The other Dark Night

While the rest of the gaming world gorges itself on Batman and drools uncontrollably at the latest incremental update to military warfare simulation, I have been drooling uncontrollably in response to a different sort of dark night, the one that imprisons your soul after a few hours alone with Dark Souls.

If you care about gaming and your don't know the scoop on Dark Souls, let me just cut to the chase and say its hard. Like that's it, that's what it is. Its hard. And surprisingly, its enough. Plot? Meh. Music? So so. Graphics? Alright, I guess. But make no mistake, Dark Souls is chock full of every uncompromising middle finger japanese game design has given over the past 30 years or so of modern gaming. Ever been shot at from multiple directions while platforming? How bout enemies that don't recoil? Single use power ups you can waste? Enemies that block even while attacking? Save points that restore dead enemies? Ranged attacks you can't aim? Invisible enemies? Bosses with instant kill attacks? Loss of unspent experience points / money upon death? Illusory floors? All these dick moves and more can be yours for the low low price of an almost excellent romp through a desolate third person action adventure game.

And make no mistake, "almost excellent" isn't any sort of slam on the difficulty, or even the premise of a game hinged upon difficulty. I am no slouch when it comes to difficult games, and truth be told, this game is often so unforgivingly cheap, that it frequently borders on entertainment. You see, there's no concession to it. This isn't like some artificially puffed up difficulty mode or a "hardcore throwback" game that presents you with a world you should be able to dominate and then whips you with an unfair damage : health ratio.

Dark Souls is a desolate and unpleasant game, filled with scenarios that are commonly and obviously beyond your means. A knight in obsidian armor with a sword as big as you stands directly in front of the only available doorway or A rickety bridge crosses a giant expanse, enemy archers cocked and ready on both sides or a crumbling stone staircase leads down to a pitch black cellar with growling in it or A giant blood red dragon sits perched on a tower, staring dead at you with hungry eyes. Dark Souls never says "come on in, you'll be fine.", it never gives you the impression you're going to be alright. It says "I don't know what you're doing here, you are going to die repeatedly for whatever it is you are trying to accomplish, and you are going to lose way more than you gain in the process."

Its a kind of game that makes you bitter and cynical about playing because there's isn't just an ambush up ahead, there's an ambush up ahead that explodes and has spikes and spews acid and transports your entrails to hell. Unfortunately, Dark Souls is also sitting on you shoulder, daring you to risk what little you've earned on the foolish notion of progress. Do you go just a little bit further and peek around the corner into oblivion or take the long back track to re-up your health and supplies, regenerating every non-boss thing you've encountered thus far. There's no status screen or mission log to tell you where to go next, and no map to tell you where you've been. Just that greedy gamer intuition that nags; "I know the next save point is around the corner" or "There's something good in that chest, I know it." or "you can kill this boss with only two healing drinks, trust me."

Its made up of all those wonderful feelings the adventure genre has lost in the last 15 years or so, because it is truly up to you. Its liberating, in a way few other games have been, to stand there at any given moment and time and have no idea what you're supposed to do next. Should I go this way? Can I kill this guy? Do I need a new sword or more magic? Its all up to you, and whether you fail or succeed the game is never going to say "good job, here's a cookie". Nope, its just going shrug and drop you off at the next overwhelmingly unfair situation and see what you do next.

Despite all this thematic genius, Dark Souls greatest failing is its arrogance. At times it is clear that the design staff was so caught up in making a tough game, they forgot it still had to be a playable game underneath or people wouldn't keep coming back for abuse. Not quite to the degree that some other games have tripped over their own premises, but enough to frequently sour the (already pretty dour) mood. Player controls are clunky, and in many cases outright stupid. The real time menu system does not utilize your combat controls, but still disables them anyway. You can't strafe or back up unless locked onto a target, so fleeing from ranged enemies is a chore. At merchants, you can't compare what you're buying to what you're wearing. And how bout the ability to use healing items that you don't need? A tiny inventory screen without an auto arrange. Are these deal breakers? No, but these are easy fixes / concessions that have been around since the psone. Wolfenstein 3D had a strafe lock, why can't this? You can almost hear the dev saying "We took it out because that would've made the game easier."

And the ai? Can only be classified as juvenille. True story; I never even got to fight the games first real boss because he knocked me off a cliff and then jumped off himself, giving me the kill for free. Some enemies can hit you through walls, while others will keep swinging / shooting at you even when you're hiding behind a wall because they never forget your position. Many can get themselves stuck in walls or accidentally / walk off cliffs. And for all their giant imposing terror, most bosses can be killed by simply staying as close as possible and circling them with light attacks. Sure, they have one obligatory "get off me" attack and practically kill you if you make a single mistake, but once you figure out how to compensate? There's no strategy, just a test of reflexes.

But, for all its arrogance I would not disparage Dark Souls too much. Even with a myriad of minor flaws (that I understand plagued its predecessor as well) the game presents an experience that is truly rare, an actual adventure. That sort of wonder a large open world used to inspire in players before Mario 64 taught devs how to paint giant arrows into the background, and GTA taught us how fantastic waypoint paths over maps could be, and MGS gave us endless radio chatter to remind us whats going on and who the bad guys are. Provided of course you have played a game with a shitty camera and questionable backstab mechanics before and that you can live with the words "YOU DIED" on screen every few minutes, Dark Souls has a lot to offer. There's even a multiplayer component which I have deliberately left out of this review because a) to spoil it would tarnish its genius implementation and b) I still don't 100% understand it.

-F.

The Goddamned Batman

Arkham City is quite fantastic. Pretty much everything I hated about the first game (that I didnt even bother to finish) got fixed and I ran through the story in this one in just under 10 hours. Side stuff has its own intertwined stories and uses part of the Riddler side quest to unlock them (solving riddles, not collecting trophies.Speaking of, Riddler trophies are a bitch goddess. Its great that you dont just walk over them and pick them up, you need to solve a little puzzle. The down side? 400 of them. That's just too many.

Voice acting is top notch; Kevin Conroy returns as the voice of Batman and of course Mark Hamill does just an amazing job of playing the joker. Most of the other voice acting is pretty good, especially Harley Quinn, but I'd love to punch the guy in the face who thought it would be good to add all the goofy break up and other cheesy effects to the Riddler's lines, especially in the pause menu. The random chatter in the city is a nice touch, but you will hear the same thing said over and over eventually but most of it is pretty hilarious.

Graphics are improved over the previous game, and not being in the confines of 1 fairly small island (which you can see off the west coast of Arkham City) is a huge plus. Some sections of the game feel very borrowed from the first one for example the part where you walk on ice feels exactly the same as the sewer section of the first one but the boss battles are all very unique and . The models are definitely more detailed but the thugs themselves still look pretty generic.

I wasnt mad that I spent $60 on this, but I dont like the fact you almost have to buy a strategy guide to get all 400 riddler trophies