Dark Souls - Hands-on @ RPS, Eurogamer
 

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has gone hands-on with the PC version of Dark Souls. For the fans desperate to play it on their preferred platform, it's Dark Souls on the PC. For those dubious about the quality of the port, be prepared to have your fears justified:
Eurogamer also has a preview up, with some differences in the detail of their experience:
More information.

Another article on the same preview with more on the technical details:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20…devils-bargain

This sounds good to me as I am not too much bothered about graphics if the gameplay and game mechanics are superiour.

Edit: oops, didn't see the 2nd half of Dhruin's post which is the same Eurogamer article.

If I understand correctly the PC version is not exactly a bad port, it suffer from the same technically problem as the console version did. Including framerate locking.

I guess we should call it a fairness?

The eurogamer reporter did not notice the severe framerate drops that were in the console version which is a bonus. Plus we get more content - I really can't ask for more. I just need to prepare to die!

I played this on the PS3, was waiting to play it again on the PC, but if I have to play online or sign into some silly service to play it, I'll take a pass. Good game, but I'm not jumping hoops just to play it again.


-Carn

I just hope the pc controls are at least decent. There was some talk that it will not have full keyboard & mouse support, which I've no idea what that could mean. Either a game has support or it doesn't. Maybe they mean it will have bad support. But that will break the game for me. I'm not buying it to play with a controlller.

From what I have read and from the game manual (which you can find in Steam), there is mouse and keyboard support with re-definable keys. Nevertheless they say that the game is designed for a gamepad. By this I think that they mean the movement and action keys are better and more naturally excuted on gamepad, not that the mouse and keyboard support is poor. We just to have wait and see.

I have not played it on console. Is it really that difficult as they say? or only console gamer difficult (want to button mash and reach god stats in few hours).

Also can you compare it to PC game that we are familiar with (in terms of combat and action adventure tactics)?

Thanks Carn.

Runs at 1024x720 internally?? LOL what!!!!!

Looking at the Steam page, the game only requires 4GB of hard disk space, so this resolution (same as consoles) is not surprising.

Resolution has absolutely nothing to do with game size. Do not mistake it with texture resolution, that is something else.

Also, this will be the worst port of all time. There is not a single PC game made in the last 15 years that would not allow change of native resolution. Just a complete disgrace to a great game. Namco fucked this up beyond words.

Oh, it was tough, to be sure. It doesn't use the usual save options, so you can lose some playtime on deaths. I'm not sure what exactly it would compare to on the PC, I'd say it's really a one of a kind game. There may be more like it on consoles, but I own exactly 5 console games, so I've not seen anything like it there either.


-Carn

Hyperbole much?

It's always a dissapointment when a videogame is ported to a PC half-heartedly. A small part of me wonders why they bothered to port it at all knowing that performance, resolution, and interface would be criticized from the get-go if they continued on the track they said they would continue on - which they did.

But that also goes to their credit. They never spinned or lied that the PC port would improve framerate or resolution and at least they are putting in mouse and keyboard controls.

As always, everyone gets to vote with their wallet. This won't be a day 1 buy for me. But I'll be keeping my eye on on player comments. I like From Software and want to support them, but on this one I'm taking a wait and see approach.

No one knows how From will respond, but I'm in the camp that thinks that if sales figures on PC are half-decent, they will hopefully put a bit more effort into optimising the follow up for PC. So I'll buy it and support them on that basis. If they repeat the same mistakes again…well, fool me once and all that.

Been eagerly awaiting this game for quite some time, but installing anything with GFWL is a huge PITA and very time consuming. I suppose I can live with the added hassle, but only for games that are very inexpensive. I'll wait to pick this one up whenever it goes on sale for around $5-10.

I don't follow. Are you suggesting that the resolution cannot be changed?

That doesn't make any sense at all, people play on monitors with all different kinds of display resolution. I think it must be some sort of misunderstanding.

EDIT:

This is a comment about the framebuffer, clearly you can set any resolution you like in the menu. But what exactly does this mean, "a simple courtesy to allow the game to play on most monitors, but the image quality will always remain the same"?

You can play at 1080p but it's upscaled like a console version?

The question is whether it will sell well or not. About 100,000 signed the petition but how many of those people will now be put off by the lack of effort for the port. I was a day 1 buy when I first heard they were bringing to pc but now I'm definitely waiting or not buying at all depending on how it turns out.

I think a good majority of people will take the wait and see approach making initial sales figures very poor. Too bad too because they had built some good will with the pc community upon announcing they were bringing it to pc but that seems to have been quelled by the way they are doing it.

Yes, that's exactly what will happen. The game is running at 1024x720 but is being upscaled to whatever resolution you set Windows to.

Good lord, this must be the worst console port in the history of gaming. I've never heard of any PC game being locked to a low res like that. Why on Earth would Namco do that?

I was going to pick this one up on sale, but it seems not even worth $5-10.

What is even the point of the fake resolution settings? You can already choose to run any game at 1024x720 and it will always scale to your display. This game sounds like a complete POS.

This isn't even an rpg, it's an action game with very little RPG systems tacked on. It's a good action game though.