Games Like Dark Souls For PC Archives

I finally completed Dark Souls III [official site] last week, a world that I have been dipping in and out of between bouts of listlessness since its release in April last year. It didn’t grip me like the first revered Dark Souls, but it still made me sad to know it was all over. Where could I go now for my Souls fix? The answer, it turns out, is loads of places. The games industry is quietly reverberating with the series’ influence. From small games boasting “souls-like” combat, to bigger games doing weird things with death and player messages. Meanwhile, our PlayStation brethren got Nioh, which took the “pocket full o’ souls” idea and simply renamed them “Amrita”. There is a popular complaint that everything in the industry is now being compared to Dark Souls, and it’s easy to forget that games embraced difficulty and strangeness long before the Bed of Chaos made you weep with frustration. Nevertheless, the mechanics and the tone of Miyazaki’s magnum opus is leaking into games everywhere.

That there’s an influx of Soulsian disciples out there isn’t a problem to me. My problem is that they are learning all the wrong lessons. At least, they are neglecting the most important one. But first let’s look at what sly tricks are being lifted from the series, and who is lifting them.

Challenge

In the kind of cursed circles we games critics skulk in, any talk of difficulty in Souls games is greeted with gaseous sighs and eyes rolling around in skulls like wild pinballs. There is nothing to be said about the toughness of the game which has not already been said. The most recent soundbite I’ve heard is: “Dark Souls isn’t hard, you just need to learn!” – an analysis that screws up my face to the point of granting my eyebrows sentience, because it is like saying “that boiling hot cup of tea isn’t warm, you just need to slurp.” It is hard, it is famously hard, and we shouldn’t need to redefine an agreed-upon term just to find something new to say about a videogame. But we do, because, Jesus, we are exhausted.

For developers, that interest in difficulty seems not to have abated in the same way. Many devs have struggled through Anor Londo or Blighttown and concluded that challenge and difficulty are the things to take away from all of it. Hyper Light Drifter gives you a slowly-expanding set of moves to deal with numerous hard-hitting foes. Learning to time your dodges and take opportunistic potshots with a sidearm makes it feel at times like a top-down Bloodborne viewed through a pixelising Photoshop filter. You’ll die and you’ll have to try it all again.

More recently, the platformer Rain World adopted the use of Bonfire-like checkpoints. Your slugcat needs these shelters to survive a regular downpour of lethal rain yet are often placed far apart, stashed in as-yet unexplored places. You die easily to animals in this harsh landscape, with one-hit kills coming out of nowhere. Sometimes you become trapped in one area, unable to proceed or go back the way you came (although this has been eased thanks to a recent patch). But it also embraced the randomness of a real ecosystem, the deadly, uncaring attitude of nature. You could be going from one screen to another and be eaten as soon as you appeared on the other side, with no possible recourse. In this sense, Rain World is tougher than Dark Souls. Because it has done away with all sense of fairness.

There are other examples, mostly from independent developers. Salt and Sancuary, Titan Souls, Devil Daggers. They all have an emphasis on repetition, punishing overconfidence, building up your reflexes, observing enemy patterns, learning to intuit a foe’s movements. But not everything is done in pixels or platformers. Lords of the Fallen and Bound By Flame tried too hard to copy the big boy formula and both came away feeling uninspired. The point is: all of these games have their strengths and weakness, but they all take the challenge of Dark Souls to be its defining element. An understandable stance, since it is the most obvious and most praised aspect of the series. Hell, it’s first on this very list of “things wot Dark Souls teaches”. But it is not the only thing developers are learning.

Obfuscation

At no point during my first run of Dark Souls did I have any idea what I was doing. Not only in terms of the story, if it can be called a story, but also in my actions. A strange man would ask me a question and I would answer in the affirmative, not understanding why. I would equip a new weapon and wonder why I was suddenly rolling more slowly. A frog would burp on me and I’d panic that half of my health bar was now missing. Many of the systems and consequences are now rooted in players’ heads, like angry parasites, but it was not always so. Developers reminisce on games like this and conclude that a sense of mystery and discovery have been absent from videogames for far too long.

Thus, we are faced with oddities. My Summer Car is a comedy game that obfuscates its end goal in an extreme manner, asking you to build an entire car from scratch without a single clue, right down to the tiny bolts that hold each component in place. Attempting this challenge without help from YouTube is a time-consuming conundrum for anyone but a trained mechanic. Its insistence on having you build this rusty, ruinous old machine has led to the industry joke that “Dark Souls is the My Summer Car of RPGs”.

