If you've ever played one of FromSoftware's oeuvre in front of another Souls fan, you already know what a scourge backseat gaming is. Now imagine you're a streamer playing in front of thousands of folks who are convinced they know better than you. Well, one streaming fan has created a lightweight tool that allows backseat gamers to prove on-stream they're as good as they say.

Vtuber girl_dm_ recently showcased the aforementioned in-browser tool during a Dark Souls 2 stream. The streamer explained on X that the tool "takes a clone of my latest save and gives a chatter eight minutes to show me what they want me to do." The result is then broadcast live, picture-in-picture style, to her adoring audience.

Called 'backseatNOW 9000,' the tool was made by one of the Vtuber's community members, and works without the viewer needing to download anything extra. Girl_dm_ explains, "It’s essentially pulling my save info, putting it to the host computer (which is running a legal copy of the game), and [allows] the chatter to remotely play for their limited session—it's Temu Google Stadia with a browser source viewer for me as the streamer."

For those who may have forgotten, Google Stadia launched in 2019 and promised a game streaming revolution. The subscription-based service offered playable games streamed over the internet without the need for pricey hardware. Its streaming library included both big-budget blowouts, titles exclusive to the platform, and limited time demos, but the service ultimately shuttered in 2023.

As game streaming services live or die by the stability of the user's internet connection, many of Stadia's big promises about cloud-gaming were left largely unrealised.

But let's get back to the 'Temu Stadia' setup, which also has its own techy quirks. For one thing, mouse and keyboard controls are currently not an option. For another, a backseat gamer will need to lock their mouse to play. You're also slightly limited in what controller you can use to backseat, as the PS5's DualSense does not currently play nice with the tool.

As for streamers, the tool does require more than a bit of setup. For instance, girl_dm_ uses Streamer.Bot and a Blackmagic streaming encoder for her fairly complex, interactive streams.

This also wouldn't be much of a tool for streamers without some basic community management features. To begin with, would-be backseaters can only log in to the tool via unique credentials that girl_dm_ sends herself, and which are only valid for their eight-minute session. Anyone attempting to hijack the stream via the tool gets a chat timeout for a week.

Hiccoughs and setup aside, the implementation of the tool is pretty elegant. I know my introduction suggested something a little more ego-based and competitive, but it's way more positive in practice.

Souls games are known for being labyrinthine in structure, with many easily missed secrets along the way. This tool allows experienced Dark Souls 2 gamers to guide first-time player girl_dm_ to the coolest corners of Drangleic, and serves as a shining example of the community at its best. Now, I wonder how backseat gamers will fare with that Dark Souls 2 path tracing mod.

Whether you think Dark Souls 2 is FromSoftware's worst Souls game or its best (as many diehard fans believe) it's undoubtedly the game that had the roughest development in the series. The sequel went through a mid-development reboot that resulted in a complete story overhaul, as well as the various level design quirks evident in its strange, surreal world.

One of the byproducts of this reboot was a host of cut content, ranging from small items to parts of levels to giant crab bosses. But one of the largest cut sections is an enormous sewer map that was ultimately replaced by The Gutter, a similarly subterranean area that connects The Grave of Saints and Black Gulch.

While various cut areas of Dark Souls 2 have been unearthed before, this sewer level has remained hidden until now. YouTuber and FromSoft enthusiast Doneda succeeded in restoring the cut sewer area, posting a video in which he explores the location in detail.

As Doneda explains during the introduction of his video, the areas that appear in most FromSoft games are dictated by the asset format MapStudioBinary (or MSB). Modders can use various tools to manipulate these file formats, which is how Doneda was able to unearth the sewer area.

As you'd expect, the cut map is incomplete, devoid of enemies and a lot of the more granular details you'd expect to see in a FromSoft game (like giant clusters of jars to roll through) But it is partially textured and mostly interconnected. It's also absolutely vast.

The bulk of the video is dedicated to Doneda poking around it, and it takes him almost an hour to do so even without any enemies to battle along the way. Some of the map has an almost temple-like design, with Doneda wandering beneath vast vaulted ceilings and domed towers. But as with the final version of the Gutter, Dark Souls' Blighttown is a clear inspiration, with the midsection of the map featuring a jumbled, ramshackle shanty with vast superstructures visible in the distance.

