Dark Souls. Unforgiving. Impossible. Brutal. Hardest video game ever made. Until you learn how to play ...
Before i attempted to play Dark Souls, i first finished its spiritual predecessor Demon's Souls. From this experience i learned not only the mechanics of the combat system but i learned how one should approach and play the game itself. You die. Often. And you cannot load some previously saved state just before you died. You "reincarnate" as do the minor enemies and you have to march back up that hill one more time. The trick is to learn how to gain from dying, and more importantly, how to spend your currency before you do die (and potentially fail to retrieve your blood stain). You literally can make suicide runs and pick up some great booty in the process, although you won't know to do so on your first run with your first character.
Dark Souls is controversial, no doubt about it. You either love it or you hate and i happen to love it (and my Chaos Scythe +5). While playing Dark Souls, i was distinctly reminded of many classic arcade, console and computer games that stood out: Atari 2600's Adventure and Dolphin, NES's Castlevania, Contra and Rygar, the Mario series, the Grand Theft Auto series, the Diablo and Baldur's Gate series and even the Sonic the Hedgehog series (mini speed-runs). Dark Souls is now one of my top games, along with GTA Vice City, Morrowind, Half Life, Thief 2, Might & Magic 5, Ultima 4, Super Mario World, Zelda (Ocarina of Time), Jade Empire, Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. And i haven't even had the time to sign on and participate in online Player VS Player ... just do a Youtube search to see what i mean.
I think what makes Dark Souls so special and deserving of praise is in its replay value and the reward you gain for accomplishing what most would consider impossible. Every adversity is an opportunity to learn new combat styles and to adjust your strategy. If you get stuck in Blighttown and decide to backtrack it out of there for more supplies (because you were too impatient to get down there in the first place), you feel the relief when you see daylight again. You learn from this game. It just doesn't spoon feed you like most games do these days.
Patience is not a virtue in this game, it's a requirement for survival.
(p.s. I think the current speed run is around 55 minutes to solve the game, but you can expect to put in nearly 200 HOURS before triggering the end scene.)
