Sony’s new PS3 motion controller has been named Sony Move. Coming later in the year either as part of a PS3 bundle, with the Playstation Eye camera or on it’s own, the Move is turns your PS3 into a Wii HD.
Here are some pictures of what you can do with the controller. (updated with new pics)
The Move comes in four flavors
The Move is refreshing
Sheer Driving Pleasure
Formidable!
“Would you like 1:1 with that, sir?”
The Move will exterminate the competition
Microsoft will be countering Sony Move with it’s own concept, codenamed Natal. When released, Natal will be able to transmit goatse images across the net with a 100ms lag between the spread and you receiving the images. Your gag reflex kicking in is even faster.
Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Quantic Dream. Published by SCE
Heavy Rain is not a game per se. It is a multiple path movie with many a quick time event as well as you assisting the character perform basic moves with your fingers playing Twister over a PS3 controller.
France-based developers (not a phrase you hear often) Quantic Dreams, noted for making that game with David Bowie in it a decade ago and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy a few years back, have give us something daring and new for the PS3. The story, which for once is king here, revolves around the hunt for the Origami Killer, a child-murder who drowns his pre-teen male victims, then places and orchid and an origami figure on the victim’s person. During the story, you’ll play each chapter as one of four characters as they all strive for the same thing. Or are they?
“And now for something completely different.” I wish this was photoshopped. I really do.
So at first you’re Ethan Mars, an architect living in a perfect life until a tragedy splits his family apart. Years later, Ethan’s son Shaun goes missing at the height of the Origami Killer’s reign of terror (the Orchid-placing Child-Drowner having been caught the previous summer), and blackout prone Ethan has to face five trials set by the killer in order to save his son before time runs out. Or is he? Then there’s Scott Shelby, a private investigator hired by the families of the Origami Killer’s previous victims. Or is he? Next is FBI agent Normal Jayen, part time junkie and Minority Report fanboy, representing the official investigation of the Origami Killer. Or is he? And then there’s plucky journalist Madison Paige. She gets her tits out.
So you’ve probably heard the game is eight hours of quicktime events and to a certain extent that is true. It’s also got elements of point and click adventures in that, for you often need to explore you location for the next clue. Unlike a point and click, you can only interact with items displaying an on screen prompt (many of these only appear once). You get the opportunity to influence a conversation by selecting questions or answers or even the tone of what you’re about to say. These answers will have a major effect on which path the game will take and it is the game’s major success that there are so many ways this story can unfold. Some or most of the characters can die. It’s not choice in the sense you can make a good or evil choice like in inFamous or Mass Effect but you can affect the storyline fairly radically. You may see a story that’s different from your friends. Failing QTE prompts too often near the end of the game and people will die.
The game itself starts off veeeery slowly, some of which is there to set the scene, some to familiarise yourself with the unique, if clunky controls, and all of it duller than a faded matte-brown Volvo after a dust-storm. Things to perk up after about 3 or so hours and get quite exciting and you start having more action scenes. Control is an illusion in action scenes and a fistfight of just dozens of 1quicktime events triggering one after the other. However, you can’t fail and retry. You let a character and the story merely continues without them. The button prompts aren’t always the same for each event (though if you replay a section they are) so you don’t learn the controls, more you learn where things are on a PS3 controller. Our friend Sixaxis motion control returns to vex us, I’m afraid. Sixaxis is like that cousin you see at family gatherings, you know, the guy who’s a bum, an addict, borrowing money of you, etc. You give him a buck and then tell him to get the fuck out. And like that no good cousin, they come back just as you managed to forget about them. Sometimes, because this is a piece of software on a gaming machine, some control is given to you to do silly mundane things like apply lipstick, change a nappy or remove a bra (weirdest date ever, don’t ask).
This is a bold move away from games aimed at teenage boys. But if any teenage boys do play this, you can see Madison naked several times. Result!
The presentation is mostly good with great graphics (though there may be a glitch here and there or a very occasionally blurry texture) and sound that can be great (sound effects and music) or extremely variable (voice acting). Some of the actors are very good and some are woeful, particularly some of the minor characters who are very obviously French actors. Imagine casting Jean Reno, Gerard Depardieu and Vincent Cassel as Green Berets in an English Language movie set in the US and you get the idea.
