Search
Search
Sign on Options
Theme: [Light Selected] To Dark»
27Dec 12

Thought of the Day: Gaming, 27 Dec 12

Issues that annoy me in Dark Souls:

Dark Souls

I mentioned last time how this game reminded me of a very old school RPG experience, what with its lack of in-game reloads. Here's another one: There is no pause button. Think I'm kidding? I'm not. Due to this game's "you're always online playing a mostly single player game" nature, you can't pause it. If you get a phone call or have to run to an elementary school to stop a shooting, you're only option is to quit the game. And keep an eye on your controller's batteries. If they go out, you're screwed.

More old school "fun" in Dark Souls: Nothing is obvious in this game. How do you cast spells? You buy a spell, select it, and press the "cast" button, right? No, dear reader, not at all. You cast spells by following these steps:

  1. Buy the spell.
  2. Buy a talisman.
  3. Go to a bonfire (rest area) and "attune" the spell.
  4. Assign the talisman to either your left or right hand.
  5. Select the talisman (instead of your sword, shield, or whatever).
  6. Press RB or LB to use the talisman in your right or left hand, respectively.

Real obvious, right? Right, but making this better: None of this is in the manual. Let me repeat that: None of this is in the manual. What does the manual say instead? Nothing. Magic is not mentioned anywhere in the manual. When I said the other day that Dark Souls was a Wikia game, boy howdy was I correct. Other than possessing that nice new videogame smell, the manual is completely useless.

The voice acting in this game is terrible, laughably bad. Reader, we could get together, write better dialogue, and record better voice samples than From Software did for this game. As you know if you read my publication here, the other game I'm playing currently is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Deus Ex has BioWare-level voice acting, so the effect of moving from that kind of quality to Dark Souls is quite jarring.

Not only is the voice acting bad, but the script is poorly written. A guy just said to me "I can share some spells with you if you'd like...unless you find magic unsavory that is." The game prompts "How do you respond?" with the options "Yes or No." Okay...am I answering to "Can I share some spells?" or "Do you find magic unsavory?" The two previous times this has come up, I picked "Yes" to get what the NPC had to offer. "Yes" is a positive response, so I just assumed that was the right choice. But no, of course not. In this case, I was actually saying "Yes, I find magic unsavory." WTF?? Again, this is the sort of ambiguity I've not seen in any RPG developed in the last 15 years.

My final complaint is the lack of story. Again, back to this being an old school RPG, the "story" here is the minimum you can have in a game and it even be called a story: The protagonist has an end goal that he wants to achieve that in some way relates to the human condition. Your character experiences no development, at least not that I've seen 50 hours into the game. NPCs are few and far between, and as I've already mentioned, are incredibly shallow. There are next to no meaningful choices to be made that affect yourself or the people around you. The few choices that are present are not obvious. Let me say it again: Nothing in this game is obvious. There are a couple people who you can help and then gain assistance from later, but it's extremely easy to miss these opportunities. There is no quest log in this game. There is no automap. There are no hints in any form as to where NPCs are located. I've already found by reading a Wiki that I could have rescued a knight earlier in the game who would help me later on. I didn't even see him. As if the lack of hints weren't enough, half the NPCs aren't even in plain sight; they're literally in areas you would think of as "secret." Finally, there are factions in this game, but again, nothing is obvious. I joined my first one by accident, and from what I can tell, it has absolutely no effect on anything. Since then I've joined two others. There are no questlines associated with these factions. At best, they open up a new merchant.

Ultimately though, this lack of story is the least of my complaints. Story is not what this game is about. This game is about the gameplay and the RPG elements (e.g., the grind). Frankly, I'd rather a game just ignore the story than make a hackneyed one like in Wolfenstein and waste my time. The game certainly could use some more direction however. After all this complaining, tune in next time, and I'll tell you what I actually like about Dark Souls.

Post Script: There are some stability issues with this game. Dark Souls has crashed twice on me in about 50 hours. Admittedly, that's not much, but considering I've recently played three games from start to finish without a single crash, I think it's worth mentioning.

5 comments
  Livefyre
Newest | Oldest
Ovirew
Ovirew

Usually the last thing someone says to you is what you respond to, so the response issue might be forgivable, though I can see where you get confused because it seemed like your response was pretty vague.

 

I tend to like and dislike games that lack direction.  On the one hand, you can figure it out for yourself and it can be rewarding when you do.  On the other hand, you have to rely on other people to give you a cheat sheet or nudge you in the right direction, and it's just plain baffling to begin with.  I liked the lack of direction in Minecraft, but I'm not so sure I'd like it in this sort of game.  If they actually give you some direction, sometimes that actually makes you less likely to rely on outside sources to complete the game after all!

