Anyone else sick of Dark Souls PR bull & leeching

I like to keep up to date on the Souls series info by checking the news section pretty much on a daily basis. The thing is that while it's great to hear that Dark Souls has positively influenced developers to make games rewarding to play, I get really annoyed seeing journalists using Dark Souls as a platform to promote a game they are reviewing or previewing. The latest, and in that I mean game coverage is ZombiU, a game that journalists can't seem to resist putting side by side Dark Souls. Whatever their reason for doing this is, whether they are paid to promote it or encourage to filter internet traffic, They could at least try and get what Dark Souls is really about.

Now it kinda sounds like I'm being a bit of a snob when I say that but all I ever read off these journalists is how hard it is. They never talk about why the difficultly is praised or explain in anyway how the difficulty in a certain game relates to Dark Souls. Dark Souls difficulty is more of a fabrication to what it really is which is learning curve, because when you start to understand it's mechanics and play them well, it is actually quite easy. That's not to say you can't be punished for badly calculated choices, it just means that you get far more forgiving opportunities than you would in say a game where you have milliseconds to perform actions otherwise you have to start all over again. Now with ZombiU you have this mechanic where if your character dies, you loose all that gear but have an opportunity to pick up that gear with another character. Yeah I suppose that could be like the bloodstain retrieval thing but since when has that been the core mechanic that makes Dark Souls so god damn epic? Not only that but soul collection is a completely different bag to losing all your items every time you die, which would be very frustrating if that was the mechanic in Dark Souls. Game reviewers have already pointed out how repetitive ZombiU gameplay is, which doesn't take a page from Dark Souls amazing gameplay.

Journalists focus so much on one aspect of Dark Souls that it really paints the wrong picture to how truly amazing the other core features this game has. The term difficulty gets pushed out so much by these people that don't get it will influence publishers who don't get it to tell a team of developers who probably don't get it to make a game that is just difficult, with all the substandard rubbish that most of today's games feature. I have never heard from them how amazing the environments are, the beautiful vistas you see that are carefully placed before and after you start a level, the diverse land where each section has it's own identity, level design where it makes you feel like you are also platforming, something an open plane field can never achieve, deep and highly responsive combat system, varied and epic enemy design that act and look different from one another instead of the traditional reskin more health model. These are the things that make Dark Souls the legend that it is today, not this shallow idea that today's gamers just want something hard.

If ZombiU was inspired by the success of Dark Souls with it's research based solely off journalists comments on difficulty, then it's a very sad day for games in the future. It pushes the idea that all we care about is difficulty and would be happy to play any difficult game, even if they are boring or frustrating to play. I hope game developers and publishers do see though all this ignorant bull$hit because while it's annoying to get fed games that are just hard for the sake of it, it's also good to know that they have an interest in this scene. I think the Souls community is fortunate to have a publisher that listens to the community and understands where we come from, but it's damaging to the scene where a shallow understanding of a successful product gets labelled onto another product just to promote it. It's not good for the series or for future games that are inspired by it.

Pardon me if I sound dense, as I don't pay attention to what those big headed guys think, but what are PR and Leaching?

If it's what I'm thinking, then yes. They need to quit comparing games and trying to copy everything and just come up with some original stuff.

For the first time in my entire life, I've actually noticed pretty much all the games that have been produced look the same to eachother. That goes triple for FPS's, for the scarce amount of those I play.

XachAttack wrote:Pardon me if I sound dense, as I don't pay attention to what those big headed guys think, but what are PR and Leaching?

PR = Public relations

Leeching = Free riding off another product. All these journalists use the cred of Dark Souls to make the game quality they are promoting sound good.

This happen often with Dark Souls?

mugenis4real wrote:This happen often with Dark Souls?

In some form or another. Dragon's dogma and Kingdom's of Amalar come to mind, other games that have used the credibility of Dark Souls to promote theirs with them at the end of the day being nothing like the Soul series.

EDIT:

Persona 4 Golden takes an interesting page from Dark Souls

See what I mean.

Both Journalists, PR and players that only tried Dark Souls (meaning people that played it, but gave up), as well as general gamer population that knows Dark Souls, but haven't played it, all of them know one thing about it.