So a bold experiment that doesn’t really come off. Do you want this? Well, do you skip cutscenes in other games? If the answer us yes, because you can skip nothing here. If you think you should just watch it on youtube, you can but be aware that what you see there is different from what you would see at home die to the nature of the story and branching paths. I ended up with two playable characters dead and the killer walking free. And from what I’ve read, everyone’s play through is different.
Controller1.com rating 2/3 (0/3 if you’ve no interest in story)
Apparently, The Cloud is in our future. Instead of buying the latest and greatest PC, you will be playing on a thin client with data streamed over the net from a server. Cam understands, George spreads FUD.
It could be worse- it could be Morbidly-Obese Inclement Weather.
So, Heavy Rain, the PS3’s first big hitter of the year has the makings of a huge hit, particularly amongst non-gamers easily impressed by pores. Despite losing a day of “gameplay” due to the apocalyPS3 this week, I’ve put in a few hours into the game (stopping when it hard locked my PS3 last night) and have gotten a feel for what it’s about. But nearly three hours in- I have picked a fight with some random guy and that was the only action I’ve seen so far.
This means that so far, I’m not particularly impressed by Heavy Rain. The story, the defining element of this game, may not have spun into top gear for me yet- but if it hasn’t, why hasn’t it? And if it has- God help us all.
So far I like and not like bits of this “game.”
Liked:
- Graphics. Even though nothing is happening, what little that does happen is pretty and fluid. Of course, it comes across as one of the high end graphics demos you used to see running instores selling PC’s.
- Trying to do something new with quicktime events.
-sound is well done. Great musical score, even if it borders on the melodramatic. Melodramatic game sounds melodramatic.
Disliked:
story, gameplay, characters, voice acting, hype.
I believe the game will appeal to non-gamers in a way that the Wii does and that’s a good thing if gets people using PS3’s for things other than Blu Ray movies. In time they might move onto actual games like Uncharted 2. But to me, it’s one enormous cutscene that I CAN’T SKIP. Metal Gear games are often derided by people who don’t play them because of the ridiculous story portrayed in the codec screens and cutscenes, but you could always skip these if you just wanted to get to the action. Because HR is a game of cutscenes, that would defeat the purpose of the enterprise.
HR brings back mandatory six-axis motions to effect on screen actions. I won’t use the word control because that would be too generous. To say you control this game the way is offensive to my DS3’s left analog stick. Let’s just say you influence your character the same way the actions in Star Wars influence C3PO- ie reluctantly and like a gay golden droid. The first three hours ofter some mundane home life tasks, an optional fistfight and some SCIENCE FICTION detective stuff. Note to developers: Don’t talk about reality when you offer up The Matrix in Ray-Ban form.
Some the blur is from the game, some is from my camera
“How far would you go?” n my case it’s about 2 Kilometres to the nearest EB games. Trade it in before everyone else does by the end of the first month and clogs up EB/Gamestop’s trade-in exclusions list.
If you are a fan of French cinema or thrillers aimed at the over 40 crowd starring Jodie Foster or Sandra Bullock, you might think the story is riveting. In which case, you could rent a movie with them and use your Six axis as a remote for your PS3. It might be more fun. Maybe the thing that bugs me most is this a story in a genre I often avoid. Maybe I’m not ready for David Cage and company’s bold dream. Maybe it’s a shit game. Who knows?
This Podcats is free yet it’s still a rip-off! Following on fron the last show’s chat about value, we talk about the videogame ripoffs we all know too well.
Controller1.com Vs ClivePwned has some new shirts available. Click Here for more designs
Reviewed by Lisvender on PS3. Developed by Sega Wow. Published by Sega
This PS3 strategy shooter stirred up pleasant memories of such gems as Advance Wars, Shining Force, Fire Emblem, and X-Com: Enemy Unknown. It also reminded me of how much these tactical combat games piss me off. It’s still very good, though, and anyone who enjoyed those aforementioned games should definitely get it.
Note: This is the only picture in this review. Why? Let’s just say it’s not a good idea to Google images for this game without safe search on.
