So, I finally played Demon's Souls...And Metal Gear...Quest?

As is often the case with older games (Demon's Souls being almost six years old) that I only just get around to playing years after release, there is a bit of a story here. Or, at least, I should explain why it is that I've only just played Demon's Souls now, especially as someone who loves Dark Souls and Bloodborne (and I like Dark Souls II quite a bit too, but love would be too strong a word).

It all started back around the time the game was released in America. I was aware of its release, but only because of the game's alleged insane difficulty. Reviews called it punishing, but rewarding. Word on the street was that it was absurdly hard, and punished your every mistake. The one and only time I saw someone playing it in person was when I walked by an open door in my dorm, and saw several people watching someone play it. I poked my head in and asked if it was Demon's Souls. He said yes. I watched for a few seconds and said, "I heard that game is really hard." He responded, "Hasn't been too bad so far" and then immediately got killed in one hit by the boss at the end of the tutorial.

I walked out, laughing.

I had friends that liked the game, but I was too hesitant to plop down $60 for a punishing game that I might not even enjoy the combat in. So, I stayed away. Eventually I played Dark Souls (little over a year after its release), and I got both Dark Souls II and Bloodborne on their respective release dates. But no matter what, I never really thought that I'd ever actually go and play Demon's Souls. So, I ended up watching things like Brad's playthrough of the entire game here on Giant Bomb. And then earlier this year I watched all of Patrick "The Hat Trick" Klepek's (no, that's not actually his nickname, I made that up) playthrough of it on YouTube. I had no inkling whatsoever that I would play the game.

Then it was $5 on PSN and I bought it because I had over $5 on my account from that $20 PSN card I got for $5 with Bloodborne. I also bought MGS2 HD and MGS3 HD, but those will be for another day. Today, is Demon's Souls. And before I get into the game, I will say that since it's a bit old, I'm not going to bother whiting out spoilers, or boss names or anything. If you have any interest in playing the game, and are reading this the day I posted it, you still have until tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon to get it for $5 if you have PS+ and a PS3. If you can afford $5 for a, "yeah, sure, whatever" game purchase, I'd say it's worth trying. But is it worth finishing? Well...

Demon's Souls

I'm not going to lie: I was kind of disappointed with Demon's Souls. There's a lot of interesting things in the game, and I certainly like quite a few things about it, but overall, I found myself more frustrated and disgruntled than anything else. And yet, though this may sound paradoxical after that, I found large swaths of the game to be laughably easy, at least with the way that I had spent points leveling up my character.

Let me put it this way instead. I found myself frustrated with most of the level design in the game, but found most of the combat encounters to be easy. I know that these games have never been about showing you exactly where to go, or how to get through the levels, but I think Demon's Souls is the only one where I found the levels to be a detriment to my enjoying the game. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

Worlds 2 and 3 are especially bad in that regard. World 2 takes place in a mine, and thus a series of tunnels. Which is fine at first, but eventually you get to a point where you have two options to get to the boss in the second level of that world. You can either go through a series of extremely tight tunnels where you can get lost very easily, and the camera doesn't react well. Or, you can take option B, which is to fall down a series of rickety platforms in a very dark tunnel. And with the crazy way that Demon's Souls handles fall damage, it can be hard to tell where the fine line is between "negligible damage" and "instant death." Which, no lie, every time I fell off something in this game (which happened a lot), it was one of those two. Never was I in a situation where a fall took off most of my health, or half of my health. Literally either negligible, or instant death.

World 3, or at least the first level of World 3, takes place in a dark prison. When I say dark, I mean that even with the brightness turned almost all the way up, I managed to fall off the same two ledges about four or five times as I stumbled around trying to figure out where to go, because I couldn't see them, or remember where they were. Which, that second one is totally on me, but I am less forgiving on those holes even being there in the first place. There's also several really tight corridors that are also stairs, and I got lost several times trying to navigate those. I got really frustrated working my way through that part of the game. The second part of World 3 was certainly a lot more wide open, but it was pretty dark and hard to see in a few spots. Not as bad, though.

