Monday, December 12, 2011

Dark Souls

If one were to go back and play old NES games like Contra or Kid Icarus, I think the nostalgia would be overwhelmed at some point by the cruelty inherent in these older games. There's no saving. There's little room for mistakes. And if you fail over the course of many hours of play, you start over. Who has the time or patience to deal with that kind of thing today? Who would pay money to experience that again?

The makers of Dark Souls apparently thought somebody would. The game has no pause button. There's very little instruction or story. The game is cruel, and when you die, you lose all of your souls, the game's currency. When you go to checkpoints and heal, all of the enemies in the game respawn.

One might think Dark Souls is just a needless nostalgia play, but they only adopt old gaming rules when they support the game's goal: give the player constant stakes. Give them a strong incentive to take care. Make them fearful to fail and jubilant at success. They hit that mark perfectly. I'm no gaming expert (I died 30+ times in the first few hours of play and nearly gave up), and even I have found the game incredibly rewarding. Fromsoft basically made a deal with the player: deal with our hurdles, and we'll reward you with incredible rewards in detail, feel, loot, and fun.

This is an incredible bet for a gaming studio; I can think of no other recent game that attempts to make this deal with the player. But after two excellent games in this vein (Dark Souls' spiritual predecessor is a game called Demon Souls and is similar), I think we may see a resurgence of the high-stakes game. Jaded players need stakes, whether they realize it or not. Here's to more stress and more rewards in gaming's future.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

I think we may see a resurgence of the high-stakes game. Jaded players need stakes, whether they realize it or not. Here's to more stress and more rewards in gaming's future.high-stakes gameI hope it reaches your targetted audience. all the best thank you.Enjoyed looking at this, very good stuff, appreciate it.

Sam said...

Nice to read it..
Regards.
Mir Muhammad AliKhan

tejaswini said...

Through this post, I realize that your great information in playing with all the pieces was exceptionally useful. I advise this is the primary spot where I discover issues I've been scanning for. You have a smart yet alluring method of composing.
data science course

360digitmgdelhi said...

I truly like your style of blogging. I added it to my preferred's blog webpage list and will return soon…data science course in delhi

360digitmg said...

I feel really happy to have seen your webpage and look forward to so many more entertaining times reading here. Thanks once more for all the details.
typeerror nonetype object is not subscriptable



Maneesha said...

I have bookmarked your site since this site contains important data in it. I am truly content with articles quality and introduction. Much obliged for keeping extraordinary stuff. I am a lot of grateful for this site. data scientist course

Huongkv said...

Mua vé tại Aivivu, tham khảo

vé máy bay đi Mỹ

vé máy bay từ mỹ về việt nam bao nhiêu

vé máy bay cần thơ đi đà nẵng

chuyến bay hcm hà nội

đặt vé đi nha trang

360DigiTMG-Pune said...

Informative article. Thanks for sharing with us.keep it up.
artificial intelligence course in pune