Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (PS4) Review
I loved the first Dark Souls because I was never very good at it. I'm one of the first to herald games that don't hold you by the hand for their runtime. I feel a lot of those Call of Duty or Uncharted -type spectacle-driven escapades not only make the experience only slightly above watching a movie, but they invariably detract from the higher brain functions games can and should tap into. Give me the choice between tapping buttons to imperiously shoot things monotonously or employing the upstairs thinking machine to sort out tactics when battling homicidal skeletons, and it's not choice at all. So even though it flayed me like a Greyjoy, I really dug Dark Souls . It was a complex, visually rich and mechanically challenging grind I was happy to consign myself to for several hours at a time. To be honest, I never possessed the masterful control over the monsters and environment many Let's Players developed through constant, blood-soaked repetition. I just liked...