Demon's Souls is not a game for the feint of heart. It's a game that offers something more in a video game. More than flashy cutscenes and big breasts. It offers a real challenge. It's this challenge that I decided to take on for myself. Little did I know, a long and arduous journey was ahead of me. One that would teach me more about myself. I would be shown my limitations, pushed to the brink. A game has never driven me like this one did. Never in my still young life have I felt such accomplishment in a video game. This is more than a game, this is an experience.



This game is hard. You will die, you will lose everything, you will break your controller. These are facts. If you accept this before entering Demon's Souls, you will have a much more enjoyable experience. At first I believed myself bigger than the game. I thought I was smarter than it, thought that I could best it at a game of wits. How foolish a man can be. Never even getting passed the second boss, I found myself pushing the game out of my mind for the time being.

A few months later, fresh out of high school, I see the case out the corner of my eye. It's teasing me. I can hear it. "You are weak." I hear it say. "You are nothing, and that's all you'll ever be.". The game was in my head. It owned me. Reluctantly I put the disk in the PS3. A new me was born. A better me. A fire was lit in my heart. I had to defeat this...thing.



Constant vigilance. Mad Eye must have been talking about this game. A great Demon's Souls player must always be on their toes. There could be an enemy around the next corner, or the next. If you lose focus for even a second, you find a dagger in your back. And if you can even make it to the boss without being killed by some abomination, you were met by the games real beauty.

Each boss fight is a unique experience. The Flamelurker is fast and requires a quick reaction time to dodge out of the way. He doesn't leave himself very open to direct attack. One must be patient, attack during the short window of opportunity he gives you and get away as fast as possible. Then there is the Tower Knight, a giant walking suit of armor. The player needs to dash in, attack the giants legs until he cripples as you slice his imaginary Achilles Heel. Learning each bosses tick is key. Every second counts.

I died a lot on bosses. A lot. This game is nothing but a big "trial and error" sim. I tried to take the least amount of help from outside sources as possible. This meant getting to the boss, running frantically around as I dodged his attacks and learned his in's and out's, usually ending with me getting smashed in some new and exciting way. As time went by though, I learned to take things slowly. Never getting too over-confident or jumpy. I would try and jump in when the boss was almost dead to get those last two or three whacks, and end up getting killed with the boss scurrying away clinging to life.



Too many games out there don't respect their audience enough to give them a real challenge. We all love the Call of Duty's and the Mass Effect's, but do any of them really try and give the player a truly satisfying gaming experience? Sure they are pretty to look at, and sure they are challenging in a way, but are they really "difficult?" Is difficulty based on the in-game mechanics or how much health an enemy has? I argue that having to shoot something 10 times (like in Call of Duty's harder difficulties) is not really difficult. I believe difficulty lies in the enemies mechanics. The unpredictability of the inhabitants of Demon's Souls is what makes them hard. So unpredictable, sometimes, that you can spend hours working on a level, hacking and slashing your way to a mountain of souls, and be killed by a lowly peon hiding in just the right spot.

Demon's Souls is like no other game out there. No game has demoralized me as much as this did. None has encouraged me to train harder and get better like this did. Nothing has compared to the feeling I got when I finally finished it. And do you want to know what I got for beating this incredibly difficult and incredibly taxing game? I got to go through it all again! And this time, everything's bigger and badder. The Demon's Souls developers are sick, sick bastards.