World 4 actually may have been the most frustrating. It definitely was in terms of combat. That's partly because it has some legitimately tough enemies, and partly because of those giant flying stingrays that just shoot spikes at you for no reason. That's especially annoying when you're on a narrow ledge with a wall on one side, instant falling death on the other, and a metal skeleton rolling at you from the front. I didn't actually die in this particular spot much (and when I did, it was because I fell off), but the grim reaper looking necromancers that summon the endless ghosts got me a few times. They do a lot of damage.

They also drop a lot of souls, as do the metal skeletons. When I play these games, I tend to go back to level once I have enough souls to level up. I went to World 4 pretty early in the game, because I knew that was the location of the sword that scales to magic, because my brain refused to lose that knowledge after I watched Brad play the game. I was already playing a Royal, and I wanted to do a mostly magic based class, because I hadn't done that before in a Souls game. So, I wanted the sword that scaled to magic because I still wanted to be able to use a sword when I needed a sword.

But, as I was starting to get at before I lost track, the amount of Souls that I got in that World meant I leveled a lot. By the end of the game I was level 82. And my final playtime was 18 hours and 9 minutes. Or, at least that's what it said after I spent a couple minutes poking around in the Nexus in New Game Plus before backing out to the main menu to check my playtime. And while I didn't literally put all of my points into Intelligence and Magic, I put almost all of them into Intelligence and Magic. I leveled Vitality a bit to get more health, and I put some points into Strength and Dexterity to use stuff like a shield that blocked all physical damage, and a bow.

Not that I really used the shield, or the bow very much. The bow didn't end up being useful because there weren't a ton of situations in which I felt like I needed to snipe enemies from afar, and my arrows never did enough damage to be useful against the dragons in World 1. The shield, meanwhile, I just didn't need very often. Since I was playing a magic character, I didn't really level up my ability to wear armor without fat rolling, so I just wore light armor the entire time, and got better at dodging. Don't get me wrong, I totally did use the shield, and it saved me from death several times. But I didn't use it as much as I did in the Dark Souls games. And later in Demon's Souls, I got a spell that I used to give my defense a big buff, so I ended up using that during a lot of boss fights, and regular fights.

It turns out, magic is kind of overpowered in Demon's Souls. With my magic focused (probably over leveled) build, I was able to steamroll my way through the game. The only bosses that I died on were the Dragon King and the Maneaters. I died on the Dragon King because that's a "puzzle boss" in which I was fighting against the environment, and I died against the Maneaters because I rolled off the edge about 10 seconds into the fight. The next time I was very careful with the edges, and got through without a hitch.

Literally every other boss in the game, I beat on my first try. I kept my distance and used magic to do most of the damage. If I took enough damage that I needed to heal, I put some extra distance between myself and the boss and I healed. Same thing if I was running low on MP. Some of the bosses I used my sword as much as I did the magic, like the final boss (well, the boss at the end of World 1, rather), but the magic was my main means of attack. Why risk taking more damage when I can just shoot fireballs at them from afar?

I should add that I spent most of the game using both the Regenerator's Ring and the Fragrant Ring. The former regenerates health (at a rate way faster than I expected) and the latter regenerates MP (at a much slower rate). I also spent way more of this game human than I did in the Dark Souls games, because I feared being invaded far less. I actually was invaded once, but I fell off something and died (accidentally) before I could meet the invader.

Now, was this character build overpowered? Sure seems like it. Was I expecting it to be as powerful as it was? No. Granted, I did make kind of a "glass cannon" character, in that I did a ton of damage, but couldn't take much without dying (well, I had decent health, but low defense). But like I said earlier, I just used that spell to buff my defense, at which point I was WAY more survivable. To the point where I think it was kinda unbalanced. I now see why the changes made to the magic system in Dark Souls were made. Namely, that instead of a pool of MP that all spells use, each spell has a limited number of uses, which is really limited for the more powerful ones. There are items that restore it, but I never played a mostly magic build in those games, so that wasn't something I have a ton of experience with.

