Atlus

Year Released: 2009 Platform: PlayStation 3 Get This Game

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This 2009 action game might as well have been called Break Your Soul — it’s one of the most difficult games ever made, a hack-and-slash for the PlayStation 3 that combined Diablo-like level-crawling and looting with a gambling game involving your life.

If you die in Demon’s Souls, you lose all the “souls” you’ve collected — they’re still around, but waiting for you back at the spot you died. If you want them back, you have to make it to your “bloodstain” without dying again. The trick then, in the immortal words of Kenny Rogers, is knowing when to hold ’em, as well as when to fold ’em. A sleeper hit, this one spawned an equally acclaimed sequel a few years later dubbed Dark Souls.

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