3261

I find it interesting that he didn’t realize that first boss was beatable. I know some people who beat it on the first try and then were concerned they’d done something wrong when they got killed by the boss after that.

3262

I think it’s indicative of the mindset with which he approached the game, yeah. I think he was expecting to be shackled by the same rules most games operate under, and it never occured to him that Demons Soul’s doesn’t work that way.

3263

This is a joke, right? Tell me you don’t need to spend more than three or four whole goddamn hours before you are able to tell if a game is good or shite. Please.

3264

To Yahtzee’s credit, I don’t think he called the game bad. He made fun of it and said it was so ridiculously hard, he couldn’t be bothered.

3265

I’d love to (in that thread), if you could describe your experiences with the game in a little detail. There’s a lot of that ground already covered in that thread (by me, even, and those who were the early early early adopters who brought it to our attention in the first place), and I’m assuming you don’t have something exactly equal to Yahtzee’s view of it. Although that’s fine too, if you want to start from there.

3266

I’m not sure that’s to his credit, but it definitely could have been worse.

3267

It is me, but was there no funny this week? I’m seeing a trend in ZP I’ve seen in satire columns before (and, well, kinda experienced first hand from the writing side): as they go on they get less funny and more bitter.

3268

It’s possible. I haven’t found the last three weeks or so all that funny either. But in the second week of November he did the funniest one he’s ever done, plus he’s had his ups and downs before.

3269

Yahtzee is clearly a bit beholden to his material and suffers in weeks where he’s working with something (like Demon’s Souls or any given Mario game) that he’s not personally enthused about.

The gems are the reviews where he plays the game quite thoroughly and then presents a complete five-minute thesis on why it blows or doesn’t blow. That’s what I loved about Uncharted 2, anyway.

3270

Forget demon souls, you want a challenge? Go play Into The Eagle’s Nest.

3271

You seriously think you can develop a firm and valid opinion on the quality of an entire game based on its tutorial? That’s what Yahtzee played - the tutorial.

3272

We don’t want a firm and valid opinion from Yahtzee. We want ten minutes of funny ranting.

3273

Yahtzee has set a standard of providing well argued positions from pretty much the start of his reviews. They aren’t just funny because he’s making crude puns with some aussie/english hybrid accent or whatever, it’s that he’s making credible observations at the same time.

The question I have for people who’ve played Demon’s Souls is Yahtzee accurately representing the game’s overall difficulty and tendency to punish the player? If so, the review seems pretty valid. He just told the game to fuck off rather play something he doesn’t like (but he should have made it clear that the tutorial turned him off so much he couldn’t go on).

3274

I thought he made it pretty clear he made it through the tutorial and then through the first level. Unless I missed something and the tutorial isn’t really a tutorial and the first level is really the tutorial.

3275

You’re not missing anything. He not only finished both the tutorial and the first level, he also got the end of the second level. I guess we have to apply Demon’s Souls fanboi definitions here: “Tutorial” is whatever portion of the game someone has finished who doesn’t like the game!

Really, you’d think playing a punishingly hard game would toughen you people up a bit. But all the earlier, overly kindly reviews apparently just reinforced the Stockholm syndrome. Stop whining already because Yahtzee treated your darling game precisely the same way as he treats all other games! I’d rather expect that many of those who got hyped into playing the game had exactly the same experience: play a few levels, die a lot, and quit in frustration. And guess what, there’s nobody to blame for that but the game designers who couldn’t be bothered to provide any modern amenities like difficulty levels or save points.

3276

Usually (not always) he has something interesting to say about the games he covers. This time he pretty much just listed the things that happened when he played and swore some. I actually hoped he would have flattened the game in his usual insightful way. I guess he did not play it long enough to generate any meaningful ideas. It was a disappointing show and that has nothing to do with whether he liked the game or not.

I’d rather expect that many of those who got hyped into playing the game had exactly the same experience: play a few levels, die a lot, and quit in frustration. And guess what, there’s nobody to blame for that but the game designers who couldn’t be bothered to provide any modern amenities like difficulty levels or save points.
Demon’s Souls deliberately does not work like that. The levels are puzzles. They don’t take long to solve once you have your strategy and tactics down. Savepoints aren’t very necessary because you can run through the whole level pretty fast when you know what you are doing. Also, succeeding is not down to precision jumping or repeated split-second timing of melee counters like in Super Mario Brothers or Ninja Gaiden. The timing needed is pretty forgiving.

The game is more of a strategy/tactical combat game than a twitch game. You don’t save after each move in a puzzle game. You learn how to solve the problem and then you just apply that knowledge through the whole level.

You automatically learn this if you persist with the game enough to get out of the quicksave / healing breather programming FPSs have foisted on you. Croshaw didn’t and it’s disappointing because he is smarter than that.

It’s totally understandable, though. It takes quite some time to get to grips with the game and it’s a brutally jarring experience after most modern games. It seems not very friendly at all to the player for a long time (it actually is once you get over minding the constant deaths) and even less so for reviewers on a tight schedule.

And hey, it’s totally ok to not like Demon’s Souls. It’s an acquired taste like Habanero or blue cheese. It’s not for everyone.

3277

Yahtzee really makes the game sound a lot harder than it is. For the record, Demon’s Souls players tend to consider 1-1 a tutorial because the game won’t let you level up or enter any other level until after you’ve beaten it. As you get more powerful in Demon’s Souls, the game becomes much easier.

Since Yahtzee never completed a level besides 1-1, it’s not clear if he ever leveled up or got better equipment than the starting stuff. He certainly never summoned allies to help him during a level since he neglects to mention that as an option.

He also clearly never explored the game-- you don’t have to enter 1-2 after 1-1. I mean, you can, but you can also go visit 2-1, 3-1, and 4-1-- which have their own challenges, but nothing as daunting as the dragon. In fact, the dragon is daunting you for the very good reason that 1-2 is not a good place to be right after 1-1 unless you’ve done a ton of grinding.

3278

Yes, he didn’t explore the game because he found it too hard. Is there something magic about a particular hour in games that they get easier at? If not, why is he supposed to have realised this?

3279

You seem to have imagined that I said, “Yahtzee was wrong to stop playing.”

No, it’s fine that stopped playing. As a consequence, though, his review misrepresents the game’s difficulty curve. He does not mention numerous features that are there to make the game easier.

For instance, that boss he swore was an instant kill in the tutorial? No, you can beat it. He just didn’t figure out how to do it. Even if he presents that in a very funny way, his statement about the game is still a misrepresentation.

3280

I guess the developers shouldn’t have called it 1-2 then, eh?