Dark Souls

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be nice to this game.  You shouldn't take this the wrong way, because I can truly see why it is highly rated and why it seems to be so well liked.  But that doesn't change the fact that I hate just about everything about it.

Let's start with the elephant in the room -- it is a straight console port with nothing added to it for the PC.  This directly leads me to the number one reason why I hate this game.  I expected that using a gamepad would probably be the superior way to play Dark Souls on the PC because it's a straight port.  So I did try to do so, and I hated the camera.  I want the camera to point where I'm looking.  I don't think that's really too much to ask.  If I'm not looking somewhere, why would I want my camera to be there?  It seems pretty simple to me.  Unfortunately, you need to turn the camera yourself when you use a gamepad, so I decided to switch to the mouse and keyboard, because moving a camera with a mouse is incredibly easier.  It's a natural motion that doesn't require me to awkwardly remove my fingers from the right trigger buttons in order to see where the fuck I'm going.  Unfortunately, moving the camera with the mouse is twitchy and stuttery, and it gave me bubonic plague.  Black death aside, one argument that I keep seeing in reviews for the PC version of this game is "it's a straight port but that's okay because it's a good game".  No.  No.  NO.  It's a good CONSOLE game.  I am playing the PC version.  If I cannot properly play the game with my PC peripherals, then it is NOT a good PC game.  It is a bad PC game.  Very bad.

Also...you leave the Windows mouse cursor visible in the game?  Really?

I will not go through this post without some positive things to say about the game, though.  Aside from the horrendous camera issues that I have with the game, the other controls are quite alright.  I found myself having an easier time on the mouse and keyboard when it came to most everything else, to include attacking, blocking, and dashing.  I am not familiar with a gamepad and therefore I am very slow to learn the controls when I play a game with one.  But I was quick to learn the keys on the keyboard and once I got past "E" not being "Action", I was fine.  I think that my entire opinion of the game would be quite a bit different if it wasn't for that damned camera.

But not entirely.  I still have other problems with this game.  Let's talk about tone.  Now, the whole overly twitchy and stuttery camera is a subjective criticism, I would think.  You could make the argument that I'm supposed to use the gamepad.  And I counter that argument with the fact that I am playing a PC game.  You could argue that it's not a PC game.  And I will argue that I am playing the game on a PC, therefore it is a PC game.  Basically, what I'm saying it, shut the fuck up and stop trying to make the differentiation of a PC game a grey area.  It's not.  Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition is a PC game that has bad PC controls.  Period.  That is subjective.  Now, let's move on to something objective.  Here, you are fully entitled to disagree with me.  

(You have to imagine how my brain works when I write this stuff.  There is actually a little voice in my head that is arguing with me as I make these points.  It's quite entertaining, really.)

I hate the tone of this game.  I fully understand what they were trying to accomplish, and I think it is brilliant.  I really do.  But I hate it.  It's depressing.  You feel utterly alone.  No one is going to help you. There's no incentive to leave that cell you're in at the start of the game, because you know all that you're going to get is death.  Over and over again.  Fuck that.  It's an utterly brilliant way of immersing you in the world, but it's not for me.  You see, Fallout also gives you this feeling that you're all alone in a very big world.  But it doesn't make me take-all-the-sleeping-pills depressed.  I understand that this is by design.  The lead designer must be a very depressed and sad individual to create a world that looks like this.  The whole point of the world is that it is dark, due to...well, due to the whole main story of the game.  Your entire goal is to bring light back into the world, so of course it makes sense that everything will be dark.  It's actually quite an interesting story and concept.  Just not one that I can bring myself to dedicated a lot of time to playing.  

I'm sure the reward is quite worth it.  In fact, I've heard that the game is impressively rewarding.  But I find that to be quite useless if the journey to get there is so damned dull.  It looks dull.  It feels dull.  It sounds dull.  I hear that voice in my head again.  It's screaming, "That just means that you prefer a flashy, mindless game with wonderful graphics that requires no skill to play!"  Well, no.  That's not what I'm saying.  I don't mind something being difficult.  But if I'm going to put myself through dying over and over again, I at least need to be enjoying myself.  I did not really find myself enjoying much about Dark Souls.  There's a thin line between "dark" and "depressing", and for me this game goes over that line.  

This problem for me is exacerbated by the graphics and textures.  I've said I don't mind difficulty, but I do mind sub-par graphics.  I like graphics.  Everyone says that gameplay is all that's important, blah blah blah.  Well I say fuck you.  I have a PC capable of rendering fantastic graphics at a lovely framerate.  I enjoy good graphics.  I enjoy great character animations, smooth textures, superb lip synching, and beautiful set pieces.  Dark Souls has none of this.  The animations are stiff.  The textures are blurry.  There is no lip synching.  Lips don't even move!  And the set pieces...well, they are grey.  Grey everywhere.

I have no problems seeing the appeal of this game.  I just refuse to look past it's shortfalls and have the unfortunate luck of not enjoying the tone of the world in which the game is placed.  That's a shame really, but not one that I'm terribly upset about.  We live in a time when there are a LOT of games out there to play.  I will not find myself lacking in any regard.