While reasonable minds may differ, I would characterize my prior statements on the 'Souls'
series as 'cautiously negative'.
And that was by design!
After all, I only played about 5 hours of Demon's Souls, and found it to be an occaisonally
entertaining, and rarely exceptional, by the numbers dungeon crawler with a narrative that
functions as the pine tree air freshener affixed... to the rear window of the game in question.
It's not that I hate the game, it's more that - given my indifference - I viewed its sudden
explosion to prominence in much the same light as a dog that walks in on its owner fucking
a Dirt Devil.
Sure, I get the appeal... but does it really feel that good to jam your dick into the only
object that sucks harder than the PS4's game library?!
Before I even broach the subject of how well it functions, this is Dark Souls.
So let's address the obvious: So is the game difficult?
For my money, not prohibitively so.
And certainly not to the Hannah-Barbara degree suggested, in all caps, by the series' steadily
proliferating fanboy contingent.
Sure, I died enough times to pass as Tom Selleck's mustache, but I never experienced quite the
same level of sublime, ego-demolishing frustration I experienced that fateful Sunday afternoon
when a best friend and myself completed Double Dragon III at the ripe age of nine.
In fact, what little frustration I did endure, was more often in reaction to malfunctioning
game mechanics than forbidding difficulty.
With Dark Souls II, it's not really a question of if the game is difficult.
It's a question of why the game is difficult.
I have no issue whatsoever falling victim to an ingeniously-realized game level or a
masterfully-designed boss fight scenario, where the only true adversary is my own lack
of skill.
It's when you consistently fall prey to less tangible adversaries like sluggish controls,
hitboxes the consistency of Lou Reed's discography, and a cameraman with more nervous ticks than
a Baghdad meter maid... that the pill becomes a chore to swallow.
These controls are muddier than Louie Anderson's ass at an all-you-can-eat Mongolian blow-out.
Unencumbered and playing a Knight class, there was still nearly a two-second delay between
when I depressed the 'run' button... and actually began the act of running!
And thats actually on the shorter end of the ubiquitous input delay spectrum!
Jabbing an enemy with a rapier - theoretically one of the faster swords in the game - produced
a delay of nearly 1 and a half seconds.
In a game where enemies regularly dispense multi-hit flurries of murderous undead knifework
with only fleeting pauses in-between!
We're not talking a bastard sword, here, folks.
It's a fucking rapier!
Doing rapier damage!
It'd be a fuckin' treat if I could jab a bitch more than twice without collapsing into asthmatic
fits!
Your character has three categories devoted to magic, and a stamina meter that goes empty
faster than Hasselhoff's hip flask...
so how's about a fuckin' cardio stat?
But I really have to stress that these irritants are just that: Irritants.
In a game that never once feels as difficult as I was assured it would be, slipshod controls
or not.
Not that I feel ripped off in the least.
I can take or leave difficult games.
Sometimes it works, other times it comes across as forced and gimmicky, and Dark Souls II
features equal parts of both approaches.
There are some gorgeous environments and unique enemy types employing unconventional defensive
and offensive strategies, and I appreciate that.
But on the latter front, it's hard for Souls fanboys to disprove the popular contention
that this series is quote-unquote "Difficult for Difficulty's Sake"... especially when
the achievement for dying the first time... is entitled 'This is Fucking DARK SOULS".
And permit me to field the fuckin' obvious, if I may: What discernible purpose is served
by recording my playtime in a game that - even in 'offline mode' - lacks a fucking pause
feature?!
What, is that for bragging rights?!
If I get up and make a tuna sandwich, it's logged as part of my playtime!
If you're raised in a house with no toilets, you don't brag about how many times you shat
in the woods!
I can't.
Pause!
And we know how well that worked out for Resident Evil 6!
Dark Souls II's multiplayer is...
Dark Souls multiplayer.
It's P.K.-oriented, and within that context, it's actually fairly standard P.K.
fare.
Some of the upgrades, like a ring that disguises what weapon your character is holding, could
probably do with a bit of fine tuning for balance purposes, but the good news is that
adjustments to this game's online balance issues are taking place motherfucking perpetually,
so by the time I complain about something pertaining to multiplayer, there's a good
chance it'll be holding a rip-roaring irrelevance party with MySpace and the music of Chris
Brown.
But what irks me where Dark Souls II is concerned are the double standards!
Oh, what's that?
Thief 4 mapped all the attacks to the shoulder and trigger buttons?!
Unplayable abortion!
Carbomb Eidos Montréal!
Bake them a cyanide souflée!
Oh, but From Software makes the exact same mistake - in a game predicated on ceaseless
combat, no less - and it's Christ come-again, regardless!
Or what about the story!?
When Final Fantasy XIII relegated 90% of its narrative to a glossary the size of Peter
Molyneaux's pretense... off to the game design guillotine they went!
But Dark Souls II deliberately engineers their pseudo-story to dart from view until the precise
moment you engage an NPC and willfully subject yourself to some vapid shithead with an inscrutable
accent, bludgeoning you to death with the wooden end of the acting stick...
well fuck!
Must be time to compare it to The Dark Project!
No, motherfucker.
Not in the most vivid, Chinese Brown Heroin-fueled hallucination is this game's lore, story,
or style of 'emergent narrative' worthy of being mentioned in the same breath, reality,
or motherfucking hemisphere as The Dark Project!
That isn't to say a somewhat intriguing game world doesn't peek through the venetian blinds
on the odd occasion, but voice actors I can only assume were hired from a Big Comfy Couch
audition put a quick and decisive stop to any connection I may have conceivably felt
with it.
Readables do their damndest to pick up the slack... but there's a lot of slack to pick
the fuck up, and a handful of notes lack the requisite muscle for the job.
Where the game emerges from the mire of its narrative shortcomings, however, is in the
awe-inspiring varieties of character and class customization options and an olympian arsenal
of wildly divergent weapons and armor types, each with its own distinct look, feel, and
statistical attributes.
The depth of simulation on that front... is second to none, at least in a contemporary
gaming market that hasn't embraced a pure, RPG dungeon crawler since the days of Ultima
goddamn Underworld, and delivers the precise manner of nuance and subtext... lacking in
virtually every other aspect of the game.
Dark Souls II is a bizarre dichotomy for me.
Because, in many ways, I didn't personally care for it.
Yet I can honestly say that - despite the negligible technical flaws, an only occasionally
intriguing game world, and the latent imprecision of the control scheme - whether intentional
or not - I would recommend this game.
At least if you're looking for a solid RPG dungeon crawler that you will cast appalling
quantities of your time into.
And that playtime only doubles with the return of a long-believed-dead gaming trope by the
name of 'New Game +'.
Despite my grievances, and they are valid.
I'm not sure if you've poked your head up from the developmental morass recently...
but these types of games aren't exactly growin' on fuckin' trees, these days.
I'll take a somewhat sloppy and imprecise plunge into a dungeon filled with pissed-off
skeletons... over a first-person modern military incursion to fuckin' BROWNISTAN any day!
It ain't perfect.
And maybe it doesn't want to be.
Welcome to my world, motherfucker.
I'm RazörFist.
God - fuckin' - SPEED!