Rain World, again, hides many details from the player. It refuses to tell you the various hidden abilities of your slugcat (he can backflip, store things in his stomach, dash when squeezing through a pipe, and more, but none of that is explained) and there are moments of desperate cluelessness. Where am I going? What does this plant even do? Why are these glowing gold ghosts all flocking to this cavern?

Starseed Pilgrim tells you absolutely nothing about what is going on. I still do not understand what I was supposed to be doing in that game.

Harnessing mystery and discovery in strong ways like this can lead the player into any intriguing cave you want. But there is a point in which obfuscation turns some people off, especially when it comes to the story you are telling. Pulling too many veils over your story, far from granting it mystery, can simply feel like a cheap trick designed to make the player do the heavy narrative lifting. Dark Souls is certainly guilty of that and it has encouraged others to adopt this faux-Lynchian style of story-telling.

I always think of Kentucky Route Zero here, although I’ll be in the minority at Castle Shotgun for jabbing at it with an accusatory finger. It puts style and atmosphere over story, relegating connections between characters and events to the player’s own mind, never giving you a truly cohesive vision of its world or characters. It is random and it is vague. That might be grand for some people, but to me it is like finding a writer’s notebook – they might be a great writer, with a cutting turn of phrase and all the flair of Calvino, Borges, Atwood, or whoever your favourites are. They might be masterful, their sentences might ring off the page like songs. But you are still only reading their notes, there is no tale here, no rounded characters. You are squinting at scribbles.

And although the games are wildly different, that complaint is true for Dark Souls too – its story is bunk, half-formed lore gleaned from item descriptions and strangely translated utterances does not a storyline make. The appeal, yes, may be in filling in the blanks, but there comes a point when we, as readers, must ask: where the hell is the rest of this book? It’s, like, two-thirds blank. It’s possible to have mystery and mysticism, or a lack of direction, resolution or closure, and still have created a satisfactory story. You only need to look at any movie by the Coen brothers to know that.

The difference between Dark Souls and its growing clan of inspired descendants, is that it had something else to fall back on. When both challenge and a mysterious atmosphere was not enough, and it’s something no disciple has since been able to replicate: a single, exquisitely crafted level.

Lordran

So here we are. Developers have taken so many tissue samples from Dark Souls that it is starting to look like one of its own goofy skeleton warriors. They’ve sliced off some of the challenge, and they’ve sucked up some of the mystery – all with varying degrees of success. But it is the boring, beating heart of level design that they should have extracted from its innards. Lordran has a unique sense of space, there is an idea in the first Dark Souls of “home” and of “camp”. We have all been stranded in some dark place. Maybe we were stuck at the roots of a tree or trapped in a cold, dark and gentle painting. But we have all felt, sometimes without knowing it, a longing to be back at the Firelink Shrine. And after a long slog, when you climb up that ladder, or open that crypt door, or step onto that mechanical lift, you discover yourself back there, and you are awarded a sense of relief and recognition unparalleled in other games. In this way, it is unlike its apostles, who seem to follow in its footsteps, but never reach the final destination.

The truth is that no game has learned that lesson, of investing in a nigh-perfect vertical-meets-horizontal level design, because even the Dark Souls series itself did not hold onto that philosophy. A shortcut in the first Dark Souls almost gave you as much of a buzz as defeating a towering dragon. A shortcut in the second feels like joyless mandatory inclusion, if it is there at all. And there are some shortcuts in the third that are virtually pointless.

It is why Demons’ Souls, with its hub world, doesn’t compare to the follow-up, it is why the sequels have never held a torch to the first, despite literally trying to. Their dogged insistence on immediately available fast travel and a shrine that is virtually disconnected from all other locations has turned what once felt like a journey into a matter of hopping up at your destination through a loading screen, like some sort of weird, teleporting rabbit. It’s a flaw I’ve mentioned before and others talk about constantly. Again I can already feel the pinball eyes of my critic pals rolling around in their heads with multiball chaos.

