It’s 1:30 AM Saturday night. Well, technically it’s Sunday morning. My family has long since gone to bed and I am slowly, patiently wandering through a run down, crumbling jail guarded by mind flayers. These guys are a pain in my ass. Get too close and they send a shock wave at you, paralyzing your body so that they can walk up and wrap their tentacles around you — and if they manage to do that…turn out the lights. Thankfully, I mostly encounter these patrolling tentacle heads on a one-on-one basis.

Demon’s Souls is incredibly challenging and difficult, but it’s not overly sadistic…

This is a first for me as I generally stay away from games with a reputation for causing massive frustration, forcing you to start over time and time again until you “get it right”. I’ve written reviews chastising games for such a thing.

So why is Demon’s Souls different? And why am I up at 1:30 in the friggin’ morning slinking around a dilapidated jail? Here I am putting off reviews that I need to write and an interview to put together playing a nearly two year old game and instead I’m taking souls, running the entire Stonefang Tunnel, determined to finish it regardless of the number of times I have to start over.

After killing the Stonefang Tunnel boss I let out a triumphant, “Yes! Suck it Name of Boss I Won’t Tell You Because It’s a Spoiler!” Eat it baby! Woo hoo!”

Most of the time when I fight boss battles in games, which I generally tend to hate, I feel relief and a sense of “finally that’s over” but in Demon’s Souls I feel…pumped. I feel like I genuinely accomplished something. This game is so brilliantly designed that it has sunk its claws into me like no RPG has in quite some time. And I have restarted levels countless times. So what is it about THIS game?

I think the difference is that it knows how hard it is and it knows that you’re going to die and its design takes this into account. If you are unfamiliar with it — there are no save points, no way to pause the game. If you die (and you will) you are thrown back to the start of the level. Oh you almost made it to the boss and died? Yeah tough luck, kid. Back to the start. You are constantly on alert — especially if it is your first trip through an area. Every turn is taken with great care. Every new room causes your shield to go up and your sword/wand/bow whatever at the ready. Only after a moment of calm do you breathe again, knowing that the room is safe.

And if it’s not safe…you better fight like your life depended on it because in reality…it does.

Dying is just part of the game and each death causes you to learn something new. When you tackle an area again you know where the bad guys are, you know what to expect and know how to best approach the situation. That didn’t stop me from dying a ridiculous number of times on the first starter dungeon (a castle area with a sleepy red dragon at the top) and honestly if I didn’t know going in that Demon’s Souls was like this I might have quit.

When you step back and look at the areas, they aren’t that big and the number of enemies, at least through the first three sections, aren’t too great, but it’s the fear of death that’s staring you right in the face and every single fight feels IMPORTANT.

This is so refreshing that I think it’s one of this game’s greatest strengths; knowing that even a lowly enemy that is nothing but pure button mashing fodder in most games — can run his blade through your gut in this game if you are careless, is a just awesome. Demon Soul’s has the most rewarding combat system of any action-rpg I have ever played — bar none. Shield blocks, parries, a nasty riposte move, two handed chops, dodges, long distance arrow attacks, nasty spells, and so on. Learning how to fight has proven a great challenge but is also incredibly rewarding and it makes re-doing levels not as annoying as it sounds because the fighting is simply so much fun and so ridiculously dangerous.

I’m not even going to go into the fantastic way the game works online or the brilliant character modeling system which allows you to start with a base class (soldier, barbarian, priest, knight, etc.) but then allows complete freedom in how you custom build your class. You can go online and find countless theories and custom builds that people have created: Spell Swords, God Knights, etc. Awesome.

Most games, even ones with “save anywhere” features and difficulty levels don’t truly take difficulty into account. Raise the difficulty and the enemies cheat, the game intentionally adds more monsters or whatever and puts the screws on you just to make the game more difficult, It’s cheap. It’s also why I tend to play games on the Normal level and if a game is too silly in its difficulty approach I’ll toss it on Casual or Easy and don’t feel any the lesser for it.

Not here.

Demon’s Souls WITH save checkpoints or the ability to save when you ant would be a TOTALLY different game. It wouldn’t be nearly as good. As it is now, this is genius.

It’s also a measly $20 at Amazon and if you have a PS3 and skipped it back in October of ’09 — now is your shot at redemption.

Demon’s Souls at Amazon

***

OK contest time!

Random.Org has spoken and the five winners of the Mount & Blade Warband contest are (drumroll)

TheKillmobile

Labreya

Plum

Webbfoot

Zeus

I will contact the winners tonight. Thanks for entering everyone and we’ll have another giveaway soon!

