Demon’s Souls or: How I learned to keep dying and love video games again

Since I was as young as I can remember, I’ve been playing video games as a pastime. The NES and Commodore 64 were the first things I played them on. I have vague memories of Clash at Demonhead, Super Mario Bros., Bubble Bobble, and some game about a time traveling gnome on the C64 from when I was 3 or 4. They quickly became my favorite hobby.

As a kid, even up through high school, the anticipation for a new game was one of the biggest impetuses for me to get the game at all. I craved it, I wanted it, I had to have it. I can remember that Super Mario RPG was the first game I actually had a burning desire for before it came out. I can vividly remember the trip down to wal-mart where I bought it with several months hard-earned allowance. I loved the shit out of that game.

It’d happen many other times as well. Upon seeing a commercial for Final Fantasy 7 when I was 11 or something that burning feeling was again bubbling up within me; expounded by my lack of a Playstation and having to wait for the PC port to become available. Super Smash Bros. and Ocarina of Time highlighted the Nintendo 64 for me. Even Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast and Windwaker for the Gamecube, punctuated by several PC titles, kept me waiting for games all the way through college. Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil 4 were both games me and my roommate at the time waited in agony for together for, and enjoyed immensely together.

But something happened in the last six or so years, I stopped really waiting for games. I still bought them, I still played them, they still passed the time… but it was lacking something it once had. I ended up buying games less and less, and playing them for less and less time when I did. I’ve probably beaten Chrono Trigger 30+ times, but only managed to play Bioshock through once. I relegated myself to mainly multiplayer affairs, WoW, TF2, etc… they still had a bit of lasting appeal.   The love was gone.  I thought they were cool… didn’t really regret buying them, but the feelings I had as a starry eyed youth was all but gone from the experience.

When StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 were announced I had a slight resurgence of that feeling from times of yore… but even now it’s all but completely dissipated.  Perhaps when they come out some semblance of  my former love will reemerge… perhaps.

For the last two years or so I’ve played less video games than any period in my life where I had sufficient motor skills with which to play them. I didn’t really miss them, it was just that nothing was being released that I was truly interested in like I once was. I played a few weird indie games (Machinarium, Braid, Flower), blew through them in a few hours and they were all good experiences in and of themselves (especially Flower, which I hesitate to call a game as much as a spiritual experience.), but they still lacked that feeling of euphoria I had when I cracked open the box for the first time and glanced over the manual for the first time, taking in that new game smell I so fondly associate with my youth.  They didn’t have those first few minutes of pure bliss as I got acquainted with the controls and explored this new and miraculous world.  It was just, different.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the point I think I realized it had diminished so much. When the initial trailer for the game was released some few years before the game itself would be back in 2005 or so, I was as eager as ever to get my hands on it. Agonizing years passed, and I eventually found myself at a midnight release. I returned home and played it for a week or so on and off and then stopped, never quite feeling it had been what I had wanted it to be.

But maybe I’m over-romanticizing how I felt about vidja games when I was a tyke.

Fast forward to two days ago, when I got Demon’s Souls on the cheap. I had heard about it from everyone I had ever trusted on games, they all told me it was fanfuckingtastic and I just had to give it a shot. So I did.

Oh how I did.

Demon’s Souls is, and I say this without a hint of hyperbolic flavor, the best game I have played in years, if not a decade. It’s hard, it’s rewarding, it’s epic, it’s huge, it’s long, it’s replayable, it’s innovative and it’s simply one of the best gameplay experiences I’ve ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on.

It plays a lot like an old Western or roguelike RPG, Baldur’s Gate or Diablo or Wizardry or something. You transverse a myriad of landscapes killing everything that moves. You find new armor, craft new stuff, level up, use herbs, etc… It’s hard. You die a lot. It’s incredibly unforgiving, but also incredibly fair. When I die in Demon’s Souls, I get super pissed off, but I realize it’s only my own shortcomings that have lead to my death. This in itself wouldn’t be anything special. I could just as easily load up some old PC game and get virtually the same experience, however less pretty it might look… no, Demon’s Souls kicks you in the ass and makes you like it.

There is but one currency in the game: souls (of Demons). Everything you kill gives you some souls. You use these as experience, as money, as a reagent for crafting better gear, everything. If you die, sort of like Sonic with his rings, you drop all your souls. You also go back to the beginning of the level. If you should reach the point you died at (with everything respawned mind you) you can recover them. If you die again before you reach those precious souls… they’re gone.

But that’s not all. When you die, you come back as a soul yourself with only about 50% HP. So, not only must you get back to the point you died at, but you must do it with half the max health you did it with the first time. This game doesn’t cut you any slack. It just tells you to suck it up and get better, keep being bad and you won’t be rewarded.

I could go into the mechanics more, but just let it be known that every time you die the game gets harder. It’s also possible to lose HOURS of work with no gain in your character whatsoever if you happen to die a few times. It’s a harsh mistress of a game, and I love her for it.

As a result of it’s unwavering brutality, however, is the triumphant feeling that is more common in this game than any other I have ever played. When I used to play World of Warcraft in a very high end guild, I felt that way occasionally after beating some new encounter, and that was the entire reason I played it. When you beat a boss, be it a huge fire breathing spider or a 5 story tall knight with a lance that shoots laser beams, you know you deserved it. You feel like a fucking boss. Hell, sometimes after beating a particularly strong non-boss enemy you feel great.

The online play is innovative and fantastic. It combines co-operative things with player vs player stuff, all with very real advantages and disadvantages. Overall, it creates a feeling of tension for the player, knowing that at any time some angry motherfucker can just crash into your game and come after your life.  Killing them is another great feeling, as you feel like you’ve triumphed over pure evil.

Overall, this game is utterly fantastic and I’m glad it’s done so well. Hopefully we’ll get more games like this that have you feel like you’ve worked for something and attained it. I have no problem with the “interactive movies” like Uncharted 2 or what have you, but something about Demon’s Souls tickles me in a way that makes me feel like a kid in the basement sitting way to close to a CRT again, and I love it.

So, thank you Demon’s Souls, for reminding me why I played video games in the first place:  they’re fun.