But if that problem is so obvious, why has it not been fixed? In the sequels you are offered this fast travel as a magical elevator, its muzak the gentle caress of loading screen tips. An elevator that conveniently stops in every rotten neighbourhood you’ve already encountered. If the true spirit and level design of Dark Souls had been retained, this would have manifested itself as an actual elevator. Or more likely, a warren-like system of shortcuts and detours – lifts, ladders and ledges – all created with a web-like consistency to bring you back the way you came. For a game with so much imagery and symbolism of cycles, Dark Souls III was a hundred times more linear than its elder brother.

To me, that descent into more conventional level design, with obligatory fast travel that was originally given later as a reward, is the result of a clash between what players think they want and what they truly want. They want to go on an epic journey, an adventure. But they don’t want too much hardship. They don’t want to travel long distances to return to a previous place they’ve already been. Yet in the first Dark Souls there was plenty of backtracking, and far from being something to complain about, it gave the game its soul.

I remember the exact moment I realised I loved Dark Souls. I had taken a long detour back to that old witchy undead woman near Firelink Shrine who sells poison arrows. I splashed down the sewer toward her hovel. I think it had taken me almost an hour to return here. But I had done it, and it was a revelation. The designers of Lordran wanted you, as the player, to knowtheir land. The crumbling medieval ramparts, the rocky ledges of the canyons, the narrow brick corridors of the depths. They wanted you to know this world, not from a top-down perspective, or as list of places on a menu, but as an inhabitant. As a rat who knows what direction to take in his own labyrinth from nothing but a searing, instinctive memory. It is a critical attribute of Dark Souls, as a series, that it has no map. And yet, every one of us rats who got lost in its first labyrinth could probably draw you one.

I understand that this is just my view on it. The Souls series is special in that it is all things to all gamers (with the exception of those hollows who put the pad down at the Capra demon and decide to exact their madness elsewhere). But to me this is the takeaway lesson: there were hard games before Dark Souls, and there were mysterious games before Dark Souls, but there was no game with such exquisite and cyclic level design before Dark Souls. That the lessons interned in Lordran, lessons about what architecture and geography and mechanisms can add to an adventure all about hardship, could potentially be forgotten and put aside, for whatever reasons, would be the saddest loss of game design in a generation.

1 month ago

Feature: One Off The List

The 9 best dogs in PC games

Brendan Caldwell • 1 month ago • 62

All dogs go to heaven, we have heard it said. But what about videogame dogs? By the virtue of their non-existence you may suspect they are refused entry. However, after contemplating the issue for some time, our finest minds in the listicle archives have concluded that, yes, even videogame dogs go to heaven. What a relief. Here are the 10 goodest boys in PC games,…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Dark Souls: Remastered, Fallout 4, Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Okami HD, Phogs, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

3 months ago

This mod turns Dark Souls into a roguelike

Matt Cox • 3 months ago • 15

It's easy to overemphasise the importance of difficulty to Dark Souls, but I'd still argue it's integral. From Software's gruelling RPGs do loads else that's cool, but part of the appeal is bound up with the same satisfaction you get from climbing a mountain. You want that tension, and the blessed relief of finally beating a boss after chucking yourself betwixt its jaws for the…

Tagged with From Software, Grimrukh, mods, roguelike, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered.

6 months ago

Feature: One Off The List

The 11 nicest smiles in PC games

Brendan Caldwell • 6 months ago • 26

The human race evolved the facial expression known as the “smile” because we needed a way to silently communicate satisfaction to other members of our species. So we decided to bare our teeth at one another and squint. This stuck, and now even the characters of your favourite digital storyderby are doing it. It’s sort of disgusting, and yet… you know what, I like it.…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, Apex Legends, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dark Souls: Remastered, Heaven's Vault, Mass Effect Andromeda, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Resident Evil 3, Street Fighter V, Team Fortress 2, Undertale, Wilmot's Warehouse.

8 months ago

Feature: The Dark Souls of mod columns

Modder Superior – Dark Souls Trilogy Remixed

Dominic Tarason • 8 months ago • 9

Dark Souls modders are forged in the flames of adversity. While mostly limited to technical improvements (such as Durante's fixes for the wonky original PC port) and small texture packs, the past few years have brought about a whole new genre of Souls mods for all three games. While limited in what can be added to the trilogy (though breakthroughs are being made on that…

Tagged with feature, From Software, Modder Superior, mods, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, Dark Souls: Remastered.

Feature: Level up

The best RPGs to play on PC

RPS • 8 months ago • 150

The best RPGs have always found their home on PC, but the sheer size of the genre can make it difficult to know what you should play next. That's why we've put together this list of all the best RPGs you can play today on PC.