There are a couple of areas worth spotlighting. One, which Doneda describes as "maybe the best part of the cut map" is a tavern hidden within the Blighttown-ish section. Aside from the fact that it's one of the map's more complete areas, it's also neat to see a dedicated recreational space in a series that tends to be all tombs, torture chambers and poison swamps.

Another, more traditionally Souls area is what initially appears to be a boss arena. Passing through a placeholder fog doorway, Doneda enters a chamber flanked by two enormous statues, with a central dais surrounded by what initially look like swords. As Doneda notes, however, they are more likely to be unlit candles. Either way, these objects call into question whether this actually is a boss arena, as all those sword-candles would get in the way of a fight. Perhaps, then, it's just where you were supposed to meet an important character.

Aside from seeing what could have been for DS2's Gutter, the video also provides a fascinating insight into the design of Dark Souls 2. Right at the outset of his guided tour, Doneda encounters a pathway that isn't connected to the rest of the map, and notes that the designers were likely undecided on how exactly the player should proceed at this point.

In a way, it serves to highlight Miyazaki's own point that Dark Souls 2 "carried the rest of the series forward" in terms of all the things the team figured out over the course of that project, and how some of the studio's best work in games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring might not exist without its difficult gestation.

Dark Souls 2 is the second-best Dark Souls game and that's fairly uncontroversial. But it's also famously the most ugly. Chief among the complaints people have about Dark Souls 2, is that the game's original lighting engine—the one FromSoftware went to great lengths to show off back in 2013—was entirely absent in the final game.

In pre-release footage, Dark Souls 2's lighting always looked a tad ambitious for a seventh-gen console game. It was meant to be an important aspect of gameplay, necessitating the use of torches in dark areas, whose fire would cast dynamic shadows and reflections. When the game actually released on consoles it looked flat, murky, and torches were never a necessity. It was kinda similar even when it hit PC with the Scholar of the First Sin edition, so for those looking for something more akin to that pre-release footage, the DS2Lighting Engine Mod has been a go-to.

Now the team responsible for that mod is experimenting with path tracing and the results are pretty phenomenal. Check out this footage from the Shaded Woods:

The Shaded Woods is probably one of the ugliest areas from the original game (you can check out bits of it in this video), though some would argue Earthen Peak deserves that distinction. I'm not being contrary when I say that there's something kinda charming about Dark Souls 2's utilitarian ugliness, especially in hindsight, but path traced Shaded Woods is so richly atmospheric that it's possible to say it's pretty without kinda lying about it.

The path tracing applies to everything, including spells, and there are some other videos doing the rounds also. Check them out below:

In dark times, the indomitable human spirit continues, relentlessly, to triumph. Such is the lesson imparted to us by Dr Doot, the sax symbol who most recently graced our pages for 100%ing Silksong using his trademark saxophone controller and declaring it's not even the hardest game he's sax'd.

Well, chalk up another win for the Dootster. As noted by GamesRadar, the good doctor has completed his no-hit run of Dark Souls the first, attaining hitless victory over Gwyn, Lord of Cinder with a song in his heart and also in his saxophone. Combine that with his previous no-hit wins in Dark Souls 2 and 3 (and Elden Ring, by the by) and you've got the full combo: a hitless, sax-based run of the entire Souls trilogy, a feat presumably unparalleled through all human history.

To be fair, Gwyn went down like a chump. Dr Doot was using a sorcery build that made total mincemeat of the old guy. Rather than a nailbiter finish, it was more of a one-punch (one-doot) man situation. Still, our hero was rightly pleased with his achievement.

"The World's First Sax-Controlled Dark Souls No-Hit Run has been DOOTED!" wrote Dr Doot in a post on X. "I just beat Dark Souls without getting hit by a single enemy/trap while playing the game on an electric sax!!! I now can officially say that I have beaten THE ENTIRE DARK SOULS TRILOGY HITLESS ON A SAX!!!"

