Dark Souls - How It Broke Gaming For Me

A Metro reader posted a new article on the site with his opinion on how Dark Souls broke gaming for him. Here is a short sample to get you all started.

I never understood the appeal of Demon’s Souls when I played it a few years ago. Twice I progressed to the 10 hour mark and became frustrated. Game disc ejected and gathered dust. With rave reviews for its spiritual successor and a sucker for punishment I thought I would try again. With Dark Souls I hit the 10 hour mark and again ejected the disc to gather dust.

About a year ago I purchased Dark Souls on PC for a measly sum of £3.74 on Steam and never touched it. During March 2014, and reading a lot of GameCentral readers banging on about how great Dark Souls was, I felt that I was missing out.

Then a funny thing happened; I tried to play other games such as FIFA, Battlefield 4, and Killzone: Shadow Fall but all felt very average. I felt broken as though I had lost my enthusiasm for gaming. A few months passed without picking up the controller. However, this passed, thankfully, and at the end of July I played and completed Astebreed, Mario Kart 8, and Bayonetta 2.

The Souls series has changed gaming for me and has awoken me to something I have lost for the past 10 years, i.e. requiring genuine skill to play and beat a game. Dark Souls et al. I bow down to you for surfacing the true gamer in me. Bring on Bloodborne I say…

More information.

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thats what all good games should strive for. setting up standards. not selling games

I stopped reading at " A few months passed without picking up the controller. "
Frack controllers!

Originally Posted by archangel
i stopped reading at " a few months passed without picking up the controller. "
frack controllers!

pc m4st3r race, rarrr!

When you completed a section or beat a boss in the Souls games you had a real feeling of accomplishment, and any achievement you received was earned, not granted. I had a similar experience with Demon Souls on the PS3, putting it down in frustration after not being able to get past one point, but came back to it later. Dark Souls was nearly the same, I almost gave up on the fight with Ornstein & Smough, where you have to face two bosses at once. I was finally able to get through that with some skill, and granted, some luck too.

Archangel, I generally do not like to use controllers either, but I found DS to be one of those games best suited for a controller. The Witcher 2 was another. The first time through I played with mouse and keyboard, and on my next play through I used a controller and found it much easier going. You can play DS with keyboard if you want to though.

I had pretty much the same experience with the series, only Demon's Souls appealed to me right off the bat. I did take a bit over a year to get into Dark Souls, but, when I did, I became ravenous. I've spent 160 hours on Dark Souls 2 alone, and almost 300 on the series.

As for the controller thing.. some games are designed for controllers. I can't really imagine playing this with a M+K. However, most PC ports I tend to play with M+K (like DAI).

So how hard is it to complete Dark Souls with a mouse and keyboard? Been wanting to play this game but I dont intend to buy a game controller just to play it.

Originally Posted by Cronis
So how hard is it to complete Dark Souls with a mouse and keyboard? Been wanting to play this game but I dont intend to buy a game controller just to play it.

Very hard without mods. If you use mouse and controls mods it's very doable. I used two or three and it made a big improvement but can't remember which ones now.

Originally Posted by Xian
When you completed a section or beat a boss in the Souls games you had a real feeling of accomplishment, and any achievement you received was earned, not granted. I had a similar experience with Demon Souls on the PS3, putting it down in frustration after not being able to get past one point, but came back to it later. Dark Souls was nearly the same, I almost gave up on the fight with Ornstein & Smough, where you have to face two bosses at once. I was finally able to get through that with some skill, and granted, some luck too.

Archangel, I generally do not like to use controllers either, but I found DS to be one of those games best suited for a controller. The Witcher 2 was another. The first time through I played with mouse and keyboard, and on my next play through I used a controller and found it much easier going. You can play DS with keyboard if you want to though.

And I consider games that cannot make a proper K+M controls not worth playing. I don't care for excuses. If it impossible to do so then it is a console game first and I don't care to play it 2x.

Okay, thanks for the reply Daroou.

Just use the mouse fix and you'll be ok. The only games I use controllers for are sports games.
Dark souls fanboys are pretty annoying though and I say that while loving the game. It's just not a video game messiah.

It is very playable with a mouse and keyboard, I played it like that, and I even completed Ornstein & Smough fight without too many retries… however you cannot play the original on PC without the mods. With the mods it becomes a very good port though as it is rock stable… never crashed on me and I didn't encounter a single bug. The only annoying thing is the console centric inventory but there is also some modding to make it better, not a huge problem either way.