You can feel the pounding wrapped around your chest whenever you delve deep into a game like Demon's Souls, and presumably its sequel Dark Souls. Nothing's too excessive for From Software, which is making the game world every bit larger than Skyrim.

According to OXM's Matt Lees, who's already spent over 20 hours in the game, Dark Souls will be giving Skyrim "a run for its money" with the length and breadth of the environment it offers players to adventure, fight, and potentially die repeatedly in through the course of the game. According to Lees, the leader of the fellowship he plays with leads at 60 hours in playtime, with less than a "quarter" of the game explored.

Lees also adds that unlike Skyrim, there's not much recycling of content in Dark Souls, which offers many more variations of monsters, items and environments for the player to interact with, which should make it a great alternative to Bethesda's RPG.

Personally, I'll be picking up both.