If you're curious as to how this works, it's actually pretty simple. Each note on the Doc's sax is tied to a different input. So you might blow an A to advance and a D to hit. If you knew which note was tied to which symbol, you could presumably envision every move he's doing from audio alone in your mind palace. I don't know why you would, but you could.

Anyway, next up on Dr Doot's playlist is a 112% Hollow Knight run played, of course, on sax. In other news, I've resolved to never say I'm good at a videogame ever again.

Sony has struck a "strategic business alliance agreement" with Bandai Namco, further strengthening its ties to Elden Ring and FromSoftware. The partnership was announced on July 24 after Sony purchased a 2.5% stake in Bandai Namco. Both companies have made it clear that anime and manga are the main focus in this partnership.

Sony and Bandai Namco said in a joint statement: "Through this business alliance and Sony's investment in Bandai Namco, as two of the leading Japanese entertainment companies, Bandai Namco and Sony will focus on expanding the fan community for IP such as anime and manga around the world and strengthening engagement, particularly in the anime field where rapid market growth is anticipated, while merging their strengths to create new and emotionally moving experiences for fans, and as a result of these efforts maximize the value of IP."

The statement also mentions "the expansion of works as well as products and services based on IP developed by Bandai Namco." This seems to suggest Sony will have a hand in creating new content around Bandai Namco's IP, which could mean we could get more manga and anime spin-offs of Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Tekken, and other Bandai Namco franchises.

Of course, Elden Ring is already getting a highly-anticipated live-action film adaptation directed by Alex Garland and produced by A24. However, at the time of writing Sony doesn't have a direct hand in that project.

Elden Ring and Dark Souls have both had manga spin-offs, but neither has an anime series yet (despite whispers of a Dark Souls anime back in 2023). Likewise, Tekken got a Netflix anime in 2022, Tekken: Bloodline, but it was met with lackluster reviews.

So, it could be exciting to see Sony adapt some of Bandai Namco's biggest brands into anime and manga series (if done right, of course). This is the second major step Sony has taken in that direction. Back in December 2024, Sony also became the largest stakeholder in Kadokawa, FromSoftware's parent company.

That partnership also emphasized film, TV, and anime adaptations of Kadokawa's IP, with the press release specifically mentioning "initiatives to adapt KADOKAWA's IP into live-action films and TV dramas globally, co-produce anime works, [and] expand global distribution of KADOKAWA's anime works through the Sony Group."

On top of that, Sony purchased the anime-focused streaming service Crunchyroll in 2020 in a $1.2 billion acquisition. Between all three deals, it's abundantly clear that Sony is betting its future on expanding its role in the anime and manga world, particularly through videogame licenses.

As exciting as that could potentially be, some fans are concerned these partnerships could mean future Bandai Namco games will launch as PlayStation exclusives. Sony was the Japanese publisher for Demon's Souls (and published the 2020 remake), so it's certainly possible Sony is aiming to collaborate on FromSoftware games again. However, it's probably too soon to worry about console exclusivity, especially considering Sony has been porting more and more PlayStation exclusives over to Xbox in recent years.

FromSoft dataminer and YouTuber BonfireVN has uploaded a new video comparing Elden Ring Nightreign's Dark Souls throwback skins to their original models, and I was surprised at how much they've actually been touched up since their original appearances.

I like to think I'm a tough, serious guy who's not easily manipulated when a piece of intellectual property goes "Hey, remember this other intellectual property?" But I'd be lying if I said I didn't squeal like a school girl when I saw the reprised Dark Souls bosses in Nightreign, or the Dark Souls skins you unlock by beating the game's final boss.

I think I just assumed that all of these models were just straight ports of their original or Dark Souls iterations, but BonfireVN's side-by-side shows that a lot of texture and fine modeling detail has been tweaked to make them better fit Elden Ring's more advanced visuals.

My personal favorite reprise skin, the Llewellyn/Drang armor for Ironeye from Dark Souls 2 and 3, is a great example: Its fur collar has gotten a big structural rework, while its texture detail is a generational improvement on the Dark Souls 3 iteration.

