get some traction in this game.