Dark Souls Preview

Eurogamer is the last to give the preview treatment to From Software’s action RPG, remarking on the game’s unforgiving difficulty and its enhancements when compared to Demon’s Souls.

The RPG elements have been expanded, with far more customisation options for your character and class, while a new Beacon system adds to the online stuff a bit, You can now create little caches of helpful trinkets to aid other players, just like when mountain climbers leave Mars bars at the top of K-2.

Beyond that, though, it’s just good to be back in this brilliantly horrible world. Watching the team demo the latest build, something crucial about the design of the Souls games finally clicks into place: something you could easily miss if you’ve just had a friend describe it to you, or have poked through only a handful of the first instalment’s levels.

Dark Souls’ developers laugh as they play through the game they’re busy making, and the semi-circle of games hacks gathered around them laughs, too. You might not equate this particular bloodbath with humour, but as you see these mechanics through the eyes of people who really understand them watching as they struggle with unforgiving set-pieces and design choices they implemented you start to see a rich seam of mischief lurking beneath the crust. It’s a black comedy of grisly excess at times, and the big jokes all revolve around dying.