LogFAQs > #946481340

18. Dark Souls [Game] (23 points)
Nominated by: Dark Silvergun (0/5 remaining)


Importance: 9.5
Fear: 6.5
Snake: 7

When I was discussing dark fantasy, I specifically avoided talking about Dark Souls for a reason, since I knew I would be writing only a few spots later. However, everything I said in that dark fantasy write-up can surely apply here, and tenfold. Its big, red, bold "YOU DIED" is that perfect encapsulation of all of dark fantasy's themes of despair, hopelessness, and death, and has become as ubiquitous a death a screen as gaming itself. Released in 2011 as a spiritual successor to FromSoftware's previous effort Demon's Souls, it was much of an instant smash than the more niche Demon's Souls ever was. It was a game that felt like a direct response to all people who said, "Modern gaming has gotten too easy", and you may agree or disagree (I'm personally in the latter) with that statement, but you must admit Dark Souls was indeed much harder than almost anything else released at that time. It was survival horror re-skinned for a new generation, as the old guard horror series lost their bites and their reputations along the way. Its minimalist storytelling through use of flavor text, bonfires as save rooms, and seriously jaw-dropping environments may have re-awoken memories of past haunts, but Dark Souls was a punishing plunge of gameplay all its own. Every battle, from solo shambling corpses of the undead to the most towering of titanic dragons encouraged, no, required, strategic thought, careful planning, and the most precise of button presses to make it through. Even when the game played its most unfair hands, there was always something you could've done differently to turn a 'YOU DIED' into a successful run to the next bonfire. I hated this game when I first picked it up. I was honestly expecting more of a DMC-esque experience but playing it like an action game proved costly. When I understood it from the perspective of a genre I had played and loved nearly my whole life, that's when Dark Souls really clicked for me. Inventory management, enemy avoidance, strategic saving, it was obvious, staring me in the face the whole time, and that's where I think the true genius of Dark Souls lies. It never was the scariest game ever, nor was it designed to be, but its pure tension, slow-pace, and confidence in its quiet atmosphere punctuated by battles potentially over in instants still marks it a stark anti-thesis to nearly everything in the mainstream market to this day and is one of the must-play games of the last twenty years, worth experiencing even if it's only for one YOU DIED screen.

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Bare feet on the tile with my head up in the clouds
https://imgur.com/1e1e70S