GAMEMODEST

Praise the sun! A Souls game has arrived on PC. It is surely weary. We'll let it rest, and get to the new edition's bonus content and the quality of the port in a moment. On the off chance you've been off collecting beetles for the last three years and missed Dark Souls entirely, here's a recap of why to be excited.

On consoles, this began with 2009's Demon's Souls, a sleeper hit that offered a quest so hard, so hefty, so immaculately crafted that developer From Software might have hewn it from rock. It and sequel Dark Souls summoned staggering review scores, gifting a generation of jaded gamers with a cocktail of fear and self-respect.

You're best off not taking your cues from Dark Souls' charming marketing slogan of “YOU WILL DIE.” While it's best known for being nipple-rippingly difficult, ultimately, it's all about the weight I was talking about earlier. That dark heft. First and foremost, this is the physical weight of your character, and the foreboding atmosphere of From Software's stunning world.

Dark Souls tells the story of your hero trying to save an intriguing world which, by every possible metric, fell long ago. Abominations make their homes in the forgotten nooks of a lost civilisation. A handful of enigmatic survivors are all that's left, but you're as free to talk to them as kill them, and they're as liable to help you as to lie. Best of all, the game literally kills you off somewhere between character creation and the first cut-scene. Above all, Dark Souls seems to thrill at escaping expectations.

An example is how your character controls. Just to swing a sword sees your avatar putting their back, shoulder and wrist into the blow, leaving you to wince at the weapon's weight. Hit attack again, and you'll roll the weapon around down, up and around, maintaining its momentum to strike once more, quicker this time. But every single attack, every block with your shield, every panicked evasive roll, takes a fat bite out of your endurance meter. Never mind whatever action games you've played before, you have to learn to fight all over again because, simply put, you're only human.

That might not sound so bad when you're gleefully taking apart a zombie with a mace. How are you going to deal with a pack of feral dogs? Or a rat as big as a Land Rover? These are the questions Dark Souls asks you, before leaning back in its high-backed leather chair to light a cigarette. It never rushes you. It never needs to. It simply tells you, to your face, that certain death lies this way. And then it tells you to walk.

Which brings us to the radioactive feather in Dark Souls' cap. Death is something you fear. If you die, you don't just get cast back to the nearest waypoint. You run the risk of losing any unspent XP or precious humanity points. Never mind fleeing from ghosts in brooding catacombs. Dark Souls can happily scare the crap out of you in broad daylight, with something as simple as a giant insect dive-bombing your head as you cross a narrow walkway.