I'm not sure where I sit with regards to Dark Souls being open to experimentation because I feel as though every decision I've made has entrenched me further, the class I chose, the stats I leveled up, the materials I used for upgrading my weapons and armour. None of these are reversible. 60 or so hours in and my cleric still feels pretty dull and I see no way out of that apart from starting again, and that's just not happening. Another thing is, since playing with xtal I've never been summoned by anybody despite putting down countless signs. I'm not even sure xtal managed to summon me to be honest, I can't remember. I'd love to go and fight some of the earlier bosses again with others to gain souls, humanity and, y'know, just to help them out. I'm not too fussed about getting help from others, I like roaming around at my own pace but being able to join others would be great. I might try some PvP just to spice things up but I've got a feeling that if I'm not being summoned then it's a connection issue so that might be a problem too. PvP was always a lag-fest on Demon's Souls for me.

Gregg, if you're solely interested in finishing the game and not overly worried about being at proper levels for summoning or PvP then you're really not bound by your stats at all. You can level up as much as you want; granted, I realize you need the souls, and it can be frustrating when you're not being summoned.

What's your progress thus far? Are you still in Blighttown?

I want to help you finish this game, because you need to! It is your destiny!

Long spiel upcoming... OkayHereIgoDeepBreath: It's certainly easy for me to say now, you could say I've lost some perspective of being a new player, but I am being frank and honest and sincere when I say that Dark Souls is not a hard game. Not in the traditional sense. For me at least there was no 11th Colossus in Dark Souls. Frustrating moments, sure, but unlike a lot of frustrating moments in other games, the frustrating moments in Dark Souls were intended by the game's own mechanisms. Death and solving puzzles, it's Dark Souls' bread and butter.

Did the makers of The Empire Strikes Back (NES) intend for me to never pass the battle of Hoth because it was fucking bullshit? No, it was because difficult, lengthy games that you can't save (eat it, old consoles) are crap, and I had friends and a life back then; I had to break for dinner and super soaker fights. Did BioWare intend for the Mass Effect 2 battle on Horizon against that stupid fucking piece of shit Praetorian to be so impossible? No, it was because their game design was unbalanced and shitty. Etc. Etc.

There are so many games I can look back to over the years that had terrible, infuriating moments that made me want to jump out a window all crying and stuff. But I didn't, because the thought of finding true love kept me going!  because I knew that one day Dark Souls would appear!  because I knew cheese existed, and someone had to eat it! Yes...that's the true reason. The point is, those are the dumb moments in games that most people have described as "hard" over the years. Dark Souls doesn't have any of those moments (The Bed of Chaos never happened, the Bed of Chaos never happened, the Bed of Chaos never happened...) to speak of.

The biggest disservice to sales of the Souls games, in my opinion, has been lazy bloggers and reviewers writing about how !!hardcore!! the game is. It's not insanely difficult, or super hard, or !!hardcore!! ... it just goes against the grain of what we're all so used to: hand holding. Even many notoriously hard games have had their share of hand-holding, and the trade off is these terrible, broken (call them emergent in a bad way, maybe) situations that give them their reputation.

Dark Souls is not these games. I've understood this since I played through the game a second time (yes, I admit, with knowledge, which is a powerful weapon). The Battle of Hoth, Horizon, so many others, these are hard in the sense that they have taken my brain to the brink of sanity.

Dark Souls brings challenge, and does have a degree of difficulty perhaps uncommon, but it is only hard in that it may be hard to unlearn your own gaming past to discover new ways. Summon me sir, I beseech thee, and I shall guide the way.

Sorry for all that; I've officially hijacked and derailed the poor Human Revolution thread.

Okay, so I'm good to talk about Malik in here right?

I got back to Hengsha last night and had the opportunity to try and save her after the chopper got downed. I'm playing on the hardest difficulty so naturally I failed first time but I was adamant that I was going to succeed. It took many attempts but I somehow managed it without any sort of explosives or EMP grenades. It felt kind of cheat-y reloading so often but given how little 'action' I'd seen and how much firepower I was packing (and the fact that Malik was getting fired on, and I like Malik) I wanted to unload everything on Belltower.

I'm amazed how inferior lethal force is to non-lethal though, having finally 'opened up' my arsenal (I'd never fired the heavy assault rifle before). I can shoot at people in the head with my heavy assault rifle, combat rifle, silenced sniper rifle and they'll take a number of bullets. I can use my tranquiliser rifle and they'll drop immediately in one dart (to the head). Even the stun gun is an instant takedown. To add to this, non-lethality gives you more XP. I'm not sure I like that sort of skew in these circumstances, when I'm trying to quickly save someone from being brutally murdered and lethal force should surely be optimal. It's almost as if the game is encouraging me to play in a particular way even if it doesn't always make much sense. Rather than an XP system, I wish DX:HR had just fleshed out the ramifications of adopting certain playstyles in the world ie. certain people refusing to talk to you or others rewarding you and giving you different assignments. This way, you play as you like and bridges are built or burned based on context. Ah well.

I've picked up where I left in DXHR after a very long break. I forget how to do everything, and I'm especially incompetent at hacking. Isn't that the worst when you load up a game and completely forget how to play it?

Sigh.

I don't remember where I am or what my goals are. I just know I need to hack some garage door and am failing quite miserably at that.

I bet the hacking is a lot easier on PC! I'm playing on console and when you need to be clicking around quickly to fortify nodes the thumbsticks just don't cut it.

But I at least mostly remembered how to do it yesterday, and I remembered that I've been augmenting myself to be a hacking god, so that helps.

Deus Ex is one of those games that I play so slowly, so methodically, because I want to explore every corner, hack everything I can, explore beyond every door ... maybe it's a 20 hour game, but it will probably take me three times that to finish.

Psssh. Come on, you have to admit that, when the network (or whatever) is alerted and the trace begins, it's pretty hectic to speed around trying to fortify all your nodes all the while still attempting to capture datastores and finish the hack!

Still, I remembered why I really enjoyed the hacking mini game. It actually had some depth and took some good planning to succeed, unlike most hacking games which are throwaway. Granted, hacking is more integral to the themes of DX than most games. But still, credit to the devs for making it worthwhile.

I hope it stays relevant further into the game. I'm still in Detroit, because I suck.

Where are you in it exactly?

D'oh, yeah you did say you were in Detroit up page.

Early doors yet!