And that was my experience with most of Demon's Souls. Breezing through most enemy encounters, falling off a lot of things, and getting really frustrated with the level design. It's a good thing that I didn't have more trouble with the bosses, because the run up to some of them is absurd. There's no shortcuts in some of the levels. Sure, you CAN kill the dragon in 1-4 to make that run up easier, but when I tried, I ended up running out of magic, out of MP restoring items, and the helpful NPC that was distracting the dragon died. Now, to be fair, a lot of that was my fault for missing with a lot of my spells. Conversely, the camera, lock-on, and spell aiming (or lack thereof) made hitting the dang thing way harder than it should have. Which, I guess is the point because they don't want you to kill the dragon, but that doesn't necessarily make that good design. Same goes for 4-2, no shortcut (at least not that I found), and you have to navigate stingrays, narrow walkways, skeletons, ghosts, necromancers, INVISIBLE ENEMIES, and eventually slugs to get to the boss.

Oddly enough, World 5, The Valley of Defilement, was far from the most frustrating part of the game for me. Granted, part of that was because I saved it for last (not counting the last couple parts of World 1, because I wanted something decent to end the game on), so I was definitely over leveled for the first part. And even the second part, the giant poison bog, wasn't that bad. I did die once, but that was because I forgot I couldn't roll whilst in the bog. After that I just was a little more careful, and made my way through. I did open the shortcut, in the event that I died to the boss, but I didn't, and I moved on.

Don't get me wrong though, as frustrated as I did get with the game, there were things about it that I liked. The music is often really weird in a way that I think is great. A lot of the design, both of the enemies, and the look of the world, is really interesting. As annoying and awful as those flying stingrays are, the idea of an area surrounded by giant flying stingrays is rad. Those Cthulhu looking guys with the robes that cast spells might be annoying to fight in tight corridors, but they look cool. A lot of the bosses are pretty interesting too. One of them is a big fat knight with an enormous tongue and a bird on its head. There's that one boss that's the extra giant stingray, and you can use that special sword to attack it. That's really cool! I probably could have used my spells to take that one down too, but I wanted to use that sword for that one because that's the only part of the game where you can do that, and that's cool.

So, I'm a little conflicted about this game. As easy as it was, I did still enjoy a lot of the combat. I may have beaten most of the bosses on my first attempt, but that doesn't mean some of them weren't at least a little close, in spots, and that I didn't have fun fighting them. And like I said, I like the artistic design stuff in the game. And, I have to keep in mind that this is an older game now, and that of course aspects of it aren't going to have aged well when it's been iterated on since then.

That said, I'd be lying if I didn't say I was disappointed in the game. I didn't enjoy large swaths of it, but I am glad that I played it, if only because I can now honestly say that I played it. Plus, it was only $5, and only took me 18 hours, so it's not like I wasted a large amount of my (worthless) time. Though, even though it only took 18 hours, it felt like it took a LOT longer than that, and not in a good way.

That's Demon's Souls. I don't want to ever play it again in my life, which I think says a lot. I still think it's worth playing, though, because there's good stuff in there. There's tons of people out there that love this game, and still like it more than the Dark Souls games, and more than Bloodborne. And good for them. Maybe I'd think more along their lines if I had played this game in 2009, before those other games existed. Or maybe I would have gotten so frustrated that I would have quit, and stayed away from Dark Souls. There's no way to know. And, really, it doesn't matter.

But if you are going to play the game, maybe diversify your points a little more than I did, to make it a bit more challenging for you. Or not, and just magic your way through it. No amount of different builds are going to improve those poorly made levels.

Metal...Gear...Quest?

