Did Dark Souls Eat Skyrim’s Face?

GameZone's Andrew Clouther weighs in on Skyrim and Dark Souls to see if, as IGN put it, "Dark Souls eats Skyrim's Face".

He asks, "Do you like your face with a side of demon or dragon?"

[LoneWolf019]

Dark souls is a lot more rewarding than Skyrim and I bet half the people who bought it gave up on it.

[Alos88]

I gave up on it without even playing it.

[JsonHenry]

^^ You missed out on a fantastic game man.

[dc1]

Dark Souls is the most engrossing game of all time. Incredibly deep and rich with weapon synchronization
I have said this before ... and still a little embarrassed to state it... I spent over 200 hrs in Dark Souls - and loved it. absolutely enjoyed it!.

But don’t take anything away from Skyrim.. After 20 hrs in.. they are truly two different games.

I know its hard to see it that way.. but you have to dive into both to understand where I'm coming from. I'll bite if need to. Peace and love all!

[Alos88]

Yeah, dying a thousand times is great fun, and then being told I suck by the elitist assholes who praise this game, what a wonderful game.
Not talking about you guys btw, but I've had some shitty experiences with people online when talking about the Souls series.

[dc1]

Everyone sucks at DS.
However most folks that engaged with/summoned through game play were wonderfully gracious. Overall the DS community is very grateful and welling to help.
I can’t tell you how many PS3 emails I have received (and sent) with 'Thanks' or general questions. If you get into again, feel free to PM me through N4G on any questions or concerns.

[Fylus]

When you understand the concept that death is imminent, and you use death itself as a trial and error way of progression, its easy.

The two are definitely two completely different kinds of games, like others have said.

Dark Souls is BY FAR more rewarding.

Skyrim, you feel BY FAR more powerful and in control.

Dark Souls makes you an ordinary guy with very human attributes and vulnerabilities.

Skyrim makes you "the chosen one" with unique abilities.

Both games are incredible for their own reasons.

[Fylus]

And dc1 is right about the DS community. The DS community is one if the best out there. If you go to the DSwiki forums and ask for help, I promise you that plenty of people there will respond positively, willing to help.

[FOXDIE]

Alos88, lets just say that one of the games requires gameplay skills and other does not.

Now they are totally different types of games, and they appeal to different crowds in the matter of in Dark Souls/Demons Souls the player is more engaged in game play because the game is based on how well you perform as the player.

Skyrim/Fallout on the other hand is not based on real time combat in the sense that every hit is 100% calculated and counts towards how good you are at using your weapon. Skyrim/Fallout is probably more story focused in this case.

[PCELITE]

Both games are great. No need to bash one or the other.

[LoneWolf019]

Yes they are ^_^

[Getowned]

Indeed.

[afterMoth]

Dark Souls is the game to get if you want top notch visceral gameplay. The world is gorgeous and sucks you into its dark (not always dark) beauty. The story isn't thrown in your face and you don't have a zillion side quests like Skyrim. The sense of journey and accomplishment is amazing.

Skyrim is the opposite, you get tons of quest, and I mean tons. Every squirrel will even give you a quest, go fetch me 5 walnuts please as I hurt my leg.
---but the core problem is having all of these quests with really lacking gameplay leads to me not caring about doing the quests. A lot of people have tons of fun with all the bugs in the game and using mods.

[FOXDIE]

nice point about the story. In demons souls it feels more or less that you are the story. You make the game what you want it to be. Now there is some background to why the world is as it is, but ultimately you know nothing and your explore the story.

Skryim/Fallout is heavily storybased and apart from the beginning where you probably start differently or have different backgrounds the game is the same when dealing with quests.

[Celeras]

Dark Souls has a better combat system, interface, enemies, and challenge.

Skyrim has a better story, quests, open world, and more hilarious bugs.

It depends what basket you want to throw your eggs in. For me, Skyrim's combat simplicity and lack of challenge is a turnoff. I'd love to try to enjoy the deliciously fantastic sandbox, but it keeps making me fight things. Dark Souls all day.

[StraightPath]

Skyrim - 96% Metacritic

Dark Souls - 89% Metacritic

Not so much.

[afterMoth]

Perfect tool for blind sheep to judge a game by.

GTV IV with a 98, LOL yeah right.

[DarkBlade4658]

who actually takes Metacritic seriously? Aside from MW3 developers.

[helghast102]

Fun fact, a lot of reviewers think difficulty is a negative.
Sucks to be them.

[LoneWolf019]

Im my own metacritic when it comes to games I want.

Plus many reviewers like game informer didnt score DS what it deserverd because it was to had. Panzys.

[zerocrossing]

No offence but only idiots trust reviews.