The year is 1935 EC, and the Second Europan (that’s not a typo) War between the eastern Empire (Russia) and the western Federation (NATO) is a-blazin’. Pinched between the two factions is the teeny nation of Gallia, a land which also happens to be rich in the precious resource Ragnite. The greedy Empire swoops into Gallia to take control, but they are met by Welkin Gunther, a militia draftee, who gives the Empire a serious headache. You’ll guide Welkin and his Ragtag Squad of Misfits through battles against the Empire that grow in challenge, complexity, and length as you go along. Your goal is to push the invaders out and save Gallia from complete pacification.
The story’s premise is interesting, but the developments are typical anime crap, filled with overblown, melodramatic moments, long-winded, head-scratching dialogue, that uniquely Japanese “awkward” humor, and endless death scenes. The Hurt Locker this ain’t. If you want to play a game about soldiers who speak the true words of war, play Call of Duty.
Nobody talks about tangoes in Valkyria Chronicles, but they do go on about bugs, bread, vegetables, and love a lot. Welkin and his girlfriend/sidekick Alicia remain self-absorbed and strangely cheerful in spite of the sobering situation they’re in, and killing people never seems to upset them. This is a war story for the adolescent. Hell, the game even has a beach cutscene so you can see the female characters run around in bikinis. Pretty sad.
Honestly, though, the story isn’t that important to the game’s success. The real joy of a game like Valkyria Chronicles comes from learning and mastering its rules and tactics. The warfare here centers around a basic rock-paper-scissors system:
Shocktroopers are foot soldiers with machine guns, and they can mow down all kinds of infantry.
Tanks are heavily armored, and can blow away Shocktroopers.
Lancers are foot soldiers with rocket launchers, and are best at taking out tanks.
There are three other classes of infantry, too: the Scouts, the Snipers, and the Engineers. While these units play essential supportive roles, they are poor fighters, and they should circumvent the combat engaged in by the others.
Valkyria Chronicles is a war game where you take turns with the computer moving your squad of soldiers around a map. Your goal in most missions is to get your men to the heart of an enemy camp, but you have to coordinate your movements so that your men can clear out the bad guys efficiently and cover each other. There are plenty of games that function like this, but Valkyria Chronicles stands apart from them because it incorporates elements of third-person shooters and makes them critical to your success. When you start a turn and are prompted to select a unit to move, you get a simple bird’s-eye view of the battlefield. All the soldiers are represented by icons. When you pick a unit, the camera swoops down into a fully detailed, over-the-shoulder view, and you get to control that unit using the familiar two-stick move-and-aim model. You can run around, take cover, survey the topography, avoid enemy firing lines, and position yourself for a good shot at the bad guys. The distance you can move is limited, though, and you can only shoot once per movement, so be sure to make your turns count! Aim at the heads of infantry units, or at the rear radiators of tanks to take them out quickly.
Units around you won’t move while you’re moving, but if you get too close to enemy units, they will turn and fire on you, so be careful. This also works for enemies who enter the sights and firing ranges of your guys, so positioning your troops to throw out intercepting fire is a very important strategic aspect. A group of Scouts and Shocktroopers is a veritable death machine to infantry, and it can be very effective at suppressing enemy advances. Lancers and Snipers don’t use intercepting fire, however, so they’re sitting ducks when enemies approach. Be sure to back them up.
If one of your units is downed, you can send another unit to rescue her. Just walk up to her, and your medic will fly in to pull her out of the battle. You can then select your camp to call in reinforcements. If a downed unit isn’t rescued in three turns, or if an enemy unit closes in to finish her off, that unit will be killed and removed from the game permanently. For this reason, you should never send a unit into danger alone.
Each soldier in the game has his or her own personality, and this is expressed through Potentials and friendships. Potentials are buffs and debuffs that come into effect under unique conditions. Some soldiers can absorb intercepting fire without taking much damage, while others have special hatreds for particular enemies which will up their accuracy. Then there are the soldiers with allergies to sand or pollen, who won’t fight effectively in desert or grassland settings. While there are some loners in your squad, most of your soldiers are friends with each other. Putting two friends side by side, and then ordering one to fire will cause both to shoot at once, and more or less doom your target. Forgetting the technical details, odds are you’ll become attached to one or two of your soldiers, and you’ll want to keep them around simply because they make you smile.