As mentioned earlier, I also bought MGS2 HD, and MGS3 HD. Which means that I finally own every main entry in the Metal Gear series. Now, to be clear, the only one I didn't own before was MGS2, and that's because I borrowed it from a friend. I own MGS3 Subsistence on PS2. But it was only recently that I acquired a code for MGS1/VR Missions on PS1 (thanks rmanthorp! :D), as before then all I owned was the (obviously superior) Twin Snakes on GameCube. And it got me thinking...

Maybe I should play all the Metal Gear games this year. In order. Then I realized that I didn't want to play Portable Ops again, partly because I don't want to use my PSP ever again, and partly because Portable Ops is not a great game. Then I remembered that the AC!D games exist, and decided to continue never having played them. Also, those are side games that aren't canon, and shouldn't factor into playing all the main ones, which was the real goal anyway.

And thus, Metal Gear Quest was born. I will play all of the Metal Gear games, in order of release, this year. And write something about them. Now, for those wanting more clarification, here is the order in which I'm going to play them:

1. Metal Gear (played about 40 minutes of it years ago).

2. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (never touched).

3. Metal Gear Solid/The VR Missions (because Ross gave it to me, so I might as well).

4. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.

5. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty HD.

6. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater HD.

7. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

8. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD.

9. Metal Gear Rising: REVENGEANCE.

10. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.

11. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Now, a couple things about this. Yes, I know, VR Missions is a side thing. I'm not committing to completing every VR Mission in it, just enough to get a feel for it. And as much as I WANT to finish MG and MG2, I also feel like I should keep an out clause for if I get too frustrated with those games, given that they are hella old, and I have a proven track record of being terrible at games of that era.

And yes, I know Twin Snakes came out after MGS2. I want to replay that before MGS2 because I want to do that before I get to the HD remake stuff. I don't want to go from HD 60 frames per second to 480i 30-ish frames per second. And yes, before you make a fuss, I am going to replay Twin Snakes too. If you don't like Twin Snakes, that's fine. If you prefer the original, that's fine too. Twin Snakes was the first MGS game I played, and it's a very important game to me. It informed a lot of my teen years, in terms of interests and whatnot. And after watching Metal Gear Scanlon, and listening to the voice acting of the original, I can assure you that I prefer the (more consistant) voice acting of Twin Snakes. But, I've gotten off topic (but please don't harass me in the comments about it, I don't want to get into arguments where no one is going to be swayed either way).

Yes, I know REVENGEANCE is also a side game. I just love that game and want and excuse to play it again.

And, of course, I will have to wait until September 1^st to play The Phantom Pain. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably have seen that I've been counting the days to it every day, with my #WakeMeUpWhenSeptemberBegins hashtag. Yes, based on a bad reference to a song I don't like from a band I'm not especially enamored with.

Honestly, I'm both excited, and a little nervous about it. A couple of these games are some of my favorite games of all time. I'm also really worried that they won't hold up very well. Or that some were never great to play in the first place. I never enjoyed playing MGS2 back in the day. And I'm worried that, having never played MGS1 (beyond that flashback in MGS4), I'll flounder my way through it just like Drew did.

And that brings me to my next thing...difficulty. See, I kind of only ever played Twin Snakes and MGS2 on easy. I played MGS3 on normal, and ever since then I've done at least normal (with occasion bouts of hard on subsequent playthroughs), but I'm wondering what I should do here. Should I go the easy route, and lessen my frustration, or just go for it on normal? Really, the thing stopping me from just playing on easy is that Drew was able to get through MGS1 and MGS2 on normal, and he had never played any of these games before. But again, he also floundered his way through them, and I don't want to flounder.

I dunno. I reserve the right to start over on easy should I start on normal, and get too frustrated, but hopefully it won't come to that. If you want to try to sway me one way or the other, feel free to. I dunno when I'll actually start on Metal Gear Quest, but probably soon-ish. This isn't something that I want to do all of them back to back, or something. Just more of a, "there's nothing new right now, so I'll go play some Metal Gear" thing. Which means it'll be on hold once The Witcher III is out, and who knows after that.