Dark Souls > Skyrim, but that's just my opinion everyone should make their own mind up and play what they enjoy.

[MariaHelFutura]

A pause button is the most rewarding. Especially when you have children.

[FOXDIE]

if you have children, then take care of them instead of playing games. Parents these days...

[Tanir]

game is so amazing, cant wait to start playin again, to bad for the people who missed it

[Mutant-Spud]

I gave up on it because after 15 hours my character was so broken I basically couldn't move from the second camp fire, couldn't go forward or back. I was more powerful at hour ten than I was when I finally got fed up and returned the damn thing.

[GamersRulz]

Both are great games.

[JsonHenry]

For my personal tastes I enjoyed Dark Souls much more than I enjoyed Skyrim. But that doesn't mean that Skyrim wasn't a fantastic game either. But the multiplayer component of Dark Souls keeps me coming back for more whereas I have already beat Skyrim and traveled the game world past my point of interest.

I am still playing Dark Souls.

[baboom223]

How have you "Already beat skyrim and travelled the game world past my point of interest..." The game is MASSIVE. you clearly are giving an early judgement.

[admiralthrawn87]

i played and beat both. i prefer dark souls but enjoyed skyrim as well.

[Captain Qwark 9]

both are my top two games of this year.....and better than anything last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that......

[RXL]

they're both different games...fantastic in their own right..enjoy them both...

but you'll need to set aside a year or two...lol

[jthamind]

i think both have their strengths and weakness, and usually one strength is the others weakness.

Dark Souls had amazing, tight and difficult combat, and that real sense of dungeon crawling, that sense of danger lurking around the next corner. in my opinion, however, the world wasn't as immersive as Skyrim's, because there was no real lore and only a few NPCs to talk to, and even those were kind of dull. Dark Souls was an amazing game overall, though, because like somebody else said, it's really rewarding when you overcome the challenges.

Skyrim, on the other hand, is all about immersing yourself in the world. it's populated with unique NPCs (other than the voice acting lol), many quest lines, many stories, a ton of lore, beautiful landscapes, towns, dungeons, etc. Dark Souls' world feels like one big dungeon, while Skyrim feels like a real world that also has dungeons. the downfalls to Skyrim, though, are that the combat is floaty and just not really physical and immersive, it's like you're hitting a paper target. and the dungeons are easy and the same after a while, there's too much of a sense of been there, done that. but i've poured over 100 hours into it so far, and i'm loving it.

so i think both games are amazing, but they both do things better than the other. i personally prefer Skyrim more, but i've enjoyed my time with both. they're like the best of both worlds.

if a game could come out and combine the two--the world, lore, and immersion of Skyrim with the combat, challenge, and dungeons of Dark Souls--then the universe would probably explode from awesomeness.

[kramun]

I agree, very well put.

[Captain Qwark 9]

it is very well put, however i cant help but feel im slightly biased toward my skyrim love since i have been a fan of the franchise for years.....that said obviously i lvoe skyrim with ds in a very close second

on that note your absolutely right, if skyrim had slightly better feel to melee, similar to ds and dungeons that made every step something to give thanks for at thanksgiving and some truly unique boss battles at the end of them, skyrim would rule all....

or if ds actually had a story, some better looking loot ( its got some nice ones but as a whole kind of disappointing imo ) and perhaps an even larger world ( it was sooooooooooo amazingly connected though, truly an achievement ) then that would rule all

but that brings me to your last point, a merger of both would prob be universe ending....or at least game ending becuase playing anything else at that point would be so underwhelming

[lifesanrpg]

I just like the fact that someone is calling out IGN for the constant hot air hype they dispense. What self-respected author has the nerve to troll Skyrim by saying one will "eat its face"

[josephayal]

Dark souls is good buy SKYRIM Pwned dark souls

[Giru017]

in English please...

[Alos88]

If I had gotten more responses like I did here I probably wouldn't hate the Souls series so much, when I posted elsewhere online I was told stuff like "Go back to COD!" and "Lol baby can't handle a man's game".

[Giru017]

The elitist min-maxing players are the ones who get their ass handed to them by the real good players actually using FUN builds.

The game is great, give it a chance. If a part gets to tough, you can always take the risk to go human and summon help, though this leaves you open to being invaded. If you ever need a phantom buddy, let me know :)

[Alos88]

Thanks, I'll pick the game up if I can find a good price online.
Thank you to all of you, it's good to know there's more to the community than the jerks I met elsewhere.

[TheSanchezDavid]

Saints Row: The Third ate the faces of every game I've played this year. I haven't had much time to play Skyward Sword, though, so we'll have to wait and see if that game becomes my face eater of the year after I've played enough of it.

Oh, we were talking about Skyrim and Dark Souls? Oops.