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Anachronox, Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura, Avernum: Escape From the Pit, Baldur's Gate II, Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition, Brogue, Chrono Trigger, Dark Souls: Remastered, Darkest Dungeon, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Diablo III, Disco Elysium, Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, Dwarf Fortress, Fallout, Fallout: New Vegas, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Hand of Fate 2, Kenshi, Legend of Grimrock 2, Mass Effect 2, Monster Hunter: World, Mount & Blade: Warband, NEO Scavenger, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, NieR: Automata, Path of Exile, Pillars of Eternity, Planescape: Torment, Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director's Cut, Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind, Star Traders: Frontiers, Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic, Stardew Valley, Sunless Skies, System Shock 2, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Titan Quest, Ultima VII, Undertale, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Yakuza 0.

10 months ago

Feature: The definitive and objective list

The greatest PC games of the 2010s

RPS • 10 months ago • 317

It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, 2:22AM, 80 Days, Ape Out, Apex Legends, Bernband, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Cities: Skylines, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Crusader Kings II, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Remastered, Deadly Premonition, Devil Daggers, Dishonored 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Doom, Dota 2, Eliza, Factorio, Fallout: New Vegas, Football Manager Touch 2019, FTL: Faster Than Light, Grand Theft Auto V, Hitman 2, Hotline Miami, Into the Breach, Invisible Inc, Mass Effect 2, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Neo Scavenger, Nidhogg, Outer Wilds, Overwatch, Papers Please, PlanetSide 2, Portal 2, Return of the Obra Dinn, RimWorld, Secret Habitat, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Slay the Spire, Spelunky, Star Traders: Frontiers, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Norwood Suite, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Undertale, Untitled Goose Game, What Remains of Edith Finch, With Those We Love Alive, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Yakuza 0.

11 months ago

Feature: Why every survival game needs wheat

Game DNA: Making yourself a home

Brendan Caldwell • 11 months ago • 18

I was homeless when I discovered Minecraft -- not homeless in the street-sleeping sense, thankfully. Only in the sofa-surfing sense. I had a bed, even. The creaking cabin bed of two friends who took pity on me and let me crash for a few months in their house, while I sullied my fingertips with sambuca in a dank Yorkshire nightclub for part-time pound coins. My…

Tagged with Brendy made me cry, feature, Game DNA, 7 Days To Die, Ashen, Dark Souls: Remastered, dofus, Else Heart Break, GTA Online, Habbo Hotel, Minecraft, Second Life, Stardew Valley, Subnautica, The Long Dark, Urban Dead.

12 months ago

Feature: In honour of His Souliness

The 10 best games like Dark Souls

Brendan Caldwell • 12 months ago • 64

Sorry, definition nerds. “Soulslike” is a word now. Disgusting, I know, but this is how genres are made. Along comes a giant like Dark Souls that everybody won’t stop bleating about and soon it has copycats. Before you know it, a swarm of like-minded games with sparse checkpoints and lethal attacks are scuttling around, leaving slime trails and biting your ankles for surprisingly massive damage.…

Tagged with Acid Nerve, Activision, Adult Swim Games, Annapurna Interactive, Aurora44, Bestest Bests, Curve Digital, Deck13, Deep Silver, feature, Focus Home Interactive, From Software, Koei Tecmo, Motion Twin, Nine Dots Studio, Soulslike, Team 17, Team Cherry, The Game Kitchen, Videocult, Ashen, Blasphemous, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Remastered, Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, Nioh: Complete Edition, Outward, Rain World, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, The Surge 2, Titan Souls.

2 years ago

Feature: The sun rises

The best Japanese games to play on PC

Alan Wen • 2 years ago • 43

After spending much of this decade catching up with the rest of the world, the Japanese games industry is truly back, and PC gamers have been reaping the rewards of this renaissance. It’s taken time for Japanese developers and publishers to get on board, especially with consoles and smartphones remaining the dominant gaming platforms in their native country. But as classic console franchises finally make…

Tagged with Arc System Works, Bandai Namco, Capcom, feature, From Software, Platinum Games, Sega, Sonic Team, Square Enix, Bayonetta, Dark Souls: Remastered, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, Monster Hunter: World, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Rez Infinite, Shenmue I & II, Valkyria Chronicles, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Yakuza 0.