I am excited though. It's my favorite series, and I'm hoping that playing them all within a year will give me some new insights or something. I dunno, I'm hoping to have something to write about them for this blog. Otherwise I wouldn't have written so much about it here. Now I have to file this under general discussion instead of just the Demon's Souls page, because too much of this isn't Demon's Souls! I know, thrilling blog writing, here.

But that's it. Nothing else has been going on in my video gaming, aside from the occasional race in Mario Kart 8. I'm still looking forward to The Witcher III, and I'll play this month's PS+ games, though none of those really caught my interest. But hopefully I'll be proven wrong and at least one of them will be rad!

Thanks for reading!

For MG and MG2, use a walkthrough. There's zero shame in it. MG is flat-out broken in a few parts (for instance, a vital Codec frequency is never actually given to you) and MG2, among other things, requires a tap-code chart that only appears in the manual. Also, keep a few saves with MG. It's unfortunately entirely possible to move the game into an un-winnable state if you kill a hostage or two. Both these games are all but unbeatable without using a walkthrough at least a couple of times.

It's good to play them for the Metal Gear lore, though, and I highly recommend it (especially before playing MGS1, as there is a scene in that game that will have much more impact if you play the MSX games... plus you'll notice all the cool ways in which MGS1 is kind of like a MG2 remake).

As for difficulties, play them all on Normal. MGS1 is the hardest game on Normal--you'll die quite a few times--but it's also fairly short, so you'll get through it, and Easy is cheating yourself a bit. MGS3 is probably better on Hard (you can cheap the game in full-Alert mode on Normal because Snake soaks up machine-gun damage like a sponge, without even getting knocked down) but is still good on Normal. Since you've played MGS4 before, you could also do Big Boss Hard for that one.

Always read the manuals before playing. If you don't know all the controls from the get-go, the experience is a lot crappier. (See: Metal Gear Scanlon.)

HELL YEAH MGQ! You are 100% welcome for the code. I'm actually on my own personal MGQ after buying Legacy but I probably won't be writing about them a whole lot. Right now I've smashed through MGS1 and still LOVE it (it might be my favourite...) and now few hours in MGS2.

I'm hoping to get to MGS4 before Drew & Dan because my dark secret is that I've never actually played it all! I've only caught bits and pieces and I'm actually unaware of a lot of the story. I'm VERY excited to get there.

In my mind Demon's Souls is my favourite of the "Souls" and Bloodborne is my favourite game in that style. That may be because I played that game when it was released and nobody knew anything. It was just fresh in a way that Bloodborne also felt to me. Every criticism you've leveled is pretty accurate if I think about Demon's Souls objectively, but it holds a special place is my heart as the first game that legitimately made me feel scared to play it. Horror games can scare you in a moment, or over a short period of time, but Demon's Souls created a sense of dread that I had never experienced before. In a way I think that's unique to everyone's first Souls game. Demon's was my first so it stands out. Dark Souls is definitely better, but it doesn't occupy the same place in my memory.

So wait, I'm confused. Are you playing both MGS1 and Twin Snakes? Or just MGS1 VR missions?

Also, I'd recommend playing the MSX games on easy, especially if this is essentially your first time playing them. They do not hold your hand at all; so I also recommend keeping a walkthrough handy, as you will probably get stuck/lost if you just do a blind playthrough.

I only ever watched Brad and Patrick beat the final boss in Demon Souls. It just looks like an older version of Dark Souls to me. Recently I got Dark Souls 1 on PC, but couldn't beat the demon you come across after falling through the floor when you revisit the beginning area. So I don't think the souls games are for me. I do like watching people play them though.

@rmanthorp: You're certainly in for something special with the ending of MGS4! Just last year I had a friend over who hadn't finished the game before, and we had a pizza and I watched him finish the game. That was a fun time because the end of MGS4 is the most MGS thing possible. I know a lot of people hate it, but I love the ending, partly because so many people don't like it, but also because it's the best.

