Dark has been my Soul of late

There's something about the brutality of Dark Souls which I find masochistically endearing. Perhaps it's the disdain in which you are held by it's inhabitants, or the relentless unfairness of it's many enemies. Dark Souls fucks you up, and pointedly fails to apologise. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing. Just like in real life!

The most underwhelming thing about a videogame can easily be the disconnect one feels with the protagonist. It's one of the reasons I never really enjoyed the elaborate QTE's of the God Of War franchise. "Press square to backflip onto this guy's back and stab him in the eyes!" is about as far removed from the patient, methodical delicacy of Dark Soul's combat as it's possible to be. There's an important difference between XP and Experience - actual experience, not numbers that fill up a bar the more you mash the X button. I'm talking about knowing how a game works, in understanding the timing of an attack or the geography of a virtual environment. That's a raw concept that can't be quantified, and Dark Souls makes little attempt to. There's a level system thrown in there, sure, and item upgrades - let's not get bananas here, at the end of the day it's still a videogame - but if you don't have the experience to carve your way across the map then no amount of XP will save you. There's something hugely satisfying about that, something that you can't hack, or cheat, or simulate; and as a result Dark Souls is, despite it's chilling flippancy towards the health of it's players, a wonderfully rewarding game.

It's also a complete cunt. Just putting that out there.

I'm still playing a lot of Dota2.