The Llewellyn set also benefits from perhaps the biggest and most noticeable upgrade to any of the Dark Souls skins: An actual matching helmet. The OG versions left Fashion Souls-conscious players scrambling to find a matching hat, while Ironeye gets a sick helmet/hood combo I seriously wish had been in the original games.

The rest of the skins have similarly subtle, tasteful modernizations, and this all just has me thinking about what's next. First, the inevitable future BonfireVN video(s) comparing the returning Dark Souls bosses to their originals, and second, new skins that will hopefully come with Nightreign's unconfirmed DLC. My big wishlist item? A Sir Alonne outfit for Executor⁠—Dark Souls 2's DLC samurai boss is a series favorite for me, and he perfectly fits the character.

As reported by Malay Mail, Malaysian-born British actor Pik-Sen Lim died on Monday, June 9 at the age of 80. Lim had an extensive career in British theater, film, and television. PC Gamer readers will recognize her as the narrator of Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3's opening cutscenes.

Though her performances in FromSoft's action-RPGs clock in at just seven minutes total across both games, Lim's haunted delivery lent a sense of gravitas and mystery to the recounting of Dark Souls' fictional history.

She adeptly set the stage of both games' cryptic mythologies, establishing the existential stakes of the story before we wake up in the ignominious muck of Dark Souls' early levels. Lim also delivered a vexing brain tickler of a line that haunts Dark Souls lore aficionados to this day: "And the Furtive Pygmy, so easily forgotten."

Lim was born in the Malaysian state of Penang in 1944 while it was still under Imperial Japanese occupation during World War 2. As relayed by Lim to The Straits Times in 1978, she moved to the United Kingdom in 1961 to pursue a career in acting against the wishes of her family.

Lim would go on to appear in dozens of UK TV shows, including Dr. Who, as well as many stage productions. Her most recent TV credits were last year's The Nevers and Vampire Academy in 2023.

"A joyous person, full of love and laughter and mischief, she was so much fun to be around and her gift for comedy was such that you always felt safe in front of an audience with her, that absolutely unique voice and vivacious energy carrying us all with her," wrote fellow actor Daniel York Loh on Facebook. "I was even lucky enough to direct her a couple of times in play readings and there were whole levels of her talent that I just kept discovering.

"She was so affectionate, so witty, so brilliantly scabrous and absolutely honest about the rubbish this industry deals actors of our heritage⁠—unlike a fair few others who actually try and cape it."

You might not have much time to take in the atmosphere in Elden Ring Nightreign while you're speedrunning between boss fights, but more attention and detail was put into the world design than you might expect for a spin-off game that reuses so many assets from the 2022 hit.

FromSoftware Environmental Artist Saori Mizuno dug into those details in a recent interview with IGN, where she revealed all the considerations that went into creating Limveld, as well as where she and her team drew inspiration from.

As its name suggests, Nightreign takes the bulk of its inspiration from Elden Ring, but the designers tried to put a fresh spin on a world that's already deeply familiar to many players.

Mizuno explained, "We didn't want to make it feel too different from Elden Ring, as it used that as a base for the design and the setting. One specific direction [we] did get early on was to create something that at first feels and looks familiar and gradually transforms into the unfamiliar and into the unknown."

To do that, they leaned into the game's themes of light and dark, day and night. Like Elden Ring, Nightreign's environments are beautiful, albeit in a sort of moody, haunting way. The designers used the looming threat of the oncoming night to amp up that haunting tone.

"Even when designing Limveld, that initial environment on the first day, I wanted it to feel beautiful, like from an outward glance, that looks beautiful and inviting, but pretty quickly you feel like something's off or something's not quite right," Mizuno said.

"We wanted players to begin to almost yearn for the night, and sort of look forward to this encroaching darkness."

Mizuno said she was also inspired by the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away, which she says brought "this feeling of being unable to go home, unable to escape from a dream, this sort of feeling I wanted to kind of harness while designing these worlds and tried to get that through to the player."

Like Spirited Away, Nightreign also has moments of calm and safety that contrast with the more sinister outside world, specifically in the Round Table Hold, which was brought over from Elden Ring with some tweaks.

