Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition – Extra Content Breakdown
The real problem with DLC, quite apart from the fact it costs money, is that most developers don’t give it enough TLC. Instead of feeling like extra content, it can feel like superfluous content. Dark Souls has always followed its own path. And with its new content, which comes as part of the PC’s Prepare To Die Edition and will be available to buy on consoles soon, it shows just what DLC should be like — almost.You can find IGN’s full review of the Prepare to Die edition here but here we’re just concentrating on the new stuff. There are two sides to it, the first being a large single-player area, Oolacile, which is split into roughly four smaller sections (the environments flow into one another very easily, so dividing them up is a little arbitrary). The second is a multiplayer arena, something the playerbase has wanted since Demon’s Souls, which theoretically should lead to easier matchmaking.If you’re a Dark Souls nut and don’t want minor spoilers about the content, such as character names, best to skip to the final paragraph now and know this: you will absolutely lap it up. The best thing about this new content is that it slots beautifully into Dark Souls’ world, like it had always been there, and shines much light on certain unexplained aspects of the original. Dark Souls, superb as it is, has the unmistakeable signs that it was rushed to make its original release date, and this feels like it was meant to be there all along.
This new content is that it slots beautifully into Dark Souls’ world, like it had always been there
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Finding it is the first tricky task, and you won’t be able to enter Oolacile until a significant way into the game — basically, you need access to the Duke’s Archives and the Darkroot Basin. There’s a little in-joke with the fans, based around a broken pendant and a somewhat obscure character in the world, but that’s about as friendly as Dark Souls ever gets. From here it’s one big stretch of deadly environments, and one hell of a boss line-up.
Things start off with the Sanctuary Guardian, which managed to kill me about ten times as a welcome present, a lion and serpent combination that’s vicious, poisonous, and shocking.
After this comes the only minor disappointment with the single-player portion of the DLC, an expansive wooded environment that is basically a mirrored version of the Forest area from the original. It’s a different beast, with a visual overhaul turning it into a spooky netherworld dotted with fake lights, but the familiar geography blunts a little of the impact. As with everything to do with Dark Souls, the lore justifies it, but I’m still not happy.
This place takes ages to explore safely, thanks to the ridiculously hard-hitting tree-men that are dotted everywhere and can be all-too-easily aggro’d in groups, though shortcuts can eventually be opened up and there’s a very interesting merchant character waiting to be found. I was around soul level 45 when first attempting this section, and got a good kicking quite a few times.
The boss awaiting at the end of this is a killer. Knight Artorias is one of the great legendary figures in Dark Souls’ world, a presence often hinted at but never seen — and here he is, a corrupted beast swallowed by the Abyss.
Putting him away solo is a massive challenge, worthy of comparison with anything in the original, and I could only do it in the end thanks to Summoning in some wonderful help. The fight is so good though, with more than an echo of Ornstein and Smough, that you want to go straight back and do it again.
From here things go down — deep down. A stretching walk over the remains of a town take you into its guts, preparation for what’s to come with ranks of bloated-head warriors and their deadly dark mage backup. As you press further and further in, you eventually find the very bottom. Barely lit, filled with enemies in corners, haunted at pockets by the unblinking eyes of ghosts that then begin to move slowly, steadily towards you. Unaffected by your shield, and simply wanting to touch you and drain sweet life, they’re a dangerous and unsettling addition to the Dark Souls bestiary.
The final boss lies in wait beyond this — and then, in best Dark Souls tradition, there is actually a final, hidden boss back along the path that’s even tougher.
Both are terrifying opponents to face, capable of destroying ill-prepared teams and turning what looks like a possible victory into a crushing defeat. Both match up to the very best Dark Souls has to offer, and ensure this new content slots neatly in alongside the wonderful original.
What is not such an easy fit, though it can also be great on occasion, is the PvP.
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What is not such an easy fit, though it can also be great on occasion, is the PvP. The arena is unlocked after defeating Artorias, and is snuggled away in an antechamber almost like From Software is somehow embarrassed. Six pedestals represent three different PvP modes over two maps — duels (one versus one), team battles (two versus two) and four-player FFA matches. If you ever want to actually play a game of Dark Souls PvP, then go for a Duel at the Ruins.
That mode and map is your only real chance of action. I’ve spent hours – and I mean hours – standing on the trapdoors for the other modes and maps, waiting patiently as the little glowing red circles supposed to indicate other players blink in and out of existence.
