[Preview] Demon's Souls [PS3 exclusive]

[LMAOROFL]

 

 

So what is Demon’s Souls and what is it about? Well, if you’re wondering about story, it goes a little something like this:

 

  King Allant the XII, the last king of Boletaria, searched tirelessly to expand his might. The Nexus, a great ice shrine nestled in the mountains, bestowed the power of the souls onto him, bringing prosperity to his kingdom. Still unsated, he returned again to the Nexus, where he foolishly awakened the Old One from its eternal slumber. This long forgotten evil, now wrought upon Boletaria, plunged the realm into darkness and fog. A mighty demon horde poured into the kingdom, devouring the souls of men.

 

   Champions from other realms learned of Boletaria's fate and sought to deliver the kingdom from evil; none would return from the cursed land. Called upon by a mysterious maiden in black, you go forth, the last hope for humanity in a place lost to demons and darkness...

 

 

About the game.

 

- Are you getting a sense of the kind of stacked odds that are against you? This is not a game for those that milk their savegame states or reset the console when something goes wrong. In fact, Demon's Souls almost constantly auto-saves. Remember that recent death or munching on those items or accidentally killing off one of the main vendors in the game? Yeah, that's all permanent. You can't sell your old equipment for cash (which, by the way, doubles as experience, so you can level up your character, his or her existing equipment or buy new weapons and armor, but rarely will you have enough cash to do all three). Oh, and perhaps the most amusingly brutal part of the Demon's Souls experience? If you die, you lose all that cash/experience (unless you can run all the way back through the level to where you died and reclaim your soul with all those enemies you killed off now alive and thirsty for fresh blood).

 

 

Enjoy all that light; it won't last long.

 

There's no bank, no second chances, no way to put off the inevitable. You will die in this game. When in this soulless form, you'll be permanently stripped of a chunk of your life meter. You will lose all of your cash, and you will hate that every once in a while it's because you got pushed (okay, you accidentally rolled) off a cliff. But you'll keep coming back because the game is quite simply one of the best on the PlayStation 3.

 

 

 

Chances are, though, even after hundreds or even thousands of deaths, you won't ever really know the breadth of what the game offers in terms of character classes, variety of weapons, rare drops, different equipment trade-offs or particular spells. That's because, even with an incredible wiki formed by importers that picked up the game when it was released in Asia a while back, there's simply too much to do in this game to get it all in one go.

 

 

If you see Ol' Red this close, you're probably already dead.

 

This is Demon's Souls' true gift -- a glimpse into a world that is so bleak, so downtrodden, so weathered by the passage of time and malevolent or all-powerful forces that it seems utterly hopeless... until you fix it. You'll meet your end plenty of times while doing it, but each death in Demon's Souls is a neatly packaged learning experience. For every cheap slip down a chasm or tumble over the edge of a staircase that sends you plummeting hundreds of feet to your death, there are dozens upon dozens that will teach you the cold, hard truths of this world: nearly every enemy (particularly early on) is a potential life-ender, and a proper defense and careful use of your equipped weapon are paramount in every. Single. Encounter.

 

Let's delve a bit into the depth of the melee combat for a second, though, because it's ridiculously varied. Each weapon has its own animations for normal and heavy strikes, and those change yet again if you wield them with two hands vs. one. If you toss a shield onto the other while one-handing a weapon, you're able to block incoming attacks or even bat them away with a parry, which opens the enemy up to critical strikes. Some weapons will allow you to block and strike, while others require both. Along with the differences in play style come the stat requirements and practice with attack speeds, damage dealt, the ability to dodge and roll... Are you getting the idea here? There's more in just the combat alone to give players a reason to go through the game more than once.

 

 

 

-Online.

The online implementation is definitely Japanese in that it doesn't embrace full, real-time, voice-based communication between players, but there are unique touches too. As you play through the game, you'll notice other players in the area fighting their own versions of the same monsters. These white wisps are reminders that you're only a fragmented dimension away from being able to play with them, and when they die, the last few seconds of their life is recorded as a bloodstain you can touch to play back their final moments -- often serving as something of a warning when in new areas. The only way to reach across these dimensions outside of joining someone's game is to leave a sometimes cryptic message built from pre-written sentences that can warn of upcoming danger or indicate a good guy around the bend. These, though, can also be dropped as particularly evil little "help" messages that encourage players to jump blindly off a ledge in search of treasure only to meet their death if you so choose, but a voting system does help weed out some of the less honest bits of help -- unless of course a bunch of equally evil people recommend the false message too.