Prepare to Die

It's hard.
It's not hard in the terms of most games, where mobs just get better stats, it's hard in terms of not forgiving your mistakes like most games do. Games give you handy respawn points, tips, or even lower mob stats when you have a hard time. They basically hold your hand and guide you through the game. This concept is alive and well for years now, but it wasn't always there. If you remember PS1 games, they were much like Dark Souls, in the way that they didn't help you much. One of the hardest games I remember there was first Crash Bandicoot and that's a game for kids! Today? The game plays itself and you can just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Dark Souls just ignores this modern trend and does it the way it was before, the way it used to be. In the end, it doesn't mae the game hard at all, it is just fair. Plain and simply, fair.

The problem is, that today's pampered gamers can't stand this. It's not enough for them to find a message saying "Go straight ahead", they need, yes need, a big arrow pointing them in the right direction, with distance counter and minimap, just to be sure. There's one hillarious video where one guy can't even find his way out of Asylum, exactly because of this.

Thanks to all of this, the game isn't known for it's beautifull locations, addictive PvP, enjoyable co-op, great combat mechanics, or for Gwynevere's huge rack. It's know for it's so called difficulty.

It's hard to say if people in PR know about all of the game's qualities, but they know that majority of gamers don't. So they use only what they can use.

If they say:
"This game has beautifull forests like you can find in Dark Souls"
Most people will react...
"What *** forests?! I didn't see any, because of some *** Taurus Demon, that killed me a thousand times!"

But, if they say:
"This game is as difficult as Dark Souls."
Most people will react...
"Yeah, maybe I can beat this one. I'm sure it won't be such an unfair ***** like Dark Souls, since it's on Nintendo."

It's not only about Dark Souls though. They do the same thing with other games and their major features as well.

Critics, journalist, reviewers- I pity the fools.

steveswede wrote:

mugenis4real wrote:This happen often with Dark Souls?

In some form or another. Dragon's dogma and Kingdom's of Amalar come to mind, other games that have used the credibility of Dark Souls to promote theirs with them at the end of the day being nothing like the Soul series.

EDIT:

Persona 4 Golden takes an interesting page from Dark Souls

See what I mean.

Yeeeep..That's exactly what I suspected it was =_=. Freakin' morons..

Edit: (This and below) What Sentiel said seriously makes me want to not play games anymore. It's rediculous at how right he is, and it's the 2nd reason I'm not a fan of FPS's.

Did you know, that in Halo 4's option menu, there isn't an option to turn off the Aim Assist?

Armored Core V, another one of From's games, has aim assist option that's actually optional. You can normally perform better with it off, funnily enough.

XachAttack wrote:

steveswede wrote:

mugenis4real wrote:This happen often with Dark Souls?

In some form or another. Dragon's dogma and Kingdom's of Amalar come to mind, other games that have used the credibility of Dark Souls to promote theirs with them at the end of the day being nothing like the Soul series.

EDIT:

Persona 4 Golden takes an interesting page from Dark Souls

See what I mean.

Yeeeep..That's exactly what I suspected it was =_=. Freakin' morons..

Edit: (This and below) What Sentiel said seriously makes me want to not play games anymore. It's rediculous at how right he is, and it's the 2nd reason I'm not a fan of FPS's.

Did you know, that in Halo 4's option menu, there isn't an option to turn off the Aim Assist?

Armored Core V, another one of From's games, has aim assist option that's actually optional. You can normally perform better with it off, funnily enough.

Thanks.
I was working in a video game store for a few years, so I picked this up when I was there. it's just my opinion though.

I think Halo 3 lacked the option to turn aim assist off as well. It was one of the reasons why I stopped playing it, it's hard to snipe when the game is moving your crosshair...

That and Xbox has unbelievably retarded community.
And I HAVE to pay to play with those clowns, while PS3 has online features for free and people are much nicer there.

I plan on making difficult games some day... when I do, I'll ever so mildly leech off Froms image purely with one true statement.
"Gameplay was inspired by From Softwares games, such as Dark Souls and Kings Field"

I don't know man. I understand your point of view and all, but I see this as a good thing. Every time journalists thing an RPG, or in this case that zombie game, can have good value and/or be difficult they compare it to Dark Souls. But it's that kind of comparison that never gets above DkS, it's always in a sort of admiration for it, and that the games in question are close to or do stuff as well as DkS. In the end, all those games are doing is giving more fame to DkS whilst never getting anywhere near as good. Publicity can be a good thing for From as the more popular DkS becomes, the more they might spend on next game - and you know what that means - more NPCS, more Areas, MORE EVERYTHING!

