There seemed to be considerable surprise in gaming circles that a hardcore title like Demon’s Souls could gain some measure of critical and commercial success given the industry as a whole seems fixated with the casual games market.
Personally, I’m surprised people would consider Demon’s Souls a hardcore game. It’s a game for mewling kittens. For Care Bears. For little Smurfs, la-la-la-la-la-la-la-ing as they flounce around in meadows.
You want hardcore? Play Torchlight. In Very Hard Hardcore mode. Torchlight fans dub it VHHC mode. I call it “Lessons in Humility”.
You die in Demon’s Souls, and you get an opportunity to recover. How adorable.
You die in VHHC Torchlight and it’s all gone. Your expensively-outfitted avatar resplendent with purples and golds, heavily laden with money, equipped with powerful spells … gone, existing only as a ghostly memory.
This is hardcore.
It will not take long for the player to realise the developers were serious when they warned the Very Hard difficulty level was for “Masochists only!” A single grunt will give you cause for concern. A pygmy at the Hard difficulty setting is comical; a pygmy at the Very Hard difficulty setting is a deadly opponent capable of eliminating half your health with a singe prod of his oversized toothpick. An encounter with a swarm of them is nerve-wracking.
However, they pale in comparison to the bosses. You sense them before you see them thanks to the eerie glow they possess, a forewarning of the ordeal ahead. They do not seem to die, these bosses, and they kill all too easily. Hit and run is the order of the day when these titans are in the vicinity and woe betide the cornered adventurer.
But it is permadeath that makes VHHC the hardcore experience it is, an experience that takes this 2009 PC game back almost three decades to its spiritual roots. Every step taken might be a VHHC character’s last, every encounter potentially fatal.
Embrace death because it is inevitable in VHHC. Characters have lifespans shorter than those of mayflies. Two-hour lifespans are not uncommon; a 12-hour-old VHHC character is venerable. I’ve died so many times in VHHC, I’m running out of names for characters. The town of Torchlight will play host to the intrepid adventurer “asdf” and his faithful hound “jkl;” before long.
Of course, it is not their end that defines VHHC characters, it is what they accomplish before they meet that final doom. How far down will they delve into Torchlight’s depths? How many titans will they slay before they fall themselves? How many treasures will they leave for those who will come after them?
Be warned that VHHC is not for the timid, the easily deterred. This is a style of gameplay that calls for a strong will, an indomitable spirit and a robust constitution.
This is hardco- …
Dammit.
