The design of the world is good but the actual combat mechanic is what Dark Souls is good for. The way each weapon works and how combat can evolve with different tactics is awesome.

There are plenty of different enemies and they all have key features which makes them deadly if you screw up and make a mistake. The best feature for me is the boss battles because they have phases, good attacks and have unique areas which makes them interesting to fight.

The RPG elements of weapon upgrades, special boss items and stats is fantastic because it gives you so much to play with.

One other key feature, your actions have consequences, the world changes based on what you do and if you are idiot and try to kill everything then your game experience will reflect that play style. 

I'm way underpowered to kill him, so for now Firelink is off limits for me :( 

http://youtu.be/OHhgjKaLHJw 

Just went into Open beta http://www.warframe.com/

It's a fairly old-skool style 3rd person ARPG with randomly generated levels using tilesets.

It's made by Digital Extremes and there is certainly a dose of Unreal Tournament style movement and combat feel while playing the game.

I've been having a blast with this in the last week or so and recommend it very much. 

You can pay the merchant in the bell tower to remove your sins and it will de-aggro Lautrec.
The first time I played the game I accidentally hit Laurentius too hard when I freed him, so I thought I had to kill him (then I found out about the sin guy after I did the whole playthrough without access to the pyromancy spells). 

 

I did enjoy it. By the end, the consolised hand-holding, disjointed progress, gung-ho vocals and tedious immersion-buggering map scenes were annoying me far more than the linearity - but were in turn well compensated for by the gameplay, reasonable diversity, graphics, and spectacle of the city. Sure it is so much COD-like I could feel by brain rotting each time I played it, but as a shooter it's pretty fine and I'm definitely going to get C3.

Continuing with Space Marine...

The clunky controls and utterly on-rails progress (it's like a FPS side-scroller as far as lack of interaction with the cool backgrounds) are still annoying, the visceral combat and excellent level of violence are still good, more so now I've got the Melta too. 

Crysis 3... it's kinda like Far Cry 3 on rails. Great graphics, though. 

TYS 

http://youtu.be/QKuKKBWnPtE 

Play Demon Souls first, the second game Dark Souls is easier. You should hurry up because part of the enjoyment of the games is the co-op aspect for boss fights and the servers will not be around forever!

Hmmm. So the predecessor is even more brutal and unforgiving than the sequel? Mgah.

Is the first game a match for the second in terms of quality? Or will it be a bit like playing a lesser game? I'd be tempted to leap straight into the second game to get the full wow factor.

I guess it's a bit like why I could never really be bothered with Skyrim after playing hundreds of hours of Oblivion. I mean Skyrim was good, but all that time spent in Oblivion completely took the "wow" factor out of Skyrim for me, and I never did play more than a few hours of it :( 

These are painful :) 

Heh, lighting is for losers

:smug: 

The first game "Demon's Souls" is brutal! It certainly not a lesser game but more a rough diamond with raw game mechanics. You will need way more patience to play the first game than the second.

Key differences of first game:
* No checkpoints, no bonfires, if you die then the whole level resets and you are back to the beginning of the level.
* Levels are self contained, no streaming, you teleport to each level.
* When you die your health is halved. You need to use Stone of Ephemeral Eyes (These are rare items) to gain human form.
* Each world has a Tendency scale of white (easy) to black (crazy hard) and plenty of levels of grey in between. When you die this meter goes towards black, so the world gets tougher. Certain events only happen at white or black levels.

Summary: When you die the game gets harder!

* If you attack ANY NPC in the game they are hostile until next game+. There is no way to reset them to be friendly.
* There is a one NPC that has some really cool items and if he dies early it can affect how you upgrade certain weapons.
* It is extremely easy to screw up a whole game and have to rely on game+ to reset events.
* The levels can be occupied with dark shades and they are extremely dangerous and tough.
* Most boss fights in the first game are tough and unforgiving. Plus you often have to fight through a whole level to get to them without dying first. (example - Tower Knight)

If you play the second game first you will dislike the first game because it is tougher and more challenging. I found Dark Souls easier (especially up to Sen's Fortress) but I poured 200+ hours into the first game and think the second game was toned down. (especially after all the patches)

The Online WIKI is a must read for the first game especially if you want to upgrade items. 

Thanks for the info.

So, if I'm reading you right, the game was designed by an insane masochist who was probably locked up in a small dungeon for his entire childhood with nothing but an old Nintendo and a copy of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts.

Hmmm, as much as this sounds like something that I would probably have had a crack at 5 years ago, these days I don't know if I can afford to sink much time into that sort of gaming commitment any more :( 

Haha, that's sort of where I land on those games too. Who has that kind of time? :P 

Got this image of Willem yellin at em to get off his lawn, rolled up newspaper in fist. 

And the unemployed - I did Viewtiful Joe at 100% like that. 

I think it's more that as I age, I tolerate frustrating games less and less. I find a lot more fun in romping through Tomb Raider than banging my head against a wall in Dark Souls.

Nothing against that game, it's not my thing anymore.

I'd rather tour content than retry the same encounter over and over. 

The game is tough, it does not pander to modern gaming conventions and is clearly not designed for everyone. It is extremely easy to forget playing many modern games because they are too busy rushing (on rail shooter) you to the end instead of being a challenge.

Is the game for masochists? Games with high learning curves are rewarding in different ways. There are no safety nets, no easy skill levels, it is designed for players who understand risk and reward strategies. The game unlocks as you learn, what you learn actually matters and Dark Souls is similar but toned down instead. 

I know what you mean. I don't have the patience for losing anymore - I think modern games design has spoiled me.

Not a bad thing necessarily, and there are many casual games which are predicated on constantly losing - temple run + clones, trails, angry birds etc etc.

The problem happens when designers try and avoid killing the player at all. I see this a lot and it always mystifies me. If there's no lose condition then victory is meaningless, and you just made a bowl of porridge, not a game worth playing.

Many games also took advantage of the Game Over to do cool stuff;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnA_6I4y0_0 

I can enjoy an insanely tough game if the design is so good that I want to keep playing it. For something as tough as Demon's Souls, I would say the game would have to be like crack cocaine in order for me to not just get frustrated with it.

To be honest, I can't remember the last game I played like that, but I know I have been in situations where I'm so into a game that the ludicrous difficulty doesn't bother me.

In general, I guess I fall somewhere in the middle. I tend to hate the modern "knife-through-butter" school of game design, where giving the player "an experience" seems to take priority over giving the player any sort of meaningful challenge.

On the other hand, I am so bloody busy in general that I don't get more than a few hours a week of actual "playing games for fun" time, so any game I do pick up probably shouldn't batter me with too many brick wall situtions... 

Dark Souls 2 will be "more straightforward and more understandable" than its predecessor, as a pair of new directors take over the series. 

If Dark Souls 2 is going to be more straightforward and more understandable then it will be the death of the franchise for me. If I want to play generic stuff I can easily find endless Marine/Soldier games for that. Dark Souls is good because it is a memorable game experience, painful at times but rewarding.