Dark Souls’ online has always been less-than-perfect, but the game is so good you tend to muddle through and be grateful when it does work.
But this is a dedicated matchmaking system that gives its players no feedback — it may well break the lore, but the fact you can’t have something as crass as a player count or an estimated wait time begins to really grate after a few hours. So basically, the PvP modes are largely unplayable at the moment. Perhaps things will improve as more and more players discover the arena, and there’s a wider spread of levels, but going on From Software’s past form don’t count on it.
That said, the one mode that does work semi-regularly, a Duel at the Ruins, shows what we’re missing. I’ve fought crazy dark wizards that are half-Saruman half-Zorro, giant hulks in unbreakable armour heaving clubs and knocking you around like a tennis ball, and assassins that turn invisible when you respawn, and strike with a backstab while you’re looking.
People don’t talk much about Dark Souls’ customisation options, but it’s a game where you can make your avatar look unique, and there are some awesomely silly hats and armour sets lying around — as well as unbelievably cool weapons.
The duels are so good because you see all of this, and come across tactics you’d never have imagined. Just like the single-player, thinking on your feet is the only way to victory, and so it breaks my heart there isn’t a better structure for it.
The Prepare to Die content adds much to Dark Souls, and not a bit of it feels out of place, or like filler. The single-player is recommended without any caveats, though it is important to emphasise it’s designed for experienced players rather than newcomers and thus you won’t see it for a good while. As for the PvP… well, it’s the same old story. The concept is great, and when it infrequently works it is great. But it just doesn’t work most of the time. While I love Dark Souls more than anything, sitting in front of your PC for hours waiting for something to happen is just a waste of time. The matchmaking needed to be much, much better than this.
To find out how Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition scored, check out IGN’s review.
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition — DLC Trailer for Xbox 360
Xbox 360
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Publisher:
Namco Bandai Games
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Release Date:
Oct 4, 2011 -
Also On:
PlayStation 3
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Summary
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Critic Reviews
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User Reviews
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Details & Credits
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Trailers & Videos
Metascore
89
Generally favorable reviews
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based on
66
Critic Reviews
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User Score
8.
7
Generally favorable reviews- based on 1612 Ratings
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Awards & Rankings
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10 |
#10 Best Xbox 360 Game of 2011 |
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7 |
#7 Most Discussed Xbox 360 Game of 2011 |
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8 |
#8 Most Shared Xbox 360 Game of 2011 |
Essential Links
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Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition — DLC Trailer
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Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition — DLC Trailer
Description: Here’s the trailer for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Artorias of the Abyss DLC pack.
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Season ticket holders will receive it on March 28. It will also release on PC on the same day, and will be available for purchase on PlayStation starting March 31st. 
Within its framework, four new controllable characters will appear, as well as support for cross-play between PC and PlayStation. In addition, updates are being prepared that will improve the stability of the connection in online matches. 
In July, the developers reported 500,000 copies sold across all platforms. The game received warm reviews from the media and players: the rating on Metacritic varies between 84-87 out of 100 points, and on Steam it is 91% (in total, users have left more than 17 thousand reviews). Preparing for The Evil Within 2.
Everything you need to know about the plot of the first part — Gambling
Too many times in recent years, the AAA video game market has tried to bury survival horror. But as a favorite action movie antagonist of the ’80s, the genre rises from the dead every time. So it happened with the first The Evil Within : commercially the game was not very successful, but it still found its fans. This was enough to get the green light for a sequel.
Launch trailer.
Buy game | All about The Evil Within 2
Every player is faced with a difficult choice: whether to spend their hard-earned money on the continuation of the game, the original of which you did not play? Do I need to go through the first part to understand the intricacies of the plot of the sequel?
Ideally, because The Evil Within is a psychological thriller in a very «classic» sense of the genre.
Throughout the game, they are trying to confuse us, hush up the facts, keep something under wraps. The creation of the famous game designer Shinji Mikami constantly throws psychological traps into which, like in a net, not only the main character, but also the player himself falls into. Until the last moment, The Evil Within keeps us in the dark, and even in the finale, when it would seem that they should explain everything, the scriptwriters are silent, leaving us to guess on the coffee grounds.
The game uses dark bars around the edges of the screen for added cinematic appeal. This will take some getting used to.
Nevertheless, we will try to help you understand the plot and the main mechanics of the original, so that you will meet the sequel fully armed.
