Dark Souls should need little introduction. Even if you somehow managed to miss out on From Software's stellar spiritual predecessor, Demon's Souls , you probably did not escape having your gaming mettle questioned by Dark Souls' "Prepare to Die" marketing campaign over the past few months.

Pure gameplay without many frills; An extremely satisfying single player campaign augmented by the most unique use of coop and competitive multiplayer around

Excellent art and sound design marred by occasional but potentially game-breaking  frame rate and clipping issues

An interesting question came up the other day while talking about dualism and the mind body problem, the idea that the brain isn't all you need to create the human experience: as videogame characters are controlled by external entities with consciousness, does this mean that these characters too...

"You might make it boy, but by the skin of your teeth." Rarely has a lyric in a trailer ever described a game so perfectly. That line from The Silent Comedy's "Bartholomew" arguably sums up the Dark Souls experience more aptly (and certainly more succinctly) than the visuals it accompanied: visuals...

A genuine sense of achievement which few other games can match; Gorgeous and varied open world; A vast amount of game time - at least 60 hours

Sometimes tips the odds a little too far against you; Controls are occasionally unresponsive; Offers only a few significant improvements over its predecessor

I have re-written this review so many times in my head and in so many different states of severe emotion. Elation, despair, frustration, pure exhilaration and exhaustion to name but a few, but I admit it; this game almost broke my spirit.

Intoxicating gameplay; Enormous open world environment.

The inability to play your online with friends

The transition from consoles to PC has been a mixture of ups and downs for Dark Souls . After the initial console release, PC fans wanted to experience the game as well, setting up a petition to Namco Bandai that actually pushed the company into porting the game to PC.

Dark Souls is one of the most challenging games we've seen this generation, and thanks to its dark and twisted environments it stands up as something different for 2011. If you can handle the brutal difficulty and you are prepared to die a lot, then Dark Souls could very well be the title you are...

The spiritual successor to Demon's Souls, Dark Souls provides extremely rewarding encounters and a devilishly difficult learning curve.

Difficulty; environments and encounters that completely engross the player; exciting combat; play time that runs to more than 50 hours

Difficulty; occasional bugs; camera can occasionally fail the player; occasional graphical problems in busy areas

Dark Souls is the debut Japanese-style RPG from Warfare Studios. It was created using RPG Maker XP and boasts an extensive amount of detailed custom sprite work and a cool anti-hero protagonist to complement its traditional music and gameplay.

Dark Souls is a brand new action RPG set in a rich, dark fantasy universe. Tense dungeon crawling, fearsome enemy encounters and groundbreaking online features combine for a truly unique RPG experience.

It seems fitting that as the new generation of consoles gets underway one of the swan songs of the last/"current" generation is Dark Souls 2 . Dark Souls and its spiritual predecessor Demon's Souls together comprise one of the best new franchises to come out of the seventh generation of consoles.