The more popular Souls game are, the more money will the publisher want to make on them and the more will their know-it-all retards talk into the game's development process and alter the game itself.

Miyazaki himself talked how they couldn't do this and that, or how he's not satisfied with something and they didn't have time to change it. That's a prime example of publisher forcing the development team to release the game on the announced deadline, even if devs want to do more work on the game. They can force upon them their own ideas and change the whole game as they see fit.

That's not only wrong, but that leads to decline in game quality and creating like CoD and other game's that try to target the major populace, that have generally extremely low quality, albeit being massively popular.

I seriously don't want to see DkS on Nintendo. It's pissy enough they released it on Xbox, just so they can make more cash on it.

I don't really mind that Dark Souls has become a new benchmark in good gameplay. I suspect that a lot of us, when we first played Demon's Souls, suspected this would be the case someday. I'd love to see more games incorporate key elements of this series into their games.

I remember reading some interview with Cliffy B, and he proclaimed himself a HUGE fan of Dark Souls. Said he wanted to bring more of that hardcore difficulty to the new Gears of War game. But for some reason I got the sense that Cliffy didn't really get the nuances of DkS difficulty. Mostly he talked about creating an "Insane" difficulty that would be nearly impossible to complete without friends in coop; that you should expect to die a lot (and be revived by friends). But I've played that series, and I know that he's really just talking about making enemy bullet sponges and lowering the player damage threshold. That's not DkS as we know it.

Sentiel wrote:I seriously don't want to see DkS on Nintendo. It's pissy enough they released it on Xbox, just so they can make more cash on it.

Dark Souls is one of the best designed games ever made and you are mad they want to branch out to other plat forms to make more money? They would have to compromise even more if they stayed PS3 exclusive. At least now they have a PC, XBox and PS3 market they can make money from without hurting the games quality.

I would be find with them releasing it for the Wii U. If it makes them more money while not having to compromise on gameplay then I am all for it. By compromise I mean make it dumbed down to sell more copies. Which might happen anyway but this is the best shot of it not happening.

As for the OP, I agree that reviewers are missing the point of Dark Souls entirely. That persona 4 review -kinda- gets it about the messages at least. I think that new feature in the game is a pretty cool idea actually.

I just view game reviewers as a bunch of Journalism major flunkies who couldn't cut it in a real job so they decided to review video games instead. Trust me, being a video game reviewer is no dream job. Unless you are one of those people who doesn't review a game until it's been out for 2 weeks and makes a 20 minute video about it and makes money from the ads. Those guys have it pretty good.

OK I'm rambling now.

They can try as hard as they like but, in my opinion, no-one but no-one will come close to capturing the ethos and atmosphere of Dark Souls and Demons Souls, they are unique.

As for journalists comparing inferior games to the Souls duo, we won't be fooled because you know and I know they are incomparable.

Even Dead Space 3 is jumping on the band wagon. They have implemented an invasion mechanic. Which might be kinda cool but its still a rip off.

Sentiel wrote:...Xbox has unbelievably retarded community.

This cracked me up.

Also, I think it's a good thing when critics, reviewers, game developers, and even gamers themselves compare other games to Dark Souls, even though it's usually pretty far from the truth. It's basically the community saying, "Dark Souls sets the bar, this is how {insert game here} does or doesn't measure up. It's good for Fromsoft, so it's good for us. Maybe it's good for gaming in general, as more developers start to copy Fromsoft.

I'm not hating on Xbox, it's just one bad experience after another for me.

Back to the topic.

If the game gets released on more platforms to make more money, it is no longer custom tailored for one platform resulting in lowered quality.

Let's say platform A has better HW than platform B. When that happens, the game can't be made custom for each platform as it would cost a lot of money and companies owning the weaker platform don't want to get the lesser product, they want them to be the same. So in the end the stronger platform gets a lesser product thanks to the game being released on a weaker platform.

That's just one example, there's more.

Medium size, HW compatibility, online features and more.
Each of them play a factor that changes the game.