As the story progresses, the missions become increasingly complex, and some of the later ones are real brain-busters. You’ll have to divide your forces, capture multiple enemy camps, use smoke bombs to blind your enemies, sneak past spotlights, dodge mortar fire, and engage in trench fighting. Many of the missions have a twist that occurs halfway through, with some new challenge or objective popping up, and no two missions are alike. They’re all very satisfying to study, analyze, explore, and complete.
Succeeding at missions earns you experience points and money, which can be used to increase the stats of your infantry, upgrade your equipment, and add new parts to your tanks. You can also purchase optional Orders, which provide stat buffs and other benefits to your squad in combat, and Reports, which open up side stories and optional missions for further character development. If you run short on resources, you have the option to play Skirmishes, which are slightly altered replays of missions you’ve completed, to refill your coffers. Grinding can be a pain, but it is necessary if you want to get your soldiers to the highest levels, and gain access to special weaponry.
I don’t often talk about graphics and sound in reviews, because nowadays most games have these mastered, or at least polished to the point where they don’t offend. I feel that I should mention them for Valkyria Chronicles, though, because they are truly outstanding. The graphics are have a lovely, colorful, painted look. There are sunny skies, rolling hills, and pleasant architecture everywhere you turn. While I can’t remember a single bit of music from Uncharted 2 or Modern Warfare, I caught myself humming the driving battle themes from this game at work multiple times.
Valkyria Chronicles is a rich and deep game, with immense rewards in wait for the thinking player, but like many strategy games, it can also be frustrating. Early on in the game, before your weapons can be upgraded, your soldiers are going to miss a lot of their shots. Even your eagle-eyed snipers, who can use scopes to zoom in on their targets, will manage to miss most of the time. It doesn’t matter if you line up your crosshairs properly; the computer rolls the dice on where the shot actually lands. In a game like this, where your every movement is precious and critical, a missed shot is heartbreaking and enraging. Not surprisingly, the computer-controlled units rarely have this problem. I highly recommend that you pour your money into accuracy upgrades the moment they become available to counter this problem.
Another issue is that occasionally the intercepting fire won’t work. Sometimes your guys will just stand there while enemy soldiers run right by them. It’s like they momentarily go blind or something. It’s bewildering, exasperating, and just shy of unfair. It can even cause you to lose, if an enemy Scout strolls by your defenders and captures your base camp.
Then there are the mines. Oh God, the mines. The battlefields in Valkyria Chronicles are often peppered with land mines that can severely injure your soldiers and cripple your tanks. They’re easy to spot, but they’re also easy to forget about, and one second not spent looking at the ground can ruin an entire mission. Engineers can disarm them, so if you step on a mine and hear that distinctive “click,” stop where you are and get that wrench-slinger over there pronto. It would be nice if the bad guys could set off the mines, of if you could lay mines of your own, but they don’t, and you can’t. Sigh.
Valkyria Chronicles has been in stores for a while, but with the mountains of hype that were raised around its competitors, it’s likely you haven’t considered it. Mixing third-person shooter elements with turn-based strategy is a brilliant stroke, and while wargamers should grab it in a heartbeat, even newcomers to the genre should try it out. There’s a lot to learn, but the game rolls out the rules in a gentle, friendly manner, so it never gets overwhelming. It has a silly story and some irritations, but it’s nevertheless a well-designed and satisfying game. The only way it could be better would be to change its setting to the future and call itself X-Com.
Controller1.com rating: 3/3 (2/3 for non-strategy fans)
Lisvender
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC. Developed by Bioware. Published by Electronic Arts.
In 2007, Bioware released Mass Effect on Xbox 360 (with a PC SKU coming soon after) just after being purchased by EA. It was a decent size hit for a new RPG franchise and despite its problems, many felt it was a great first stab at a Sci-Fi RPG game from Bioware that wasn’t a Star Wars game. Some of the perceived issues with the first game: cut and paste side missions, complex RPG stat screens, poor shooting mechanics if you weren’t a hardcore RPG fan, boring first few hours, terrible MAKO driving missions, long loading screens when you’re stuck in elevators, poorer 360 version, and static conversations. I don’t agree with all of those but that’s the collective wisdom. It was also a lot of fun, had great characters and a great story and felt like a cool Star Wars game without having to pay royalties to those fuckers at Lucasfilm.
