If you’ve heard anything about From Software’s Demon’s Souls for the PS3, you know it’s a beast of a difficult game, daring you to play it and laughing at your failures.  The realization that this game is the closest to survival horror that you’re going to get on a video game this console generation came last night.

Taking a break from reviewing another game, I sat down with Demon’s Souls yesterday.  It had been awhile, as I’d been deep in finishing ODST, Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend.  While I was playing all of those games, however, there was a part of me that couldn’t wait to get back to the brutalization that is Demon’s Souls.

I entered a new area for the first time ever with my little hero.  For those of you with the game, it’s area 5-1, the Chieftain archstone. For those of you without, let me try to explain.  It’s a rickety hodge-podge of broken and fragile wooden walkways and nests of hay perched precariously above an instant-death drop into a swamp below.  The objective is to travel further and further upwards, climbing across these unstable platforms while fighting off enemies.  The enemies consist of this odd bird/goblin bastardization, who have the unnerving ability to drop out of the sky from unlit perches above and land unnervingly close to you, with the sole intent of pushing you off an ledge to your death.

The thing that got me was the breathing. 

The way the level is designed vertically, you can more or less hear these mouth-breathing zombie birds two levels above and below you.  They may not be near you…or there might be one perched directly above you, but you can never really tell.  I’ve got a pretty good surround sound system set up in my basement, so when I would hear this ragged gasping breath come from behind me to my left, I would spin around, shield raised, expecting an attack…but there would be nothing. 

The enemies are generally in the same locations every time, but sometimes, they can wander off and be places you are not expecting them.  Seeing that every fight can be instantly fatal and death can involve twenty minutes of having to redo the level over, these come as very “oh !#$%” moments as you’re inching along. 

Remember when the original Resident Evil was kinda scary?  That first hallway where the dogs would launch themselves through the window at you, and all you have is the stupid 9mm handgun?  After you recover from the shock of these demons breaking through the glass, you’re forced to quickly recover and fire round after seemingly useless round at them.  That feeling of shock paired with helplessness was a hell of a “survival horror” combination. 

Now look at Resident Evil 5.  “Survival horror” took a backseat to “Hollywood action flick”.  Was there any point in the game where you ever felt truly…afraid?  Where death came at a steep price?  Oh, no, chainsaw zombie just cut me in half.  Restart. 

Oh, here’s another one I just thought of for those of you with a Wayback machine.  Remember Clock Tower?  No?  That’s understandable.  Late 90s, PS1 title.  You played as this little girl with a dog, and the whole game consisted of you running and hiding from this guy with a pair of giant scissors.  No rocket launcher, no melee attacks, just a little girl hiding in cabinets and closets and running for her life. I just remember that feeling of “ohcrapohcrapofcrap, please don’t look over here and see me”.

The punishing death penalty associated with Demon’s Souls, paired with the darkly lit, confining areas and the fact that almost every fight can be deadly if you’re not on your toes leads to an anxiety driven experience I haven’t felt in a video game in a long damn time. 

And I like it.

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