Now you may think, what's the point, why do we need custom tailored games for each platform, Dark Souls is good as it is.
Yes, Dark Souls is good as it is, but it doesn't mean it was meant to be.
Take Uncharted 3. That game runs on how old? 5-6 years old HW and looks fabulous. If it was released on another platfrom, you wouldn't be able to achieve this. Souls series aren't a prime example for this, as Demon's Souls had rather low budget graphics sometimes, so Dark Souls looks stunning (it got an award for best graphics on Xbox or something I believe), but even though, when it was released on PC, everybody started frowning on it's graphics and resolution. PC has the advantage that they can mod it to look better, as their platforms deserves. Console users dont have this priviledge, so they have to accept the results, restrained by the requirements of the weaker console, which in itself sucks and holds any potential advancement in HW for consoles, unless they both remain on com[etitively similar level.

They aren't journalists, they're just another part of publisher PR and advertisement.

Sentiel wrote:

Let's say platform A has better HW than platform B. When that happens, the game can't be made custom for each platform as it would cost a lot of money and companies owning the weaker platform don't want to get the lesser product, they want them to be the same. So in the end the stronger platform gets a lesser product thanks to the game being released on a weaker platform.

.

The fact is that Dark Souls might not even exist if it weren't for the 360. Demon's Souls sales weren't exactly chart topping and a publisher may not have made a deal with them if they didn't expand their user base.

Did you know that Dark Souls sold less copies than Demon's Souls on the PS3? 1.66 million for Demon's Souls and 1.33 million for Dark Souls. The XBox version sold 570,000 copies. That plus the DLC and the PC version made Dark Souls more profitable than Demon's Souls.

If Dark Souls was PS3 only I guarantee it would have been the last souls game ever and there would have been no DLC. With the game selling 300,000 copies less From would have deemed it a failure and stupid to move on with the sequel selling less than the original by a substantial margin.

So the XBox and PC probably saved the souls series. But you can keep bashing a console you probably don't even own

The PS3 has better hardware than the 360 IN THEORY. You could call Uncharted a really really good tech demo since it's virtually the only game ever made to actually utilize the hardware capabilities of the PS3. It's amazing but almost impossible to write code for.

This is why the PS4 has already announced it's just going to be an expensive computer. They want developers to be able to port games to it easily. With the 720, PC and PS4 all having the same architecture it will be much easier to port games to all systems.

With your attitude I would suggest you start PC gaming. Then you can whine about the "kids" "ruining" your games with their dumb controllers and backwards consoles. They actually have something legitimate to whine about most of the time, but I still love to drink the tears.

Of course the game would exist. The fact it made more profit doesn't mean it wouldn't have made enough profit for it to be worthy of doing since we don't know the development cost.

Guarantee based on what?
Dark Souls sold less copies than DS, but still quite enough to sustain itself, as you can see by the shere number of 1.33 million.

If you read my posts you can see I mentioned to have Xbox, but dropped Gold. I still have the console and use it. I'm bashing it's community, if something and HW diversity in general.

I'm not saying which console has better HW, Uncharted was a prime example of what a game can be like when it's custom tailored for specific HW, same can be said about GoW, or Halo for Xbox if you want.

I've been gaming on PC, it's much worse than Xbox, no thanks. I don't care about their whining, I left, just as with Xbox because of the community. Well Xbox had other reasons beside that, just like PC, but nvm those, they're not important to the topic at hand.

I'm only on xbox, and I'm sorry that myself and my community have threatened to degrade the quality of what should have been a PS3 exclusive series.

Let's not start a console battle here..

Keep in mind, this game, our game, Demons's Souls, Dark Souls and (possibly) Dark Souls II, is not for the faint of heart, not for those who are not prepared to accept that 3-sword-wielding-attack-parrying-bleed-inflicting-skeletons can kill them, not for those who aren't prepared to die. I should know, the first time I played Demon's Souls, I gave it up a full year when I could not beat the Flamelurker. And only returned to pass the time till DD came out, but then I was consumed by it. Farming here and there, then, I found the Glitch, the Glitch of all glitches, Item duping! It was then that all the bosses, fell to my feet, one after another, a morale-boosting Glitch!

Here I am now, to start all over again, to face the hardships in Dark Souls that I could never have faced in Demon's Souls. To prove to myself that I'm not a glitch-dependent noob, that I'm prepared to die.

(Not all the time, I have the Homeward spell.)

XachAttack wrote:Let's not start a console battle here..

I would hate to see that. I just wanted to show how different HW can afect games.