Skyrim Vs Dark Souls.My opinion on these 2 big fantasy epics.

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Ok so before I begin this. id like to make it very clear that I have played both these games top to bottom, explored them profusely and yes, they are both awesome. The reviews are right, and Skyrim is a brilliant piece of next generation gaming, beautiful in its scope and epic. the reviews claim Dark souls is impenetrable, hard as nails and a triumpth in gaming. both statements are very true. However, im going to relay the reasons that I believe Dark Souls deserves more accolades,  and that it has been painfully overshadowed by Skyrim this winter, and possibly indefinately.

Skyrim is a huge open world game, the graphics are gorgeous and there is so much to explore and do you could indeed spend 100s of hours within it playing the game. I personally gave Skyrim over 80 hours, and while doing so managed to achieve the full 1000G. it wasnt exactly challenging but it was fun, time consuming, and it was worth my effort in buying the game. Its a better peice of software than Oblivion ever was, and I believe its because it takes all the best bits from the 2 Fallout games and melds it all together to make the perfect bethesda open world game.  You start as Dragonborn, end as dragonborn and you are a god amongst men. That however is my main problem with Skyrim. You are indeed without a doubt the most powerful being in the game. after levelling up enough you can destroy dragons with a few hits, shout at them to bring them down, and virtually every enemy in the game you can annihilate. There is no consequence for dying because you can save at any point, and just do it again. Sure, its fun and it means you dont have to repeat but it does kind of eliminate challenge. Glitches plague the game the same way they did New Vegas also. and this in itself can be a big issue sometimes, removing the realism and immersion. Still, the game does make up for it, by its fun quests, its NPC characters and the amount of effort and detail put into the background, such as all the books that are fully readable for example and the daedric quests which I found to be the most fun in the whole game. So to sum up Skyrim, I loved it. It had all the right elements. However, I believe it epitomises all that is currently an issue to me with all the latest games released in the last 2 years and this brings me to my next point. The differences between these 2 games.

Dark Souls. Yes. It is indeed as difficult as it says it is, and it is utterly impenetrable...but spend enough time within it and something becomes very clear. As I said with Skyrim that as dragonborn, you are the most powerful creature within the game, with Dark Souls it is literally the opposite. You begin as the lowest of worms. Everything you encounter is either hostile, or unfriendly. and even after putting the first 10 hours in, if you can last that long, you come to realise that virtually every other being within the game wants you dead. you literally live within fear of staying alive long enough to explore the next area. but you see, if this sounds unpleasant and not fun to you then your missing the point. Dying has been used in gaming for years as a submission of failure. you die, and clearly youve done something badly or wrongly. this is true for Dark souls, if you die, its your own fault. However, unlike other games, Dark souls uses Dying a core game mechanic. Without dying endlessly, and without learning...the groove of that certain area, then you simply cant progress. Why? Because when you kill something, you gain souls. Souls are used to level up, which in turn makes you more powerful. So the game essentially forces you into suffering and grinding souls. because when you die your souls are left in the exact spot where you die, so you have to kill all the bad guys again to get there, and therefore your souls duplicate. Once you recover the souls, you can return to your save point (called bonfires) and hopefully use the amount you have gained to level up, and use the next powerful weapon you have obtained to make it easier for yourself. Only through learning the layout of the level, and becoming powerful enough to remove the enemies can you hope to progress, and move forward to the next bonfire. The story of the game is very minimal, almost non existent, but it is there and its dark. its fantasy, just like skyrim, in a similar world, but its a grimy, gritty, evil world that wants you wiped from it.

Basically, Dark souls epitomises old school, hardcore gaming. The days when Megadrive games were the norm, and you regularly got all the way to that bit in level 6, then got taken out because you hadnt been there yet and fell down a hole or got killed by a bad guy you didnt know existed. Later in the game you come across bosses 10 times your size, that without learning the patterns of their attacks, you have no hope of succeeding,just like the old games. The word is Challenge. It poses a challenge within a game that I personally haven't come across since yes, the early days of gaming. It harkens back to those days where you had to learn the layout of the level in order to beat it on repeat visits. where there no saving at any point, Dark souls uses a save system where you have to get yourself to the next bonfire in order to progress, until later on when you can warp to previous ones. So you cant just save when you want, you cant even pause. the developers have crafted a game of pure warped genius.

Skyrim is a next generation console game that despite its many many good points, poses no challenge or threat, because you are the most powerful being in the game. Dark souls is a next generation game where you are the downtrodden piece of turd on the shoe on every single enemy or indeed everything you encounter. But heres the big difference, when you endure, suffer, grind and finally become powerful within Dark Souls, you can literally own every one of those bad guys that once proved a challenge, yet...if your not careful enough, you can still be killed by a rat if its faster than you.

To sum up. If Skyrim is this:

Dark souls is this:

Grim.