Mass Effect 2 sees Shepard (who may be imported from the first game if you wish) return literally as a new man/woman after something big that happens in the first cutscene that people may or may not decry as a spoiler but it is in the opening cutscene, dammit). With a new ship and crew, and with a mysterious new paymaster voiced by Martin Sheen, Shepard sets out to build a core team to take on the new big bad for this game. You visit planets, mine them from orbit for minerals used to power up upgrades for your skills, weapons and ships. Then you’ll land on a planet/dock with a vessel to carry out a mission or visit one of the more fleshed out locales where there are multiple missions. There aren’t that many main story missions but each member of your team has at least two missions you’ll want to undertake. The first is to recruit them to your cause, and the second is to secure their loyalty. Recruitment and loyalty missions of course are the meat of the story-based missions. Along the way you’ll encounter a few survivors from the first game (if you’ve imported a save game from ME1, it does depend on what you decided back then). Some will come with you and and some will recoil in horror from you and your new boss but in the end your team is as much a part of the game as Shepard. The team you assemble is generally composed of fairly interesting people, even if most of them are damaged in some way. And almost all of them are killers with a twist (ie crazy, semi-autistic, calm).
The action parts of the game consists of squad-based shooting (or magic if that’s the way you roll), with you and two compatriots (chosen before the start of each mission) tackling an objective that seems like something out of a shooter from a simpler age. Missions are generally short, much much shorter than the first game. Shorter than a midget at a dwarf convention. You can tell Bioware went out of their way to make the game more accessible to shooter fans than the original by the way anything screaming ‘NERD!’ is flashed by on screen quickly so we can get back to the sex and shooting. Even so, you still have to select a team that is balanced. If you’re a soldier, it makes sense that at least one member of your away team is a biotic, etc. Choose unwisely and you’ll find you’re having to take down an armoured boss all on your lonesome since your selected team only have pea-shooters unable to pierce armour and with the wrong powers levelled up. Selecting teams correctly really makes itself felt in the big climax and it’s quite possible to return to the ship with a few empty spaces if you don’t give it some thought. You can of course play as a male or female Shepard, import your character from the first game and choose to play as one of a number of classes from soldier, scout, magic user, tech, etc, but the game for me is third person so how does it play as a Gears-lite game? Not too badly. It still seems to be doing a lot “under the hood” but not as overtly where you can’t do anything in the early stages of the game (like the crime of the original). When you’re not shooting you’re exploring and talking. The exploring (on foot) is a lot simpler and navigation of the more populated areas is simple since few of the environments are all that large. Think of it like GTA but when you go to a mission-giver and accept the mission, the game whisks you straight to a loading screen and voila, you’re at the start of the mission. There’s a lot less back-tracking, fewer “Go to B talk to someone and then return to A and have a conversation” than the first game as well, which is always welcome. While I’m on the subject- Fuck GTA!
In the future, in the year 2009 (which was the fashion at the time), the year was one of releasing sequels to hit 2007 games that slavishly listened to criticism of the first game and jettisoned the stuff people hated. Uncharted 2 mixed up the gameplay more, ACII ejected the by-the-numbers repetition of missions and ME2 cut anything that got so much as a column inch of hate on a message board. So you need to scan for minerals as an upgrade imperative which is the one area this game has actually made much more boring than the first game. It may have been a bit monotonous to drive around the planets looking for blips on your radar but moving a cursor over a globe is 1000 times more boring than sitting in a dentist’s waiting room with only copy of CoD: Modern Fisherman magazine for reading material. I have spent about 38 hours playing ME2 and I would estimate a minimum of 5 hours has been taking up with scanning planets. It’s sort of zen at first but as you go through the game it really slows you down. When I felt the end was near I stopped scanning even with two dozen planets left since I still had so much mineral wealth strip-mined from various planets (some inhabited) that I felt safe I could stop and concentrate on the story and side missions. It’s money you are likely to run out of before the various minerals, and missions don’t often net you all that much. It is said that you need a fully upgraded team in terms of their abilities and your ship’s upgrades to beat the game but it may on the higher difficulties. I played on normal and found I have died much less than the first game. There are no lifts. If the game needs to load, you get a loading screen. The hub areas are much much smaller than before and moving between areas is a loading screen away rather than a long corridor. The streamlining extends to the micromanagement issues of the first game, but don’t hurt the game in any major way (unless you’re a hardcore PC RPG fan). The actual missions are a lot shorter compared to the original, which had many sprawling story missions in amongst the legion of cut and paste side missions. Really only the last mission feels long and then it’s not so long that you’re hoping for a swift death in order to use the bathroom before your bladder leaps up and chokes you from inside.