Have fun! You should have plenty of time, because I don't expect they'll get around to MGScanlon 4 until July. Definitely post E3, and I reckon it'll take at least a month post E3 before Dan can convince them to start up the MGScanlon train again.

@impartialgecko Yeah, totally. Dark Souls 1 still holds a special place in my mind since it was the first one I played. I've definitely felt that dread in the other games, so I know what you're talking about.

@redfox742 Yeah, I'll probably stick with normal, maybe bump it up to Hard for MGS3. I have played MGS4 on hard before, and it was definitely harder.

Demons Souls is great I think its my second favorite of the lineage of "Souls" games. My favorite being DSII. I remember grinding for pure blade stones and listening to a LOT of Lady Gaga's first album while doing so.

The Tower of Latria is the best area in all of the Souls games and you, sir, are a crazy man for thinking otherwise.

There's a lack of acid in your Metal Gear; I'd argue with that much Metal Gear you might as well go for broke and do every Metal Gear game within a year - that would indeed be impressive. Aside from that I wish you luck and look forward to your future blogs / writings / ramblings.

In contrast to you, I really liked that first part of World 3 in Demon's, maybe more than any other part of the game. I'd heard about those Octo-dudes with the bells before, so I was constantly tense throughout that whole area-- and it didn't help that I was decent enough at the game to spend an hour running around without dying, so that initial tension was never broken until I finally died without progressing to the next area. Bloodborne did that a lot for me too, which is probably why I love it so much. I hate horror games, but for some reason I'm totally into games that make you feel a constant dread.

I did a similar MGS thing back when Rising was still new, just without the MSX games and Twin Snakes. I think MGS1 is totally fine on Normal, except for a few select parts (that final driving sequence really hurt), and the same goes for MGS2. The biggest difference you'll find is that bosses take more hits. Also, if Drew can get through them on Normal I'm sure you can ;)

MGS4 totally has the best ending! I actually thought the "cop-out" Epilogue was way more in line with the themes of the first game (it echoes a lot of Naomi's ending ramble of MGS1 about choosing to live and escaping fate etc). It sort of came full circle, and I liked where they left Snake's character. The stuff with Big Boss had a bigger impact on me than the fake-out ending anyway. It sort of 1-upped the real ending with a bunch of Metal Gear goodness. Also, dat final boss.

A big problem with Demon's Souls is that magic is overpowered and royal/regenerating MP is basically an easy mode, that triviallzes a lot of the encounters in the game. I'm not saying you're a scrub or something for picking it and going that route, it's the game's fault that the systems are designed that way.

It's a problem that's generally made worse by the perception of the Soul's games being super hard, so people naturally gravitate towards the best starter class to make things easier. Since this is without a doubt royal, lots of players end up playing a class where they can "cheese" most of the game. Dark Souls fixed a lot of these problems and is a better game imo. Still love DeS though, the atmosphere alone is amazing.

I had started my own MG Quest recently but feel like playing all the games on easy as i want to catch up on the story before Drew starts MGS4.

If nothing else, playing through MGS 4 last year and watching Drew Scanlon's own personal Metal Gear Quest has made me not want to go back and play those games for a long time.

I had a similar experience with Demon's Souls when I played through most of it last year, though I used the *slightly less* overpowered Magician class instead of the Royal. Maybe it was the part where I had played through two other games like it already, or the little quirks and issues that were ironed out of later installments, but it never really clicked for me the same way Dark Souls did. If I played the game in 2009 I'm sure I would have loved it, so I imagine this is an issue entirely related to outside context because the game itself is still very well made.

Dark Souls was way more egregious with its use of tiny-walkway-above-instant-death-pits than Demon's Souls. It was my biggest complaint with the game. I thought Demon's Souls used them sparingly and effectively. Dark Souls dedicated entire areas to the theme.

