

We recently revealed our top 20 games of this console generation (in two instalments - part one and part two) as well as the best PS3 and Xbox 360 exclusives. Finally, Matthew Reynolds reveals our best game of the generation, Dark Souls.



What makes Dark Souls so absorbing is how deliberately obtuse it all is.

In a console generation where so many games aspired to replicate Hollywood blockbusters by guiding players by the hand with tutorials, cutscenes and quick time events, Dark Souls teaches you very little about its world, its dangers and how to survive them. And it's all the better for it.

While it doesn't quite drop you in the deep end at the very beginning - there is a basic tutorial at the start to teach you the controls - it literally pulls the ground from under you, planting you at the feet of a massive, bulbous beast - wielding a screen-filling hammer that can swiftly destroy you - and that must be defeated before you can continue.

You're then welcomed to the realm of Lordran, a sprawling, beautiful labyrinth formed from the haunted shell of a once prosperous kingdom, and are given the task of ringing two bell towers somewhere within.

Dark Souls's world is not an open one - it has more in common with Metroidvania games, consisting of a series of interconnected passages that sprawl in all directions - but there is freedom in where you can go.

Your first contact is a nearby knight, sitting idle by a nearby campfire, who tells you where these bells are located. Of course, he doesn't tell you how to get there. With no map or sign posts as a guide, it's up to you to find them on your own.

The opening area is a bonfire perched on a grassy cliff top, populated by what the few individuals remain in Lordran, each teasing the perils and the fate of the world beyond.

It's here where your journey truly begins; there's one staircase going up, one going down, and if you look around a little, a slightly-hidden passage to a subterranean world.

There are many instances of these branching pathways with unknown destinations. If you are bold, foolish or very experienced, you can go almost anywhere, but the game masterfully - but subtly – will tug you in the right direction, through the design and flow of each area, and the placement of under and overpowered enemies.

It'll often tease other paths, though, many of which are ill-advised. You could be an hour into a dungeon, out of health flasks and desperate to find a bonfire, and it will suggest risking taking on a new enemy in the hope you'll find that all-important respite on the other side. And if you take that risk, and it pays off, then the relief is impalpable.

Dark Souls is an expert at planting seeds of doubt. One particularly unsettling moment comes halfway through the game as you explore Sen's Fortress, a brutal complex that guards the entrance to a jaw-dropping city hidden in the mountains above.

It's here that a chest, usually the source of a valuable item that will aid your journey, will suddenly spring teeth and swallow you whole. It turns one of the game's few rewards into an adverse risk, forcing you to attack every chest ever after in a paranoid manner.

Such tricks and uncertainty are confounded further by a core gameplay loop inspired by roguelike games.

Fail to make it from the sanctity of one bonfire to the next and the enemies you've vanquished on the way reset and appear back in the world, and any souls accumulated - a currency earned used to upgrade and buy new equipment – is taken from you.

However, Dark Souls is not that cruel; any skills and equipment on your character remain, and if you return to the position of death without dying once more, you can regain those souls.

If you don't, then those souls are lost forever. It's a simple but incredibly effective means to make each subsequent run more tense than the last, a gamble to see if you can better your performance with a chance to save face.

Bosses in particular are a key indicator that you're going in the right path, and they also very effectively summarise the Dark Souls experience, providing death and awe in equal measure upon the first few visits to these gatekeepers.

Who can forget the Capra Demon, a goat-headed beast that springs upon you and slashes away with no respite; the majesty of giant wolf Sif as he bounds in a circle around you in a moonlit forest clearing, and the feeling of hopelessness as you encounter Ornstein & Smough in a shimmering palace hall, struggling with how to defend against their disparate attacks.

But through perseverance, perception, patience and practice, by reading their tells and using the fighting arena to your advantage, in time knowing how to defeat them soon becomes second nature.

And that narrative of being utterly demoralised from when you first encounter a boss, through to discovering their weaknesses and flawlessly putting them into practice, is told in no better place than in Dark Souls.

Their demise also plays heavily into an alluring post-game, where only by replaying three times can you fashion their souls into the best weapons, unlocking a final elusive achievement.

It's through attempting this that you return to a world that once bested you countless times before, and now you're back not to just survive it, but master it.

The story of Lordran is as vague and alluring as the game's systems, gradually unfolding as you discover each new desolate landscape, interact with its twisted inhabitants and decipher item descriptions, leaving it to the player to draw the dots in between.

While not all of what Dark Souls does is exactly new, its reception has seen its more novel features gain influence. It can take credit in the rise of permadeath and roguelike elements seen in independent and big-budget releases in recent years.

Its approach to multiplayer, meanwhile, looks to be at very heart of many next-generation releases.

Dark Souls sidesteps the cumbersome lobby process, filling Lordran with messages from its community of players - both supportive and deceptive - as well as populating it with potential invaders out for your blood.

This blurring of single and multiplayer experiences isn't the first of its kind - spiritual predecessor Demon's Souls and Journey had similar approaches to marrying you with other players effortlessly - but its flawless implementation continues to see it name-checked by developers around the world.

Dark Souls has many daunting labels attached to its name; difficult, cruel, torturous, brutal and intimidating. And while these are accurate, it's the sense of discovery in its strange, oppressive world and the relief of surviving its trials that make Dark Souls rewarding like few other games are.

And it's likely we'll feel its influence pressing down on games for years to come.

Have you played Dark Souls? What's your favourite game of this console generation? Add a comment to the space below!

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io