Spoiler Alert . If you still intend to play the first part, it’s best to skip the first paragraph of entirely.
Welcome to STEM
Slowly drinking detective Sebastian Castellanos is a man with a tragic past and by no means a bright future.
Once a successful Crimson police sergeant and a happy family man, he loses everything in an instant: his wife goes missing and his little daughter dies in a fire. Salvation Castellanos sees exclusively at the bottom of the bottle. Joseph Oda — a faithful partner and the only living soul worried about the future of the detective, contributes to the transfer of Sebastian to the internal affairs department. For a while, this saves the hero’s career, but there are things that Castellanos cannot part with. From that moment on, the hero is haunted by guilt, which he tries to drown in a flask of whiskey.
Keeper of Ruvik’s secrets.
One day, after a long day at work, Sebastian receives a rather strange call from the control room about a «mass murder» in the asylum. Interested, he arrives at the scene with Joseph Oda and Julie Kidman. Entering the territory of the hospital, the detectives realize that almost the entire staff of the hospital was brutally murdered, although there are about a dozen empty patrol cars in the yard.
At some point, the boundaries between reality and a bloody nightmare blur: Castellanos finds himself locked in the subconscious world of a certain Ruvik, a man who was engaged in research on the collective mind in this hospital.
Sometimes you have to calm down not only your nerves.
“We saw something like this in Silent Hill,” you say, but Mikami goes further and hits the conspiracy theories. It turns out that Ruvik’s subjective reality is the result of an experiment to control the minds of all mankind: the creation of the STEM system, heavily funded by a secret organization. The principle of operation of the system is simple: people are connected to a Giger-like machine and a single grotesque world is formed from their consciousness, full of physical manifestations of human fears, complexes and repressed desires. Sooner or later, people connected to STEM lose their individuality and degenerate, doomed to forever loiter in the world of nightmares.
People who got into STEM completely forget who they were and play the role prepared for them by the master of the world.
The only catch is that only a handful of people with very rare psi abilities, the so-called «alphas», can manage such a world. Ruvik is just one of them, but his goals do not at all coincide with the aspirations of Mobius (that same secret organization). Being the disembodied ruler of his world, like a «ghost in the shell», he seeks to break out into the objective world and take over the minds of people personally, not wanting to share power with his masters, who, by the way, are the first to betray him.
In the course of the action, it turns out that there was another «alpha» in the mental hospital — a frail teenager named Leslie. Ruvik decides that the unstable boy is his ticket to the material world. In the end of the main game, we still manage to kill Ruvik’s manifestation. We climb out of the STEM and see Leslie walking away from the Lighthouse. Is it Leslie? And why in the finale Castellanos again feels an acute migraine, as at the first contact with the world of the collective subconscious? The game does not provide answers.
In fact, the plot is more complex, full of double betrayals, fake agents and other genre clichés (if you want to understand all the little things, welcome here). Does it make it worse? Not a drop. But the chaotic presentation of history is one of the serious disadvantages of the game. Moreover, you can find out the whole background of The Evil Within universe by exclusively playing all DLC.
Ward #9
If you’ve ever played Resident Evil 4 , Mikami’s last game made back in Capcom, The Evil Within is the spiritual successor to the iconic Resident Evil title. Features of the camera, the specific inertia of the hero’s movements, an inconvenient aiming system — all this migrated from the horror of the 2004 model to a completely modern game. Even monsters and patterns of their behavior, even crows from which loot occasionally falls out — all this causes a nostalgic smile.
Greetings from Resident Evil 4.
The Evil Within in no way encourages the unsophisticated genocide of all living things (in this case, the dead).
The level design allows you to bypass enemies, lure them into traps and simply run away from the crowds of «undead».
The above does not mean that Mikami is copying himself: The Evil Within has its own unique features. One of them is the system of «pumping» the player and his weapons. During the “upgrade” of the hero, they literally shock him, as if in some kind of shock therapy session in a psychiatric hospital. Looks…original. The game has a fairly large selection of improvements, but we recommend that you first upgrade Sebastian’s parameters: health, stamina, and the effect of first-aid kits. The choice for pumping weapons already depends on your style of play and your favorite arsenal.
This is how the process of “upgrading” a character looks like.
This is still a survival horror, the main task of which is to take you out of your comfort zone, to remind you that you are a hostage of the situation, not its master. You will have to run away from the monsters, and run away quite often.