 

In fact, the disconnected nature of Demon's Souls' online interactions helps encourage the kind of break from social norms that being anonymous online has done in message boards. You can be a complete ass in this game and delight in the misfortunes of others. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ability to invade other people's games as a Black Phantom. When giving in to the Dark Side, you can entice enemies to attack the player, and of course can do it yourself, effectively ruining their careful exploration. There's a level limit to keep end game Black Phantoms from just rolling up and insta-killing newcomers (you can't even interact with other players until you beat the first boss and get the necessary stones), but toward the end of the game, ten levels can mean the difference between some wildly different bits of equipment or spells depending on how characters have been leveled up over the course of their travels.

 

Yes, that's a boss. Likely only your second, and yes, there are bigger ones than that.

 

The differences in any of these states, from Blue (helpful) to Black (invading) Phantoms, to Soul (dead, but dealing more damage) or Body (alive, but attracting more enemy attention and doing less damage) Forms means you can play the game in a variety of ways. If you factor in the shifts that can happen when going from Dark to Light tendencies in a particular world (some areas will only open up once an area has completely bend to one end of the spectrum), what was already a deep game becomes a chasm of replay value, adaptability and reward.

 

It also helps that playing online will allow you to see more of the world, which is in and of itself one hell of a treat.

 

Believe me, you don't want to meet the business end of that dragon. But you will, don't worry.

---

Demon's Souls is not a game for everyone. Actually, I take that back; it's most definitely something everyone should try, but the look, seemingly unforgiving nature and themes might be a bit off-putting. Don't let them be. Every single person that owns a PS3 should at the very least rent this game to see what all the fuss is about, and those that can remember the good ol' days when games taught through the highly effective use of intense punishment and a heavy price for not playing it carefully should scoop this up instantly. It's utterly unique among the offerings on any console right now, and absolutely, positively should not be missed.

IGN Ratings for Demon's Souls (PS3)

 

Source : ps3.ign.com made by Sam Bishop, also some photos and text taken by atlasforum and Atlus Aram.

 

 

This game is awesome, it may be punishing like no other, but its indeed fun. If u got a couple of friends then it'll be awesome.Its ur choice.

I did rent this game, liked it a lot.

 

Here's a video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awTag3BWc80 . Check related videos too.

 

 

          PS3 EXCLUSIVE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NickOmaniac]

Very nice graphics and the story seems cool too. I will try it if i have the chance.

Thanks for this preview

[GrisoM]

Any vid? dang.. PS3 exclusive..

 

)!"·%/!"|#€¬@)"/$!

[Cloud]

i hope and i am 90%sure that this game will be also on Pc,xbox 360..because it seems very cool and they will need more money:p

[Fя0zenInside™]

i hope and i am 90%sure that this game will be also on Pc,xbox 360..because it seems very cool and they will need more money:p

i have to agree with cloud btw this game is somehow like the devil may cry style(my opinion) and its look awesome well very nice games will be out in some months;pthanks for sharing the preview with us.

[LMAOROFL]

Any vid? dang.. PS3 exclusive..

 

)!"·%/!"|#€¬@)"/$!

Check the ending of this post.

video is there.

 

Here's a video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awTag3BWc80 . Check related videos too.

 

i hope and i am 90%sure that this game will be also on Pc,xbox 360..because it seems very cool and they will need more money:p

 

I dont think so cuz sony owns it and theyre kinda enemies with microsoft which owns xbox and publishes most of the games for pc . Plus playstation rly needs a good RPG ,sharing it will decrease their profit.

 

But u never know  , maybe they will if they find any profit comes out of it

[cyperex]

Seems PRETTY amazing, too bad i dont buy ps3 games, they empty out ur wallet in seconds.. xD

[agapitos]

this game is only on ps3 ??? if its only on ps3 i dont buy it  8)