It’s a highly directed experience, albeit one in which there is a lot of choice. In giving you the choice, Bioware have learned from the rather static staging of many conversations in the first game cinematics are a hell of a lot more dynamic, both in terms of animation and how choices change the flow of action. It’s almost a quick time event but without seeming like a cop out or having David Cage’s lawyers on the phone. You can follow the various prompts for Paragon or Renegade actions. The difference between Paragon and Renegade conversation options is a choice between touchy-feely and snark. The difference between Paragon and Renegade actions will stop someone being killed or something less lethal.
This being a Bioware game (and it has the hallmarks of almost every Bioware game of the last 10 years), there are romances to be had- at least four ladies are open to the idea of a relationship with Shepard (mine, as you can tell from the pics, is a smooth talking newspaper man from the 50’s). I was able to score with two difference ladies in the game. Well, at least I think they’re ladies. One looked like Natalie Portman from V for Vendetta who got drunk one night and now spends her nights looking up Laser Tattoo removal in the Yellow Pages; and the other looks like, well I don’t know. It was kinky with masks and antibiotics and such like.
The presentation is excellent with this being an incredibly polished title. So many of the rough edges that made it to the first game have been polished down so much they shine brighter than a sun surrounded by giant mirrors. On 360, there are few textures that look a little blurry , usually on minor character’s uniforms in cutscene close-ups but apart from that the game is smoother than a bottle of smooth peanut butter dropped from a plane. The frame rate is constant, slowing slightly in cutscenes but never lagging like a first gen 360 title (or even the first game could sometimes do).
Audio is also great with fantastic sound effects and a stellar voice cast. Yes, the trait of having every alien speak with standard US accents is a bit annoying but the impressive voice cast: Martin Sheen, Tricia Helfer, Adam Baldwin, Carrie-Anne Moss and of course Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski (not only the voice of Miranda, but providing the basis of her character’s visuals, with Dat Ass added through CG magic) joining the lesser known but equally impressive cast filling out the major roles. The only audio disappointment is the JMJ/John Carpenter-esque/early 80’s horror synth soundtrack of the original has been replaced with a more standard semi-orchestral score. It’s good, just not as memorable.
One thing to note. The game comes on two discs which will take 12 gigs on your HDD if you install both discs. I installed but I did have to swap discs twice in nearly 40 hours. There’s a serious amount of content here. EA has also added a sweetener to buy this game new instead of used. New owners have the option to download an extra mission, as well another playable character (who’s ok but superfluous) and a free gun and some armour, none of which is all that earth shattering (but if it’s free, why not?”) but not worth the money EA will charge people who buy used down the track. Installing is recommended if you have enough space. I would have preferred if disc swapping wasn’t necessary but you do this less than if you bought three separate games that took the same time to play.
There’s a lot in this game and there’s much I’ve glossed over. It’s just a great experience (no pun intended) for a game. Mass Effect 2 proves Bioware’s still got it. If you like RPG’s of a western bent, you will like this. If you like shooters with a bit more than fragging noobs, you will like this. If you have two lungs, you will like this. Perhaps not you, Raspy One-Lunger with your ventolin, but two lunged creatures will find much over which to be breathe heavily.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
Is how long important or what you do with it? Is a not a man entitled to the sweat of his wallet?