Magic is OP as hell in Demon's Souls. Warding like halves physical damage but doesn't slow you at all. There is that one spell that actually let's you ignore a death inflicting hit. The weapon enchants are FAR more powerful than the enchant spells from the other games. Also those cheaper laser spells like homing soul arrow are OP as crap. The game also has awesome stackables though, like stacking a regen ring, the adjudicator shield (can't remember name), and a Blessed upgraded weapon all three granting passive hp regen and all three stacking. That said how the hell did you manage to fall in those same two pits that many times? I have only died to them once and I have played through Demon's Souls like 10 times :P

@mooseymcman: Interesting timing for this blog. Ever since Bloodborne came out, I've been thinking about Demon's Souls. I bought the game through PSN before even Dark Souls II was released but never played it. Whenever I had the urge to play it, I ended up playing through Dark Souls instead, leading to me accumulating close to or over 200 hours in that game.

However, with the fact that I have all the achievements for Dark Souls, the Platinum for Dark Souls II and will likely try for the Platinum in Bloodborne, it seems weird to not have Demon's Souls on my resume (even if I don't go for the Platinum.) I've played up to beating the boss of 1-1 and that's basically as far as I've gotten actually playing the game myself, and while I have watched Brad and Vinny's playthrough of it, something in the back of my head keeps telling me to go through it myself. However, after reading your thoughts on it, I'm not so sure anymore...

Neat-o for MGQ! I bought the MGS Collection for PS3 prior to MGS4's release and only got through 1 and barely any progress in 2 before 4 came out. I then jumped straight to 4 and love that game to death for all its weird Kojima-ness and especially that end game. I'm glad for Metal Gear Scanlon as it allowed me to see the story of 2 and 3 without having to play through them myself. I remember trying 3 at a cousin's house: I started the game and walked to the first screen, where I was promptly eaten by an alligator (crocodile?) which caused me to put down the controller and never touch that game again.

I would really like to play through 4 again at some point but I don't have easy access to my physical copy of the game and I have too much stuff I haven't even touched yet to justify, to myself, of buying the game through PSN. I beat GZ and never went through it again, so I'm cool on TPP... I might get it eventually but probably not a "get at launch" like I did with MGS4.

I actually *really* like VR Missions, but I'm one of those weird people who likes how MGS1 plays. Plus it has murder mysteries.

@wchigo: As negative as what I wrote about Demon's Souls is, I still think it's worth playing if you like the other Souls games. It's definitely the shortest one of the bunch too, even if you don't power your way through it like I did (I dunno that I'd recommend playing exactly as I did).

Royal is definitely easy mode for Demon's. But on my most recent platinum trophy run, I went royal. The game hadn't quite perfected the idea of boss runs, so most of the time a boss death meant that you'd have a substantial run to the fog gate and it would probably be a little tough to get around some enemies. The levels themselves are definitely more challenging than the bosses. But it is pretty cool that every boss has a different mechanic, something the other games in the series haven't been able to replicate.

As with most old games that spawned franchises, the originals can be very rough to go back to.

@mooseymcman: Hmm... I have always been curious about it. After all, despite watching the B-V play through, there's still a pretty substantial difference between just being an observer and having the controller in your hands and dictating what is happening on-screen.

Another hurdle, so to speak, is that I don't have my PS3 hooked up. The TV I have access to only has two HDMI ports and currently I have my PS4 and Wii U taking up those slots, so I'd have to unhook my Wii U. That and after getting used to the Dualshock 4, I would rather not have to use the Dualshock 3 again: it was fine at the time, even though I would switch between using the DS3 and 360 controller. However, I have this weird... "bias" towards it now? I can't explain it, it's completely irrational.

@wchigo: Well, I can tell you that I played all of Demon's Souls using my DualShock 4 on the PS3. It's pretty easy to set up. Go into the PS3 menus, and there's an option for managing accessories, or controllers or something. Anyway, in one of those, there's an option to scan for new devices. Get that going, then hold the PS button and the Share button at the same time on the controller for a few seconds, and it should sync up the controller to the PS3. Granted, you'll have to go to the controller settings and set that controller to be controller 1, and you won't have 100% functionality. There's no rumble, no motion controls (not that Demon's Souls has that) and the PS button won't do anything in game, so you'd need to have a DS3 handy for anything that requires that. But as for in game, it works perfectly. The Share button has the same functionality as the Select button.