It’s a rare Saturday update from me and why do I do it?

Because I care. That’s why.

This weekend Soldak Entertainment, the developer of the indie PC dungeon crawl Din’s Curse, is offering Din at a superb 50% discount over the weekend only on Impulse.

I haven’t played Demon War yet (the expansion) but I have sunk a lot of hours into Din’s Curse and while graphically it can’t compete with higher profile games, the gameplay is awesome. Better than Torchlight awesome. So if you want some serious PC dungeon crawling action for $10 now is your chance.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/publisher/soldak_entertainment

The first issue of the Portal 2 comic book tie-in, Portal 2: Lab Rat is up at IGN for your viewing pleasure. It’s a shame that IGN doesn’t understand how comic books work and is asking the reader to magnify each individual page as if it’s a collection of scantily clad women, the usual subjects of their galleries, but whatever. It’s a free Portal comic, so I won’t complain. Too much.

Ben Kuchera is one of the best in the biz, and as a two time guest on Jumping the Shark he’s one more appearance away from a free coffee mug*. His Opposable Thumbs column today discusses, along with yet another former guest of Jumping the Shark, PR ninja and FIFA addict Tom Ohle, how “early” reviews can actually hurt the sales of indie games.

Both Ben and Tom are smart cookies — and both colleagues whom I respect, so make suerw to give this a read.

Here’s a taste:

“Especially with smaller, more affordable games up to $10, you’re really banking on a lot of players making an impulse purchase; at $50 it’s more likely to be a well-thought-out decision,” Ohle explained. “If a review is positive, you want people to be able to buy the game right then and there, and if they can’t, there’s a good chance they could forget about it, and you’ve lost that sale for the time being or, worse, forever.”

Oh, and the game they mention? Anomaly: Warzone Earth — on Monday GameShark’s review will go live and we concur that’s it’s worth buying.

There’s also a line in there about how if your game is plugged by Penny Arcade it’s like being touched by the light. No High Scores has some experience with that phenomena…those guys are aces.

*Tom Chick holds the record for JTS appearances, and honestly I have lost count how many times Tom has been on. We’re holding his mug until E3.

As the weekend approaches, and more specifically as I get ready to take my daughter to her dog training 4-H meeting, it’s time to toss out some links from the week that was:

Let’s start with a Michael Barnes bonanza as Mike was firing off reviews left and right this week and there’s more 3DS stuff to come.

Super Street Fighter IV 3D

Ridge Racer

Samurai Warriors Chronicles

The Dishwasher Vampire Smile

And his latest Cracked LCD: Der Pate (The Godfather) boardgame

Danielle checks out The Arrival Mass Effect 2 DLC.

Brandon plays would be movie star in Yoostar 2 on the PS3.

A tale of two Crysis 2 reviews as Tom Chick reviews the 360 version and Brian Rowe tackles the PC.

Next week I will have reviews of HOARD, Puresim Baseball 4, and maybe Din’s Curse Demon War if I can get the time in and get away from my current gaming addiction, which I will talk about on Sunday.

You are either going to watch that video and think “eh” or you’re going to watch that video and think “That looks like modern day Panzer General!”

That’s what I did.

I remember when Matrix and Slitherine Games announced this a while back but now I’m going to be doing an email interview with the developer to find out some extra bits before the game launches on May 15th.

So, if you’d like to help me do the job I get paid to do, feel free to submit a question(s) in the comment section today or over the weekend and if it’s not something already in my notes* I’ll add to to the question list. You can get more info at the game’s website: http://www.slitherine.com/games/panzer_corps_pc

* I will most likely take full credit regardless. Sorry.

Disgaea 4 is coming to North America in September of 2011 and to Europe sometime in the fall of 2011. To celebrate, NIS is giving all of you diehard Disgaea fans a chance to name an in-game weapon, special skill or a character in the game. Dood! I have a great appreciation for Disgaea as the very strange sense of humor appeals to me greatly and the battle systems are a thing of beauty.

It’s a shame I’m so absolutely terrible at it.

If you’d like to try your hand at coming up with a weapon name, head over to the “Come up with Dis-name-a” contest page and start naming.

Majesty 2 is a damn fine game so now’s a good time to dive in if you haven’t played this one yet.

PR time:

Paradox Interactive and developer 1C Ino-Co cordially invites you to THE most prestigious royal occasion of the year as the marriage of (have announced that) Majesty 2, the Fantasy Strategy game of regal proportions, is betrothed to (and) its three expansions (will soon be available) in one magnificent Majesty 2 Collection on April 19th for the almost-giving-it-away price of $19.99/€19.99! (.)