Lisvender reviews Demon’s Souls. Reviews on PS3. Developed by From Software Published by Sony/ Atlus
Review: Demon’s Souls
I haven’t beaten the dark fantasy game Demon’s Souls, and I don’t expect to for a long while. I don’t believe, however, that this disqualifies me from having an opinion about it. Every Game of the Year should elicit some kind of response from the average video game player, even if it’s an apathetic one brought on by hype-burnout. What makes Demon’s Souls unusual is that it was not hyped in the West at all, and the reaction it got from half of the gaming populace was one of passionate hate-spit. “This game hates me,” the detractors say, “so I hate this game.”
Does Demon’s Souls hate us? Well, it does reject many of the conveniences we’ve come to expect to be in modern games, like checkpoints. It also bucks some of the conventions of not-so-modern games, like pausing. Yeah, you can’t pause in Demon’s Souls, not even to look over your inventory. You press Start to open the menu, and the action just keeps going on around you. If you need to go to the bathroom, make sure your character is in a safe place first.
This might suggest that creators From Software were out to be unfair and mean when they made this game, but I don’t think that’s true. It’s just possible that they were aiming to create a very intense experience, something more stressful and scary than what’s offered by most video games, and that every design decision was made with that result in mind.
In Demon’s Souls, you play a voiceless fantasy hero who has traveled to the cursed kingdom of Boletaria to face down The Old One, an angry, toothy beast of Lovecraftian power and dimensions. You get to choose from a large list of character classes which includes the traditional warriors, swordsmen, and wizards. Each class has its own unique stats and starting equipment, which will dictate your style of play as you start out. You begin in a brief tutorial level that shows you what you’re going to be doing throughout the game: slashing at monsters, blocking and dodging attacks, running down halls, casting magic spells. At the end of the tutorial you are one-hit-killed by a boss, and you are thrust into the Nexus, the hub/town of Demon’s Souls. Here, you can buy or upgrade your equipment (though you cannot sell anything back), store items you don’t want to lug around with you, buy and memorize spells, and upgrade your character’s stats.
All of these upgrades are purchased using souls, the currency of the game. You get souls automatically every time you slay a monster, and there’s no limit to how many you can have on hand. You cannot, however, store them away in a bank or a stash. Your money stays with you at all times. This makes exploring new places with a full wallet incredibly tense, because when you die, you drop all your souls. You can make a corpse run if you want to get them back, but if you die again before you reach your place of perishing, the souls disappear forever. You’re going to want to take your time with this game.
The Nexus connects to five areas, and each area is divided into four sections. Every section is loaded with monsters, secret passages, and deadly traps. They have no checkpoints. If you die in them at any time, even during the boss battle at the end, you’ll have to start the whole section over, with all the monsters revived and back in place. Good luck with that corpse run! Fortunately, any switches you’ve activated or doors you’ve opened will remain as you left them.
There are monsters all over the place, but they’re often tucked away in spots where you won’t be able to see them until they’ve got the drop on you. March ahead slowly, and be ready to jump out of danger’s path.
The sword-and-sorcery combat in Demon’s Souls is complex and deliberate. You can use regular or strong attacks, parry and counter enemy attacks, and wield one-handed weapons with two hands for added damage. You can cast spells on yourself or on your enemies, but you need to have enough magic power, have the proper spells memorized, and have a wand (or “catalyst”) equipped.
Knowing your moves is only the start of the challenge. Demon’s Souls is not Zelda or Fable, where you can just swing your sword like a maniac and watch the monsters drop. Most of the enemies in Demon’s Souls can kill your character in one or two hits, so there’s very little room for error. You need to fight defensively, and attack only when there’s a clear opening.
You can’t just stand there with your shield up all day either, because you’ll run out of stamina. Attacking, dodging, and blocking hits all drain your green stamina meter. If it runs out, you can’t attack. The bar refills quickly and automatically, but only if you lower your shield and don’t do anything. This means that you’ll sometimes have to retreat from a fight momentarily to regain your strength. If you block an enemy attack that bottoms out the stamina meter, your character will be stunned and helpless for a couple of seconds, which is more or less inviting death. You can’t afford to get careless, even against enemies you’ve beaten many times before; they can still kill you, and quickly.
