30 (rushed) minutes with Demon's Souls

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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Demon's Souls

A few weeks ago, I wrote about three games I'm too afraid to play (I forget what the name of that article was, but I'm sure it wasn't on-the-nose at all). One of those fearful titles was From Software's PlayStation 3-exclusive role-playing game Demon's Souls, which frightened me because everyone keeps telling me how freakishly difficult it is. But I'm 31 years old and far too "mature" to let a bunch of ones and zeroes give me the willies, so long story short, I own a copy of Demon's Souls now.

That odd, high-pitched noise you just heard was Bitmob editor Rob Savillo squealing with glee.

The first thing that happened when I started up Demon's Souls was that I had to update my PlayStation 3. Way to build up that suspense, Demon's Souls. Will the status bar ever fill up?

Spoiler: Yes, it did.

 

After some online license whajahoosit, it came time to create my character. This would usually take me an hour all by itself, but I was under a deadline, so I just named him Rob. That way, if the game ended up pissing me off, I would always remember who wanted me to play this goddamned thing.

I spent a couple minutes playing with the "Gender" slider and wondering why it was a thing. I also aged Rob as much as I could and made him look like a ginger Lance Henriksen. At five minutes, it was the fastest I've ever reached a satisfactory result in an image creator.

Demon's Souls Rob

After that, I got a shitload of backstory full of names I suspected I wouldn't remember, either because my self-imposed clock was ticking, or because I am super bad with fantasy names.

The first thing I did upon assuming control of my character was foolishly press the Square button on my DualShock 3, which used up what I assume was a health item. Then, I realized two things: First, that R1 was the sword button, and second, that Start did not pause the game. It's a slightly lesser crime than the Guide button not pausing an Xbox 360 game, which is the case in Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw (see a pattern?), but still...useful information, nonetheless.

A moment later, I discovered that the PS button doesn't pause the game, either. How the hell do you stop it?

I killed the weird zombie guy who had been attacking me while I thought the game was paused and then I found out that it was possible to walk over him and have him "stick" to my foot so that the in-game physics would hilariously fling his limp corpse around. Five minutes later, that got old and my time was up.

OK, so maybe this wasn't enough time to really see if Demon's Souls lives up to the hype. But I'm playing it, at least, and I'm looking forward to seeing what it will throw at me.

While I was writing that last paragraph, the third enemy in the tutorial almost killed me.

This might be rough.

 
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EVAN KILLHAM'S SPONSOR
Comments (11)
Default_picture
June 29, 2012

Love this

Default_picture
June 29, 2012

A ginger Lance Henrikson made me laugh a lot harder than I would have thought it could.

Default_picture
June 29, 2012

If you want some help getting over your fear for the game, I'd suggest you watch an awesome speedrun on it that I've only recently found. This is the first part of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWi6t8Psv9w

It certainly helped me, other than the speedrun being just downright amazing. And if you ever feel like you're getting stuck and are too scared to continue (I was for an entire week, sadly), the only advice is to really just push through it. After a while you get so angry at whatever boss and/or world that is holding you back that you won't stop playing until you've taught them the meaning of glorious defeat.

Robsavillo
June 29, 2012

I don't recommend watching any videos of Demon's Souls. Most of the fun (for me, at least) is in the initial discovery of things in the game. I wouldn't spoil that for youself.

Profile_pic4
June 29, 2012

I second that. Watch nothing, be surprised by everything.  Too many WTF moments, but I didn't want to spoil even one of them.

The lack of pause is just one of the many things that made me stop and say "oh, it's going to be like THAT, is it?"

Incredible game. Rob, have you given him any indicators as to stage/world progression/order?

Robsavillo
June 29, 2012

Not a word!

Profile_pic4
June 29, 2012

Excellent.

Default_picture
June 29, 2012

@Rob, I can respect that opinion. I just thought I'd add it, because 1) it's a speedrun, it's not a walkthrough of how to play the game and it skips over all the important plot points (except for the last two bosses, which are arguable spoilers) and 2) not everyone's game experience gets ruined by finding out what's ahead of them. 
So really, if he wants to watch it, he can, I'm not forcing him :) I was just trying to give some advice from someone who too got scared off by the difficulty and what he could do, not what he should.

26583_1404714564368_1427496717_31101969_389938_n
June 29, 2012

I'm staying as cold as possible, which is paying off in a big way.

Now I know who Guy on the Bridge is and why people hate him.

Default_picture
June 29, 2012

Great stuff, Evan.

Robsavillo
June 29, 2012

Heh. It's funny that you fixate on the lack of pausing immediately. It's mostly a technical issue -- developer From Software can't very well let you pause the game because of how interconnected the online components are to the overall design. I love this feature, honestly, because it forces several things: 1) you have to plan your equipment setup in advance, 2) you have to plan which items you want to hotbar in advance, and 3) you have to execute all actions in real-time (i.e., you can't open up your inventory and halt the action a la any Bethesda RPG to instantly heal yourself. In other words...no cheating the game design).

But if you're really worried about the pausing thing -- Demon's Souls autosaves every 10 seconds. So all you have to do is quit out of the game through the menu quickly to pause. Also, enemies will never search for you, and most enemies will return to their positions if you put enough distance between the both of you. And that means you can (usually) safely leave an idle character in a location with no enemies around.

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