A sumptuous gaming package, Majesty 2 Collection brings together Majesty 2, Kingmaker, Monster Kingdom and Battles of Ardania, along with the Kingmaker game editor enabling players to create their own missions. Also included is every item, quest, unit and building previously only available for purchase using the in-game store. This additional content includes new spells, weapons, units, heroes, buildings, quests and much more.

Learn more at: http://www.majesty2.com

Welcome to Don’t Shoot the Food, a semi-regular series where I combine my love of gaming with my love of cooking and eating.

The Masters is upon us, both in real life and in my gaming life as I take my virtual golfer on the road to glory at Augusta. With that in mind, it’s time to visit one of the sandwich cart staples at Augusta, namely the Pimento Cheese sandwich.

As dishes go, pimento cheese is pretty simple and unassuming. It’s a spread made from cheddar cheese, cream cheese, mayo and, you guessed it, pimentos. Nothing too complicated, nothing too grandiose, just a simple cheese spread, perfect for crackers, or celery stalks, or as a filler between two slices of white bread, grabbed on the go as you head to the best spot to watch the action unfold at the Masters. Outside of the South, you’re probably not going to find it on the menu, unless you’re eating somewhere staffed by southern transplants. It’s one of those dishes that I always find fascinating when it comes to regional cooking. It’s pretty easy to find the main dishes that define a specific region but to me, it’s these little sides that bring out the character of the region.

It’s not hard to find a recipe for pimento cheese, but I used the recipe from the Lee Bros. book, partially because it’s my go to book for southern food, and partially because reading their recipes is a joy, both as someone who loves to eat and someone who loves reading about food. The Lee Brothers learned how to cook in the south and upon finding themselves in Manhattan, away from the foods they had been raised on, started bringing southern food staples back to the Big City, for themselves and other transplants. This quickly turned into a southern food mail order business as they found that there were more people looking for boiled peanuts in Brooklyn than they had originally thought. Their book is not only a great collection of recipes, but a trip through the food of the South. From the way they write their recipes, it’s obvious they have a great love for the food and for sharing it with others and when you read something like that, it’s hard not to want to get up and start cooking.

This recipe uses pimentos made fresh from roasting your own red bell pepper, but you can use jarred pimentos if you like. You’re going to shoot for a scant 1/4 of the little red beauties. Roasting a pepper is a relatively simple process but it is a slightly different flavor profile than the jarred things. Why not make two batches and see what you like better? Your arteries will thank you.

Pimento Cheese – from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

Ingredients
1. 1 red bell pepper
2. 8 oz finely grated extra sharp cheddar
3. 2 oz (about 1/4 cup) cream cheese, cut into small pieces
4. 3 TBL mayo – If you want to be authentically Southern, use Duke’s.
5. 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Cooking Steps
1. Preheat your broiler. If you don’t have a broiler in your oven, you can roast peppers over the gas flame of the stove top. If you don’t have either of these things, go with jarred pimentos.
2. Place the pepper on a baking sheet and put it in the oven so that the pepper is an inch or two away from the heating element. Broil the pepper until the skin of one side is black and crispy. Then, flip the pepper and broil the other side. Keep flipping and broiling until the pepper is evenly charred.
3. Remove the pepper from the oven, place it in a small bowl, cover and let it steam for 5 minutes.
4. Remove the pepper from the bowl, reserving any liquid. Peel all of the blackened skin off of the pepper. Chop the pepper into 1/4 pieces to make a scant 1/4 cup.
5. Mix all of the ingredients, including the pepper water in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

That’s all there is to it. Serve it up on some white bread with the crusts cut off and you’ve got a tasty little sandwich. If you want to go the grilled pimento cheese sandwich route, omit the mayo and once the cheese is mixed, shape it into a rectangle and refrigerate it for an hour. Once the cheese has set you can slice it and use it in your favorite grilled cheese recipe.

Still hungry? Check out the Don’t Shoot the Food archive.

Funcom has released a new trailer, or sorts, for its upcoming modern day MMO called The Secret World.

The premise:

“Imagine if every myth, conspiracy theory and urban legend was true. Imagine a world where you can become anything you want to be, without restrictions such as classes or levels. This is the premise for The Secret World, Funcom’s upcoming massively multiplayer online game set in the modern-day real world.”

For more info check out the Secret World website, complete with screenshots and background on the world and a Secret Society test.

http://www.thesecretworld.com