Mizuno said this hub and rest area took inspiration from Dark Souls, explaining, "We wanted it to feel, from a design perspective, more cozy, more welcoming, more at home. One inspiration was the Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls 1, where you feel sort of more embraced by the atmosphere, you feel like you're coming home after these hardships, after a hard-fought battle."

The battles in Nightreign definitely are "hard-fought," if nothing else. As much as the high level of difficulty in Nightreign can leave me frustrated, I can't help but enjoy being in the world of Limveld. One of my first comments after jumping into the game was that I wished I had more time to explore and just take in everything.

Nightreign isn't in the business of giving you more time for anything, though, but maybe that's just another reason to keep coming back to it so you can see everything Limveld has to offer (and everything waiting to kill your team).

Thanks to the efforts of one glorious modder, there’s a whole new reason to play Dark Souls again. The Seamless co-op mod, released in April, lives up to its name just like it did for Elden Ring. No longer do you have to suffer FromSoftware’s bizarre multiplayer functionality—you can finally take an uninterrupted road trip through Lordran with your friends like god intended, and I lost a whole weekend doing just that.

Dark Souls deserved this all along. It’s a multiplayer game at heart: Playing solo you’ll run into the ghosts of other players sitting by bonfires or eating it to some nearby monster. There are factions dedicated to helping others out. Cooperation and community are embedded in its DNA, and it’s a shame that FromSoftware’s implementation of co-op is so damn fussy.

Not Yui’s Seamless co-op mod, however. It’s truly about as seamless as you can get for a mod: There are a set of files to drop into your Dark Souls: Remastered folder and a password to set, and then all you have to do is use an item to summon a friend and start playing.

I played through the entirety of Elden Ring with Seamless co-op, and the Dark Souls version feels identical. It can be hard to tell you’re playing with a mod at all. In an alternate universe this would’ve been the co-op mode that shipped with the game. Yui says she tried to “preserve the game’s challenge” by scaling up the difficulty of every enemy to make up for the fact that there’s more than one of you.

It’s been a while since I’ve played vanilla Dark Souls, but the skeleton folk in Undead Burg were still slicing me apart like it was 2011. Thankfully, dying while someone else is still alive doesn’t cause enemies to respawn. You can just run back to where you were, minus a small chunk of your health bar.

The mod is still considered to be in an alpha state, which means there are some bugs, like a dragon who refuses to stop torching a bridge you need to cross. A friend and I toppled the twin gargoyles and the goat jerk with the two dogs without running into anything game-breaking, though. In fact, the fussiest part of the experience wasn’t even the mod’s fault. Dark Souls is an extremely dense game compared to Elden Ring and is full of thin stairways and catwalks absolutely not up to code for more than a single person.

This proved to be a liability whenever enemies would ambush us in tight spaces. It was like being stuck in traffic with a mob of skeletons and dogs at our backs.

The rest of the game was essentially a revenge tour on all the enemies who made our first playthroughs a nightmare when we were still Dark Souls newbies. Those spear guys who hide behind their little shields? Try to block two of us, idiots. The gargoyle boss who calls for help on the rooftop? Dead before his buddy even showed up. Havel the Rock? We won’t talk about that.

But for the most part, Lordran wasn’t ready for two people who have seen the future, know all its tricks.

I was worried that it might be hard to go back to a FromSoft game without a dedicated jump button and a big open world to explore, but replaying Dark Souls in co-op reminded me of how close it is to what came later. Without the fear of getting annihilated by some random enemy and resetting all your progress as a solo player, the world feels infinite. We could play the game like speedrunners targeting specific items and locations out of the usual order people do them in. A detour into the forest for the anti-poison shield is much less daunting when you can tag team your way through its traps.

And without the game kicking one of you out after every boss fight, you start to settle into roles. One of us would take the lead while the other would stay back and look for openings that would frequently save the other from getting crushed.

It made me think about Dark Souls as if it were an open world game. Apart from not being able to freely teleport around, it was like playing a rudimentary Elden Ring. Peering over the stone walls of the Undead Burg and seeing the rest of the game below gives you the same rush that it does the first time you ascend Stormveil Castle. FromSoft has always been making open worlds that lure you to their farthest reaches, it just got more ambitious over time.