The 100 best-selling games on Steam in 2018 so far

Alec Meer • 2 years ago • 21

We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there. 2018 releases Jurassic World…

Tagged with 2018, arma iii, Bless Online, NBA 2K18, sales figures, Steam, Vamypr, A Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, Age of Empires II HD, Ark: Survival Evolved, Assassin's Creed Origins, BattleTech, Black Desert Online, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty World War 2, Call of Duty: WW2, Cities: Skylines, Conan Exiles, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Crusader Kings II, Cuphead, Dark Souls III, Dark Souls: Remastered, Darkest Dungeon, Dead by Daylight, Deep Rock Galactic, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Don't Starve Together, Dota 2, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Dying Light, Eco, Elite Dangerous, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Europa Universalis IV, Factorio, Fallout 4, Far Cry 5, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XV, Football Manager 2018, For Honor, Frostpunk, Garry's Mod, Grand Theft Auto V, H1Z1, Hearts of Iron IV, House Flipper, Human: Fall Flat, Hunt: Showdown, Jurassic World Evolution, Just Cause 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, NieR: Automata, Nioh: Complete Edition, Northgard, Paladins, Path of Exile, Payday 2, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, Planet Coaster, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Raft, RimWorld, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Rocket League, Rust, Shadowverse CCG, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Slay the Spire, Smite, Sniper Elite 4, Squad, Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Subnautica, Surviving Mars, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, Team Fortress 2, Terraria, The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, The Forest, The Sims 3, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, theHunter: Call of the Wild, They Are Billions, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Tom Clancy's The Division, Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II, War Thunder, Warframe, Warhammer 40000: Inquisitor - Martyr, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, Watch Dogs 2, XCOM 2.

‘I wish they had good anti-cheat,’ says Dark Souls hacker

Brendan Caldwell • 2 years ago • 101

Pain and purgatory simulator Dark Souls: Remastered was released a couple of weeks ago, and within hours it was already the playground of a well-known hacker. Malcolm Reynolds, who is known to players from his exploits in other Dark Souls games, was invading players and throwing an accursed, hacked fireball at them, which inflicts diseases and a curse that makes the game even more difficult.…

Tagged with Bandai Namco, From Software, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered.

This great Twitter account collects safe rooms in games

Alice O'Connor • 2 years ago • 15

A new-ish Twitter account is collecting the save rooms, bases, shops, quiet zones, and other "safe rooms" from games (well, safe-ish) - places which I'm always happy to visit while playing, and glad to see pop up in my Twitter feed. The Safe Room is almost a safe room itself, a pleasant moment on that punishment of a website. Who doesn't hear the calming Resident…

Tagged with Twitter, Dark Souls: Remastered, resident evil 4, System Shock 2.

Feature: TOP 10 PC GAMES EXCEPT THERE ARE EIGHT

Steam Charts: Unblessed Edition

John Walker • 2 years ago • 41

Thank goodness you're here! If you weren't to read the Steam Charts today, you would DIE.

Tagged with Bless Online, feature, Steam Charts, Dark Souls: Remastered, House Flipper, Moonlighter, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Raft, The Forest, Total War: Warhammer II.

Feature: Actually ten games!

Steam Charts: A New Hope Edition

John Walker • 2 years ago • 51

Please sit down. Make sure you have a friend with you, or available on the telephone. Plunkbat isn't at number one. Somehow, it's something even more boring. But the rest of the charts are a splendid sight! No GTA, no CS:GO, no Witcher 3, no Skyrim!

Tagged with feature, Steam Charts, Assassin's Creed Origins, Conan Exiles, Dark Souls: Remastered, House Flipper, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Raft, Stellaris: Distant Stars, The Forest, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Wizard of Legend.

Dark Souls: Remastered is out now – and it’s already got an infamous hacker

Brendan Caldwell • 2 years ago • 32

Crack open a nice cold soul, fans of permanently holding up a shield while you walk. Dark Souls: Remastered has been released on Steam today, a day earlier than we’d believed. The original Prepare to Die Edition was pulled from sale two weeks ago, so if you didn’t buy it then, this is now your only PC doorway to popular resort town Undead Burg. The…

Tagged with Bandai Namco, From Software, Qloc, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered.

