Demon's Souls

This game blew me away. First off, this game is not for the casual gamer. This game will punish you over and over for every small mistake, and the punishment can be overly harsh. Take a wrong step -- dead. Not see an enemy -- dead. Advance haphazardly through the levels -- dead. Many enemies are strong enough to finish you in 2-3 blows. This difficulty can make the game extremely frustrating, and gloriously rewarding.

The visuals are ambiance of the levels are fantastic. All of the worlds have a dark/foreboding presence to them, which is only increased by the slow/cautious approach that you must take the first time playing through the game.

The aspect that really sets the game apart, however, is the ability to team up/compete against other players playing through the very same worlds. At a certain point, you receive the ability to summon other players into your game or be summoned by other players into their game. This function is brilliant and loads of fun to use. Again, given the difficulty level, I often found myself hesitant to advance in certain sections until I found another player (or two) to summon. You can have up to two allies while playing. There are advantages both to being summoned and to summoning, so this mutually beneficial relationship works out great. In addition to helping other player in a co-op fashion, players can also leave helpful hints for each other. These messages can be read by all players on the Demon's Souls server. They disappear if no one recommends them, but linger around if other players recommend the messages.

In addition to summoning, a player can also invade another player's world, hunting the player down, immune from enemies, to combat and hopefully slay the opposing player. My heart sunk numerous times as I was fighting for my life as the words "Player XXXXXXXXXXXXX has invaded your world" flashed across the bottom of my screen. In a game where the difficulty level is through the roof, this bit of knowledge was rarely welcome (unless I knew I had the upper hand).

Overall, Demon's Souls is an extremely good, dark, and captivating RPG, but it's made fantastic by the continual online interactivity between players.