Invasions are part of the package too. Having them enabled is a lot like playing on a harder difficulty where you pray you don’t get jumped by some other group on your way to a boss, just like the old days when Dark Souls PvP was still new. Unfortunately, you’re limited to people who are also using the mod, which means you can go a whole session without getting interrupted. Hopefully as the mod catches on, more people will show up. There’s nothing like seeing the invasion message on your screen while you’re on your last Estus flask and five steps away from a bonfire.

Playing as the invader has its own issues at this stage in the mod’s development. I warped into another person’s world and it seemingly caused them to spawn way below my location, leaving both of us in a kind of purgatory until I disconnected. I’m apparently not alone in this situation, and it’s possible it works fine further into the game. Given the volume of updates and work that went into the Elden Ring mod and the number of people posting their own PvP problems in the NexusMods comments, I don’t expect it’ll be long before invasions are restored to full working order.

The Seamless co-op mod keeps Dark Souls’ spirit alive without a ton of sacrifices. It’s why I’d fully recommend it for anyone new to the series or not. It’s also why it continues to be tragic that FromSoft hasn’t figured this out on its own, despite not being opposed to the idea. I know so many people who would probably fall in love with its games if there was a way to hold a friend’s hand as they play without the frustration of the arcane summoning systems.

Dark Souls may not be built to accommodate a whole group of players running around together (the mod supports up to six players together at once), but nothing about a team of Chosen Undead goes against the themes of the game. You’re told over and over again by NPCs that you’ll go hollow if you give up on fighting for something. The fodder-like zombie enemies who sit with their head in their hands are a reminder of what that looks like. Playing Dark Souls alone can wear away your resolve, but having a friend to step in for you underlines what it’s always been about.

There’s certainly a thrill to doing it all by yourself, especially when the alternative was such a pain. Braving the horrors with the Seamless co-op mod, however, convinced me that sharing the journey with a friend just as essential to the experience, if not more so all these years later.

For all the trailers and articles dedicated to it, unless you got in on the 'network test' open beta event back in January, it can be surprisingly hard to pin down exactly what Elden Ring's upcoming co-op spinoff Nightreign actually is. A glorified boss rush? Some weird Fortnite-esque live-service Forever Game? Or is it an official replacement for Elden Ring's seamless co-op mod? None of the above, really, and the latest trailer aims to dispel some of those myths and explain exactly what players are getting into through ten minutes of soothingly infomercial-esque narration.

In the video below, FromSoftware breaks down the structure of the game, piece by piece, from the shifting overworld to the timed rounds, summaries of six of the eight launch classes and a quick look at the meta-progression options available between runs.

While I regrettably missed out playing the network test myself, I got to watch friends streaming it, and I'm eager to give it a spin. I've also got dibs on either the bird-man Guardian (the archetypical greatshield defender class) or the Duchess (an all-or-nothing glass cannon combo fiend with an aesthetic straight out of Bloodborne), although I'm gravitating towards the former purely because of the Solaire alternate skin that they show off in the trailer.

One thing that is relatively new in this trailer is the mention of personal quests for each of the playable characters. Talking with certain NPCs in the Roundtable Hold (your home between sorties) will unlock bonus objectives in the field which will build on the Deepest Lore of each hero. Probably not a major focus of the game, but it's nice to see a little bit of a narrative hook sprinkled in amongst the loot-hoarding, monster-mashing, semi-speedrunning combat.

The last segment of the trailer is dedicated to the big Nightlord bosses, which you'll be throwing down with on the third day of each session. While some of them are immediately familiar to anyone that has survived Elden Ring (horrible cosmic skull-bug Astel is returning to thrash another round of asses), there's some interesting new faces in there. I'm a little perturbed by the giant goat-man shaman with far too many giant googly goat eyes, but I especially want to tussle with the chunky-looking one-armed centaur warlord. His moves remind me of Ludwig from Bloodborne.

Elden Ring Nightreign launches at the end of the month—May 29th—with pre-orders open now on Steam. There's a £35/$40 regular edition and a £48/$55 deluxe version, which doubles as a preorder on some DLC coming further down the line, including "additional playable characters and bosses", hinting at a planned season pass kinda situation.