[Giru017]

Yeah, how could Skyrim's epic open world or Dark Souls teeth grindingly difficult [but rewarding] combat system compare to "Bitches 'n ho's" and purple dildo swords... </sarcasm>

[TheSanchezDavid]

For the record, I want to play both Skyrim and Demon's Souls, but I haven't had the chance to. That said, Saints Row: The Third is much more than what you listed as its primary tropes. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of that stuff to go around, but there's also an incredibly rewarding experience to be found, most of it rooted in the main element that makes up why we play games in the first place: fun.

[Chuk5]

Very different games. This is one case where the scores don't fully tell the whole story. I prefer Skyrim myself but they are entirely two different experiences.

[Drabent]

Open world > all sorry Dark souls u ARE #2.

[admiralthrawn87]

i use to crave open world games. nowadays they appear to me as huge games filled with tons of boring things to do. Dark Souls did open world in a wonderful new direction. its open yet directed and every inch of it is designed with the player's experience in mind.

Battling into the depths of the demon ruins, or the seemingly never ending path leading to the tomb of the giants....

or persuading 3 people to do something i don't care about for the thieves guild, fetching a staff, circle strafing and murdering the final boss in the game without a drop of health....Dark Souls just appeals to me more.

[grahf]

Going to disagree. Dark Souls is an open world. If you can see the location, you can explore it, and there are very few physical barriers preventing you from doing so. Kind of like Skyrim, you can see a mountain and walk to it. You are not bound by "levels" or "zones" in either game.

[DOOMZ]

SKYRIM, sweeps the floor with DS!

[shammgod]

Two completely different games, two completely different experiences...both great

[blaze22-qwerty]

BOTH are Good but Dark Souls is better for me Skyrim felt too easy after playing dark souls

[svoulis]

So let me get this right? As i have read countless articles about BF3 being better than MW3 and NUMBERS don't matter. Yet people do comparisons like this...which is exactly the same concept.

Both games in their own respects are good for their own reasons. People need to stop with this stupid filth they spew out of their face (or fingers for typing). Just stop being a baby and enjoy whatever you like. Numbers or not both games are great.

[opinska]

Answer: "N O"!

[iWishTifaWasReal]

only thing i hate about Dark Souls is the multiple endings. IT FEELS UNSATISFYING -,-

[VonAlbrecht]

They're both amazing games in completely different ways.
Skyrim is an enthralling "Holy hell, I can do what I want!" type of game. It's unreal, especially if you have it on the PC. Dark Souls is a dark, gritty kick to the balls, and you're a masochist for it. I'm a fan of Dark Souls because it feels more like King's Field than Demons' Souls did. I'm a fan of Skyrim because I can slit the Jarl's son's throat and throw his corpse into his unflinching father's lap, only to be told "Why are you doing that?"

You guys need to get over this mentality. They're both unreal games and neither of them are better than the other, it's all a matter of what tickles your fancy.

[grahf]

I've always had a soft spot for the Elder Scroll games, ever since Arena. However, in my old age I've come to the decision that fetch/delivery quests belong in the same level of hell as achievements and trophies and the Kardashians. I don't need some NPC to tell me to fetch 10 shoestrings or rescue 6 slaves from the dickwolves (AND ONLY 6!!! Penny Arcade) for a few coins or an enchanted garter belt. Thats why I stopped playing WoW, why I quit the SWtOR beta after 20 minutes, and why I won't play Skyrim. Shallow? Maybe. But I'm an adult! and can be shallow when it comes to how I occupy my time not hanging with my kids or wife.

Dark Souls on the other hand... Hey, go ring a bell. Why? Why not! By the way there are 2. How do you get there? IDK, you tell me! What happens? Buggered if I know, but its gotta be cool, right? I felt more immersion playing Dark Souls than any other game in a LONG time, and it isn't because there are 1000 books lying around that I can read to learn history and lore, or NPCs that want to bed/marry me, but rather the isolation and fear you feel the first time into a new area... your senses absorb every detail of the terrain, where enemies are, where they MIGHT be... its an awesome feeling. Then, coming back later and owning the zone because you have the experience rather than the gear.

[DonaldBeck]

dark souls eats skyrims face

[bk201soren]

I can't help but feel IGN was just saying that for the attention. There is nothing more controversial than insulting Skyrim. If it were any other game, people probably wouldn't give a shit.

Either that or I over-estimated the person who wrote this at IGN. If that is the case... well... you can't spell ignorance without IGN.

PS: I'm not saying Dark Souls is a bad game. I personally haven't had a chance to play it yet. I'm sure it's wonderful, but Skyrim is definably a good game too. No point to put Skyrim on the chopping block quite like IGN has unless you are looking to upset people.