Demon's Souls coming to PSN on January 8

As the dust settles after the announcement of Dark Souls 2 at the Spike VGAs last month, publisher Atlus has announced that the first game in the ‘Souls’ series, Demon’s Souls, will be available as a downloadable title on the PlayStation Network from January 8, 2013. Demon’s Souls is set to cost $19.99, which roughly translates to Rs 1,100.

To celebrate the re-launch of the game as a downloadable title, the company is hosting a World Tendency Event for one week starting from January 8 to January 14. For those who don’t know, Pure White Tendency brings a number of changes to the game. For example, the whole game becomes relatively easier as enemies have lesser health, attack power and defence while players do more damage. Pure White Tendency is a rare occurrence, as World Tendency is mostly decided by how many times someone dies in a level, and people die a lot.

Coming to PlayStation Network next week

The latest game in the series, dubbed Dark Souls 2, was unveiled during the VGAs in December. Dark Souls 2 is coming to the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC, and the development is being handled by From Software once again, with series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki at the helm along with director Tomohiro Shibuya, known for working on the Monster Hunter series.

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“Dark Souls 2 will offer loyal fans exactly the kind of demanding challenges and never-ending struggle that became the hallmark of this whole series,” said the publisher.

Earlier this year, From Software ported Dark Souls to the PC in the form of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition. The game was originally meant to be a console exclusive, but was ported over to the PC because of a massive online petition that requested Namco Bandai for a PC version of the game. However, due to the fact that From Software isn’t very experienced with developing games for the PC, the PC version of the game is plagued with shoddy porting problems, such as the use of the much-hated Games for Windows LIVE online service, along with textures that are extremely low in resolution. The PC version is worth buying purely because the Prepare to Die edition gives PC players new bosses to fight, along with the fact that it fares better in terms of frame rate, where the console versions had trouble keeping up.

The Souls games have interesting multiplayer modes as well. The games don’t follow the traditional matchmaking or lobby systems that most other games employ. Instead, if your system is connected to the Internet while you’re playing, you are always online. Other players can see you fight monsters and die. And if they choose to, they can also join your world to help you out with a particularly tough enemy, or they can even choose to kill you. There is no inherent voice or text chat in the game except for the messaging system, where players can leave messages for other players on the ground, such as warnings against foes up ahead, or requests for aid.