You creep forward gritting your teeth, your face a contorted mass of concentration. You know that one little mistake will cost you an hour and a half's worth of progress and will send you right back to the start of the area. This is intense. This is Demon's Souls!
As everyone is pretty much aware Demon's Souls is a 3rd person dungeon crawler developed by From Software which has become something of a cult hit. Much of the games reputation has been earned by the fact that the game can be unrelentingly hard and unforgiving of any mistakes the player makes, which in the age of easy games with checkpoints every few minutes makes this approach rather unique.
At it's core Demon's Souls has a simple premise, devise a character from one of the selectable classes and set about traversing the worlds, leveling up as you go along. In reality it's not so simple, this is a game where a couple of hits will usually kill you and dying sends you back to the central hub minus the souls (gained by killing enemies and used for leveling up) which were on your person at that point. If you can make it back to where you fell then you can retrieve said lost souls, but should you die on the way then they are lost forever.
For the first few worlds dying is an inconvenience but manageable, the levels being relatively short and easy to traverse. As the game progresses though the areas become larger and more complex meaning it is very easy to lose 1-2 hours progress due to a silly mistake. So you creep forward rather than run, wary of every footstep you take. This experience reminded me of Ninja Gaiden somewhat, in that this isn't a title where you run around slashing the hell out of everything without using block. In Demon's Souls you need to have your shield up. All. the. time.
The boss battles are nothing short of epic, the excitement and level of tension is nothing short of unreal when you have slogged through an hour long section for the fifth time and finally reach the boss knowing that death will mean an hours worth of slogging again just to get back there. You have to think and adapt, there is no place for rushing straight into the boss and hoping for the best, there are no checkpoint retries here.
Now whilst i completely commend the difficulty of Demon's Souls and do believe it is what gives the game it's intensity i would be lying if i said that the game didn't also anger and frustrate the hell out of me in places. The controller was thrown a few times in disgust, mainly at myself for making a stupid mistake and costing myself hours worth of progress. Other times at a couple of little bugs that resorted in me falling to my death.
The online element of the game is fantastically implemented. Other players can leave you messages on the floor warning you of upcoming danger, or even trick you into thinking the area is safe. Other players can also invade your game to either assist you or battle you. This constant online implementation however means the game lacks any kind of pause facility. This can be unfortunate if you (like myself) juggle gaming with a family, as should anything need attending to then you leave yourself open to death if you leave the game.
This is a minor point however, Demon's Souls is meant to be played intensely with upmost concentration, with no outside distractions and is certainly a unique and gripping game because of it.
Those craving intensity and an old school challenge should play this game straight away.
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