Never wise to question Magic 8 ball.

That said, my plan is to do a step-by-step review. I will report my progress here, as it happens, and present my conclusions in the actual review.

I have yet to receive my copy so no news yet.

Unless, of course, you consider what I have learned about Carl Orff and Carmina Burana and the early incarnation of Heaven, as well as steerpike's comments on The Void, as news. Then, yes, there has been news.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky and Red Faction: Guerilla are making their way to my house even now. What with rumours of Pripyat being pushed back to 2010 I thought I'd risk the $10.World in Conflict was in/out/in/out of the cart with more waffling than a pancake house but in the end the RTS label on the box is a warning too loud to ignore.

Boy oh boy, are cpu prices cheap these days. Both Intel and AMD are offering very fine desktop packages with processor, mobo, and 4G memory bundles at < $500CAD for Intel i5 750 and AMD 955 BE. While not top of the line, these multicore processors seem like they should have the horsepower to work with every possible game now and multicore supporting games for the next long while.

I just want to play something made in the last decade. This Daggerfall thing is getting tiresome, and I do feel the need for a little smiteage.

Gregg B, I am still playing it, probably about 120 hours in. In my line of work you rarely play a game for that many hours, but this one won't let me go. It's the abusive spouse I never had.

It is very seductive. It is very hard… but not the way you might think. It's not, like, ZANAC hard or Contra hard. It doesn't throw hordes of enemies or put you against foes you're no match for or anything like that. In fact the normal gameplay, while hardly easy, is not what makes Demon's Souls the so-called “hardest game ever made.” It's a combination of two things:

a) The awful penalty for failure

b) That when you do fail, it's your fault and you know it

Demon's Souls never cheats, never abuses its own system, never does anything it's not allowed to do. It never twinks out or does stuff that you'd find annoying or frustrating. It is what it is. It's very Zen in that regard. You went too far, you zigged when you should have zagged, you got careless, you got sloppy, you knew it was time to turn back but didn't, you knew this area was too tough but thought you'd take a look anyway. Demon's Souls isn't hard, you're just bad at it.

One day I will probably write a dreamy love/hate letter to Demon's Souls, one that will likely exceed my previous record of 12,000 words (Thief retrospective). At least my mom will read it to the end. [Image Can Not Be Found]

Edit: I'm amazed this game is not available in the UK yet. It sold out across the US in about two weeks, and Atlus had to produce like 100,000 more units. At least the PS3 isn't region-locked.

The Abyss of Addiction piece is what really sold me on Demon's Souls. I think Meho published it a month or so before the game released here. My initial concern was that it would be just stupidly, brutally hard, requiring more muscle memory than skill to enjoy. Meho's Abyss convinced me that wasn't the case, so I went for it. I bought it after work and wound up playing all night. Unlike Meho, though, who has mad skillz, I'm still stuck on Dragon God.

The multiplayer component is especially fascinating. Producer Takeshi Kajii invented it after an experience when he and several other motorists were stuck in a snowstorm. They all got out of their cars to help each other out of the snow, one at a time, but once a car was freed, the driver had to keep going or he/she'd get stuck again. So no one was able to stop and thank their fellow drivers or even really communicate. They were all complete strangers helping each other and then vanishing. The result is a multiplayer side that I've never really experienced before, and which is really a huge portion of the game's value.