Gamescom 2011 Hands Off: Dark Souls (PlayStation 3)

What it is: Dark Souls is the spiritual successor to the critically praised Demon’s Souls, the tough as nails role playing game that amazed PlayStation 3 owners from around the world and made its developer, From Software, and publisher, Namco Bandai, quite a lot of money, as well as a cult following.

The new game promises to keep the challenging nature, while balancing it out a bit in order to not make it unfair to players that didn’t experience its predecessor,   or at least tried to.

Dark Souls promises to make enemy encounters even tougher, but players will be able to wield new weapons or magic spells, and can once again communicate with others through the game’s special online modes, or even team up in a cooperative mode.

How it is: Dark Souls aims at living up to its motto, Prepare to Die, as the developers at From Software want to really deliver a challenging experience filled with unpredictable events. As a concrete example, one of the game’s directors demoed the game throughout the first few days of Gamescom and died, according to his colleagues, about 300 times.

Many were to demonstrate just how unforgiving the game is, but others were also due to the tough enemies that don’t cut the player any slack. While the team admits that it’s a much harder game than its predecessor, the feeling of accomplishment bestowed to the players, as well as the rewards, are more than worth it.

Besides the unforgiving gameplay, Dark Souls wants to deliver a much more nuanced experience which is connected in a smoother way, as there will be lots of locations to visit and, of course, get murdered in. A new checkpoint system is present, as players can now light bonfires in certain locations and, when they’ll inevitably die, they spawn back at that bonfire. Don’t expect to encounter many of them, however, as the developer doesn’t want death to become just a step backwards

While the studio admits that it might be possible to complete the game without dying, by playing perfectly and avoiding the many traps, like instant-death chests, it’s pretty much impossible, especially because of the many high level enemies Dark Souls throws at you right from the get-go.

When and on what: Dark Souls is set to appear on October 4, in North America, and October 7, in Europe, on consoles like the PlayStation 3 and, as a first, on the Xbox 360.

We have a special page with all our Gamescom 2011 coverage.