There are also numerous traps in the game, many of which will insta-kill you if you don’t know how to get sidestep them. An early level features causeways that you must cross while flying dragons breathe flames on them from overhead. You need to learn the timing of the sweeping fire, and calculate a starting position for your sprint. You don’t want to edge too close to the danger zone and get roasted before you begin your charge, and you don’t want to start sprinting too soon and run out of stamina before you reach the next safe spot. You’ll probably die many times before you get it just right.
Speaking of death, Demon’s Souls has a very unusual rule about it. You begin the game as a living person with a solid body. This is called “living form.” When you die, that body is taken away from you, and you enter “soul form.” To avoid confusion with all the other soul terms in the game, I call this “ghost form.” Being in ghost form doesn’t change the way you play: you can still use all your equipment and you move and fight just the same as when you were living. Your leash is tightened, though, because being a ghost halves your maximum health. As we’ve already established that death is a common occurrence in this game, expect to remain in ghost form for a long, long time.
Playing in living form with a nice, full health bar means you can take a lot more hits before dying than you can in ghost form. It’s a secure and comforting thing that you’ll want to guard jealously because it’s so fleeting, and so tough to attain. There are four ways to give up the ghost and get back to living form:
1.) Beat a boss. Beat any boss and you will be revived. This requires time and patience, as you must master the level and the boss fight to get through them without dying.
2.) Use a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes, a rare item that instantly returns you to living form. These are not sold in any store. You have to find them, and because of their scarcity, you’ll probably want to save them.
3.) Help a living player beat a boss. You can use a special item called the Blue Eye Stone to leave a mark in the level that living players on the Playstation Network can see. If one of these players activates that mark, you will join him in his game. If you succeed as a team in beating that level’s boss, you will return to your own game with a living body. This demands a little luck, however, as you have to hope that there are living characters who are not only online, but also in your particular section of the game, and also inclined to ask for your help. Teams cannot communicate in any way, either, so if one or both of you doesn’t know your way around, you’re likely to get killed, which sends you back to your own game. Better luck next time!
4.) Kill a living player. This is the most interesting, and the most asshole-ish, of your options. Instead of leaving your mark on the ground and waiting for a living player to give you a call, you can take a more aggressive approach. Use the Black Eye Stone, and the game will find a living player who’s exploring the same level as you, and shove you into his or her game. The invaded player will be notified of your arrival, but not of your whereabouts. Your goal is to hunt down and kill the living player. Do so, and you are rewarded with a living form and returned to your own game. You have essentially stolen the other player’s body. Congratulations, you dick. If the other player kills you, you don’t lose anything and are returned to your own game. If you fall to the monsters, however, you are returned to your own game with a stat rollback. Your most recent stat upgrade will be undone, and the invaded player will receive a bonus equal to the amount of souls you spent on that upgrade. So beware if you wish to go ganking. The game will only allow you to invade characters with similar stat levels, but since the filtering ends there, there’s no way to know how skilled or well-equipped your quarry will be. Your best bet is to perform the invasion in a level you know very well, so you can take advantage of the environment, and surprise your victim.
Demon’s Souls looks like a simple Diablo clone from a distance, but it is immensely more strategic and slow-paced. Every action you take demands care and forethought. Where most games only set you back a few feet when you die, Demon’s Souls is always ready to take something from you that you might not want to lose. The auto-save feature seems to be in constant effect, so you can’t just reload your save when you screw up. Amazingly, the tense exploration and the heartbreak of dying are not strong enough for me to discount Demon’s Souls: the action of dodging traps and slicing monsters is fun and satisfying enough that it is worth experiencing, if only in small doses. If your temper is flaring, it’s probably time to take a break. The game is dense with difficulties, but it is not impossible. Keep coming back, and you’ll find that even the sternest areas become easy with practice. Of course, by “practice,” I mean many, many deaths. But come on, let’s be honest here: It’s only video game money you’re losing. Is it really that important?
Take a look at your little Demon’s Souls guy. He might suffer death again and again, but he keeps getting back up and drawing his sword. He’s always ready to get right back in there, among the demons and the darkness. We could all learn a lesson from him.
Controller1.com rating: 2/3