If my explanation is...lacking, or accidentally incorrect, you can find the information easily online. I should add that this doesn't work for all games (damn you Burnout Paradise), but it works in most PS3 games. And once you sync it to the PS3, it stays synced, so you can hit the PS button to turn the PS3 on (don't ask me why it then doesn't work once the console is on, I don't know). And if you want it re-synced to the PS4, just plug it in via USB and hold the PS button for a few seconds.

Hope that helps!

Demon's Souls is probably easy now after playing 3 other souls games, but at the time it was brutally difficult. Also I thought the level design was pretty outstanding throughout the entire game.

I had a weird experience with DeS after playing DS1 obsessively for months first. Initially, I despised it. I wanted to like it, but everything felt weirdly unbalanced, especially once I reached Flamelurker. Once I beat him though, everything clicked. I got better at dodging and the weird bullshit that annoyed me gradually became less irritating with more playthroughs. I adore it now, and I still think it has the most unique flavor out of all the Souls games. It has a fantasy setting sure, but a unique vibe all its own.

@mooseymcman: True, I do know about that functionality. I remember once watching MANvsGAME on Twitch as he was playing Dark Souls II on PS3 and he was using the DS4, but there was some weirdness to it even aside from the PS button not working. Perhaps it's gotten better now, but the lack of force feedback seems less than ideal as well. It's something I've gotten so used to having that even when playing PC games, I sometimes prefer to use my 360 controller (as blasphemous as that may be) since I get no feedback when using M+KB.

You've given me things to think about. I'll be going on vacation next week to go back home and I'll be away for basically a month, so no rush to do anything as I'm not even sure I'll have enough time to finish Bloodborne prior to leaving. But... I may look into it more after I return... Gah! Decisions, decisions... :p

I still need to play Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes. I've owned them both for quite a while now but something is stopping me from playing them.

As for your experience with DeS, are you going to tell me you did not know the magic build was massively overpowered? Come on Moosey.

This actually brings me to a general point about both the modern MGS games (from MGS2 onwards) and Souls games: The difficulty is what you make of it. Nearly all these games give you options to completely trivialise them. This rings especially true for MGS. You've probably seen me recommend playing on the highest possible difficulty (outside of European Extreme) multiple times on Giant Bomb.

Play Acid. Especially the second one.

I still haven finished bloodborne but have started on demon souls again (Imported a US copy never expecting it to be released in europe and only did 1-1 and 2-1 when the game and remember stopping at the cthulu guys in latria) and now I've beaten all the ...-1 worlds and so far it really is a cakewalk? I died 3 times in total so far(fell one time in 1-1, phalanx defeated me once haha and the adjudicator) and I even almost beat the first guy you are supposed to die to..Its funny how to a lot of people bloodborne is easier. Playing both at the same time, to me at least, bloodborne is waaaaay harder. My reflexes arent that good and it really shows with bloodborne, I pretty much always know what to do after facing a boss for the second time but it then takes me another 10 tries to actually be able to do it. Demon souls bosses seem really easy so far, a boss attacks are slower and more clearly telegraphed and as soon as you figure out the trick its done. Also had 0 difficulty with the levels so far...but who knows, it may get drastically harder further on.

I've also gone back to dark souls II for a bit and got my ass handed to me immediately by everything though. And people said that one was also too easy compared to the previous ones? Demon souls seems by far the easiest to me.... I might also be enjoying it more than bloodborne. Even though i'd say bloodborne is definitely a "better" game and has a better atmosphere, I'm having more fun playing through demons souls

@mooseymcman: good luck duder I played mgs2 this year and wanna play mgs3 before the years over mgs2 was fantastic