I hated Demon’s Souls. It’s the kind of game that is designed to infuriate most gamers and only appeal to the hardcore types that like to max out the difficulty on every game they play. Personally, I play video games to kick back and relax. I like a good challenge, but there comes a point where the game stops being fun and that’s when I quit playing. Unless you’re the type that doesn’t mind replaying the same areas over and over again until you memorize them, then don’t bother with this one.

The design of this game is supposed to hark back to the old days of gaming where things were meant to be played over and over again. A good example would be the original Super Mario Brothers, which is widely regarded as one of the best video games ever made. You would play it enough to memorize the levels, and even then it still offered a good challenge. The problem now is that game design has long since moved on from this type play, especially on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Some Wii games still use this format, and that’s why I don’t play my Wii very much any more. With the PS3, I think most gamers expect more cinematic titles rather than ones that rely on repetition and memorization. This game has virtually no plot or story other than you kill demons to collect souls.

I found the controls to be sluggish and not responsive enough, and that just further adds to the already unforgiving difficulty of the game. My character would not swing his sword when I wanted him to swing, and sometimes he could block a hit while other times his shield would drop even while I was holding the button. It’s like nothing moved quite fast enough or the way you’d want it to move, and the cameras leave lots of blind spots where enemies are purposefully waiting to catch you off guard.

The whole game is designed to kill you at every turn, then you have to go all the way back to the beginning and start over. That’s right – there are no checkpoints. You can put a lot of time into a level, then make one mistake and have to start over. That’s not all, though. You will also lose the souls that you collected along the way, so it’ll be just as hard to go through those spots again until you reach your corpse and recover them. The souls work sort of like experience points and can be used to buy stuff to help you out, but getting enough souls to actually upgrade anything is the hard part.

The graphics were pretty good, though very dark. You’ll go through a variety of medieval looking areas and the monsters all look demonic enough. I’ve always considered graphics secondary to gameplay, and since I hated the gameplay so much, there wasn’t anything special I noticed about the graphics. The sound is quite minimal in terms of music and sound effects since this isn’t really a story-driven game and there is not much dialogue. This is just a grueling hack and slash game, but it looked decent enough.

If there is anything positive I can say about this game, it’s the way it integrates into online play. There is no multiplayer or cooperative mode, but instead the game ties into other player’s games so you can see how they died and leave notes behind. If you come across a blood stain on the ground, you can watch what happened to the player that left it. This will reveal hidden enemies and also show you what not to do, though sometimes it only helps a little. Notes can be left behind for other players, but sometimes people will screw with you to try and get you killed, so don’t always pay attention to them.

One really disturbing trend I noticed when looking up info about this game is how many people talk about the sense of accomplishment one gets from completing the levels. I found message board posts from people venting their frustrations and looking for help, and the general mood from players that actually liked this game is how great they felt for beating it. I’m sorry, but if you play video games for a sense of accomplishment then you may need to reevaluate your life. I play games for fun, and Demon’s Souls just wasn’t any fun.

Recommended: No