 

Voice acting, I've found, is kind of in the eye of the beholder.  That goes for story too, I guess.  I know people who have said negative things about stories and acting that I've liked, and I've said negative things about stories and acting other people have raved over.  I guess you just have to liken it to a preference thing and move on, because it's something not everyone can really agree on.

kfjl
kfjl like.author.displayName 1 Like

One thing about the Souls games is they are designed in a way that encourage players to help one another. When you say nothing in the game is obvious, it is done that way on purpose so that players will leave hints for other players to help find those hidden things and benefit from leaving those hints. Demon's Souls did a better job at it, but I wonder if maybe because you are playing it a year after it came out, there aren't as many people online to leave hints. If hints aren't being left (or if you're playing offline), then yeah, chances are you're not going to find some of those things without a wiki. Some of your criticisms are true though; for instance your difficulty in finding out how to use spells was the same thing in Demon's Souls. I didn't read the instructions for Dark Souls but apparently they didn't improve the help in that area.

 

Also, no pause is annoying, although you don't always have to quit. I think for the most part fires are safe spots with maybe one exception I can think of, and if you are able to get to one you can just stay there unless you are leaving yourself open to attack from another player. But yeah if something unavoidable comes up and you aren't around a fire, you're pretty much going to have to quit or hope that nothing attacks you while you're away.

 

The game is not a 9.5 in my mind though, no way. I liked the game but in the end, the list of issues I had with it was way too long for give above an 8.0. I didn't read the GS review to see what case they made for the score, but the score alone makes it seem like maybe a little fanboyism might have been in play there.

Palantas
Palantas

 @kfjl

There are hints all over the place.  They're (sometimes) helpful for finding secrets, but there are some basic things that you expect in an RPG that this game doesn't have: A map, a quest log, a manual that's not worthless.  I think some modern games make everything too simple, like with compass waypoints that tell you precisely where to go.  Dark Souls has the opposite problem, where you need a pad of paper to remind you what people said so that you have some notion of what you're supposed to be doing.  That was fine for RPGs in 1990, but it's unacceptable today.

 

I often find myself staying at bonfires while I go in the other room or check the Dark Souls wiki.

 

I don't know what was up with the GameSpot score.  I watched the video review, and as I recall, it didn't mention any of these issues.  The only complaint I remember was the difficulty, and frankly, I haven't found this game to be all that difficult, provided you're careful and patient.

iowastate
iowastate ranger

 

hate to say it but you make Dark Souls sound as tempting as Two Worlds  lolz

 

both games do have die hard fans though.

I played some Two Worlds awhile back and thought it to be something like a poor mans Oblivion - sorta the inbred Elder Scrolls: Ozark/Appalachian version.

    you can go to any house and use any chest to store your items or take anything if you want it for yourself.

 

Palantas
Palantas

 @iowastate

 Two Worlds was abysmal, I think.  On the other hand, I think Dark Souls is better than Oblivion.  There are two key components that make Dark Souls good: A.) The gameplay, and B.) The RPG mechanics.

 

Going around killing things is challenging and fun in Dark Souls, and that's what you spend most of your time doing.  There are a lot of different types of monsters, and they all have different attacks and powers.  It's fun learning how to fight new critters.  This is in contrast to Oblivion where every single f*cking fight was identical.

 

Also, Dark Souls gives you a good sense of progression.  Monsters that were challenging to nearly impossible (the skeletons in the high level area I accidentally accessed at the start of the game) are a cake walk now.  That's good; that's how an RPG is supposed to make you feel.  Again, constrast that to Oblivion.  It's nice to play a console game that has no scaling whatsoever.

 

The graphics are also nice, but those two items above are the main reasons why I'm sticking with the game.  I give it around a 7.5/10 or 8/10; somewhere in there.  I don't know what GameSpot was thinking giving it a 9.5/10, making it one of the highest rated 360 games ever.  :roll:  An 8/10 from me is very good.  I haven't actually written any reviews in a while, but I've become much more critical of games in the last couple years.

Conversation powered by Livefyre

My Recent Ratings

Title Score
Too Human 7.0
Star Wars: X-Wing 8.5
Star Wars: TIE Fighter 9.5
Halo 3: ODST 8.0
Quake 4 7.5
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 9.0
Unreal Gold 9.5
Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali 7.0
Unreal Tournament 9.5
Starcraft 9.5