It’s the final day to buy Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition

Alice O'Connor • 2 years ago • 20

The PC's original 'Prepare To Die' edition of Dark Souls will be removed from sale on STeam tomorrow, ahead of the launch of the mildly fancier Remastered edition, so buy now if you want it for posterity. Folks who own Prepare To Die will get a 50% discount on Remastered, but that'll still work out more expensive, so the reason to buy now would be…

Tagged with Bandai Namco, From Software, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered.

Dark Souls: Remastered is half-price for original owners

Alice O'Connor • 2 years ago • 53

Folks who have the original Dark Souls on Steam will be offered a 50% discount on the upcoming Dark Souls: Remastered, Bandai Namco confirmed today. The revisions and additions in the Remastered edition aren't huge but if you fancy returning to a fancier Lordran, that beats paying full price.Remastered will be the only way to buy Dark Souls on PC, as Bamco also announced that…

Tagged with Bandai Namco, From Software, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered.

3 years ago

Feature: Listen or be unmade

Podcast: Remakes, reboots and remasters

RPS • 3 years ago • 9

Welcome to the freshly relaunched RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show! You might think this is episode 31, but actually it’s episode 1 again. We’re rebooting it, even though we just did that last year. We’ve started by making it more accessible. Instead of three of us chatting about videogames between snippets of jaunty music, there’s just a sad man saying “Sonic the Hedgehog” over…

Tagged with feature, Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun, Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, Wolfenstein, Assassin's Creed, Dark Souls: Remastered, Deus Ex, Doom, Grow Home, No One Lives Forever, Okami HD, Pathologic 2, Prey, Resident Evil 2, System Shock.

Up-res the sun! Dark Souls: Remastered prepares to live

Alec Meer • 3 years ago • 73

Whatever Dark Souls maestros From Software have planned for their next game proper is an only slightly-teased mystery, but here's some fine news to make our own souls ache less during that wait. Dark Souls, the original and greatest in the series (Bloodborne excepted) and also one of the best PC games ever, sez us, is getting a remastered edition.Update: confirmed for PC on May…

Tagged with From Software, Dark Souls, Dark Souls III, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered.

Seven years later, the influence of From Software’s Dark Souls on the games industry is impossible to ignore. A challenging atmospheric experience through classic fantasy tropes with a grim tint, Dark Souls spurred an entire genre of souls-like titles, and provided a haven for those who love exploration, larger-than-life boss battles, and a world drenched with mystery. Dark Souls Remastered is the way to play the game today if you’re on console, though PC players may have experienced many of the same improvements via Durante’s famous DSFix mod.

The most important part of the remaster is the upgrade to 60 fps. Even areas that were notorious for slow chugging like Blighttown run smooth the whole way through (although the zone is still an abomination of toxic poison, ogres, and rickety ladders). Everything looks crisp and clean, and you won’t slow down at an inopportune moment when you’re jamming your zweihander into a disgusting monstrosity’s flesh. For those that experienced the original title on console, these changes alone make the remaster worth the price of admission.

In addition, Dark Souls Remastered brings other aspects of the game up to speed with its modern counterparts like Dark Souls III. You can remap your buttons for a control scheme that suits your playstyle, use multiple items at the same time instead of having to laboriously consume each little bundle of souls, and change your covenants at bonfires. Even playing with your friends is easier than ever thanks to the implementation of a password system. These minor changes are nice additions, and don’t fundamentally alter anything from the core title.

For those new to the series, you can expect a captivating crawl through a mesmerizing dark world, full of unforgiving encounters, majestic foes, spectacular loot, and beautiful environments. The amazing moments that define the series like triumphing over the legendary Ornstein and Smough battle or wandering your way into Ash Lake for the first time are as epic as ever. The degree of openness in Dark Souls can lead you venturing into dangerous areas early on, so don’t get dismayed if you suddenly find yourself up against something impossible – instead, perhaps look for another route. The interconnected, shortcut-laden world that wraps around the Firelink Shrine is something wonderful, once you have your bearings. The lauded DLC for Dark Souls, Artorias of the Abyss, is included in the remaster and features some of the best characters and battles in the entire franchise.

All improvements aside, Dark Souls does feel its age in the face of From Software’s recent contributions to the genre. The drop off in quality in the second half of the game, bosses like Bed of Chaos and incomprehensible zones like Lost Izalith remain curious blemishes on an otherwise incredible experience.

This review pertains to the PS4 version of Dark Souls Remastered. The game is also available on Xbox One and PC and is coming to Nintendo Switch.