PS4, Xbox One, PC, Bandai Namco, cert: 16
★★★★★
The fire has faded. The thrones are empty. The world is old and tired, drowned in ash. The dead rise and the dragons return. This is Dark Souls 3. The latest instalment in the gruelling fantasy series puts you in the boots of the Ashen One, an undead warrior tasked with restoring the order of the failing world of Lothric. The five Lords of Cinder have deserted their posts, and the Ashen One must track down and conquer these legendary heroes. Which is about as easy as it sounds. Developer FromSoftware’s games are notorious for punishing difficulty, pitting a small, fragile character against towering bosses and vile abominations that blow away health resources almost instantly.
Dark Souls 3 is perhaps the quintessential Souls experience. The game never holds the player’s hand but demands excellence, like a stern parent; even a basic enemy is a threat and if you want to follow the story you have to be prepared to find it for yourself. The “invasion” system has more dirty tricks than ever, allowing you to slip into another player’s games to murder them, disguised as a helpful white phantom or an ambiguous purple shade.
Content from previous games has also been worked in well; the mana bar from Demon’s Souls makes a return and characters from Dark Souls 1 and 2 can be found walking around. The dense, looping environments feel like something out of Bloodborne, which isn’t surprising since they share a graphics engine, though the world is a little smaller than other games in the series. The new “weapon arts” system gives each and every weapon a unique technique or buff that adds a new level of tactical mastery to the combat, like a subtler, refined version of the Bloodborne trick-weapons.
There is, then, almost a greatest hits air to Dark Souls 3, a compilation with a couple of new tracks and remixes thrown in to keep things fresh. You already know the songs, but they’re still great. PH
Wii U Virtual Console, Nintendo, cert: 7
★★★★
With Star Fox Zero about to touch down on the Wii U, Nintendo offers gamers a chance to enjoy a key part of the series’ history in the form of Star Fox 64. Originally a Nintendo 64 title in 1997 – also known as Lylat Wars – it’s starting to show its age in terms of pacing, tone and mechanics, but remains of interest as a striking piece of game design.
Predominantly a dog-fighting shoot ’em up, Star Fox 64 gives players freedom of movement in 3D space, but the protagonist’s spacecraft is locked loosely into a predetermined path. There are a scattering of more open arena sections, alternative vehicles and several routes lending replay value, but while the visuals and audio are rather outmoded, the quality of production and gameplay are consistently solid.
This is a very straight port too. The upside of which is that Star Fox 64’s Wii U outing runs with authentic precision and pace. The downside – if you consider it a drawback – is that there’s nothing much new added. Star Fox 64 is the very same game it was in 1997 – hard to put down and very much of its time. WF