Dark Souls 2 is widely considered the "worst" Dark Souls game, which is not only wrong (that distinction goes to the greatest hits listlessness of Dark Souls 3) but ignores the fact that it could have had a giant hermit crab with a castle tower as a shell.

As discovered by YouTuber Zullie the Witch, the Lost Bastille area was originally meant to have a big 'ol crustacean boss battle, which would have marked the first appearance of a crab in a series that absolutely loves 'em. The one cut from Dark Souls 2 wasn't just a typical giant crab either, but instead a crab wearing a portion of the Lost Bastille itself on its back.

The video speculates about how this boss battle could have played out. It's possible that the giant tower-bearing crab could have been fought in the large arena in front of it, which is as boring as it is probably true. The other option is much more interesting: the player could have entered the castle tower itself in order to descend the spiral stairs and wack the poor decapod in the backside until it died, all the better to receive the Malformed Shell, which actually exists in Dark Souls 2 and was originally titled the two-handed hammer of the Hermit Crab (the Malformed Claw is also associated with this ditched boss). It's also possible that the player could choose either option.

FromSoftware seemed pretty determined to get a crab into Dark Souls 2 for a while, which is pretty on brand. There's a second crab-centric mockup in the game files, also in the Bastille area. This version had more legs, a rounder body, a big long head, and based on its design, might have been able to leave its tower shell—presumably offering the player a brief window in which to slash away at its underside thus causing massive damage.

Whatever was actually planned, it's more proof that Dark Souls 2 had a lot of good ideas left on the cutting room floor, the most famous being its dynamic lighting system—which FromSoft actually showed off pre-launch, and which modders have since reinstated. Less quantifiable, but more pervasive, is the game's austere sense of emptiness in some areas, like it was never given a final decorative coating. In this way, it kinda reminds me of all the PS2-era aping dungeon crawlers that are popular at the moment. Dark Souls 2 has a special vibe about it, something vague and indescribable, that I love.

Arguing about Dark Souls 2 is a sport around here. In 2020, James Davenport controversially brought attention to its brilliance, a fact that many simply will not countenance due to a lack of imagination. In 2022 Lincoln Carpenter saw fit to chronicle the difficulties and injustices experienced by Dark Souls 2 defenders. A year later, Sam Greer proclaimed that "time has redeemed Dark Souls 2" which is controversial only in the sense that—c'mon Sam—it didn't need redeeming.

He's doing it again. FromSoftware modding savant Yui, creator of the wildly popular Elden Ring seamless co-op mod and the only just released Dark Souls 3 seamless co-op mod, is now doing the same with Dark Souls: Remastered.

Yui announced the mod earlier this week, posting a video of it in action on YouTube with his usual straightforward spiel. "Mod which removes all multiplayer boundaries and allows for connections to persist after death," he wrote in the mod's YouTube description. "Play with friends from the tutorial to the very end of the game, with synchronised progress, and no resummoning or interruptions. Invasions are optional and active by default."

The video shows Yui's Dark Souls character, resting at Firelink Shrine, using a "Crystal Eye Orb" to join a seamless co-op session with his friend and longtime testing companion Oroboro. The two then fight their way together up the initial section of the Undead Burg. Later, the video cuts to the boss fight with Sif, which the duo lose before respawning together at the Darkroot Garden bonfire.

There's no firm release date for the mod yet. In an update post on his Ko-Fi page. Yui said he "can't give a release window right now" but that he is "nearing completion" on the project. "I have completed a few playthoughs with friends to make sure everything is working alright and it seems fairly stable aside from a few bugs fixed along the way." Yui also casually mentions that he "fixed several vanilla game multiplayer bugs" along the way. What a champ.

Of all Yui's seamless co-op projects, this is the one I'm personally most excited for. I love both Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3, but if there's any FromSoftware world I'd like to poke around with a pal, it's Lordran. I'm also slightly surprised it's happening at all, given Yui previously stated he wouldn't add seamless co-op to Dark Souls. In his Nexus Mods FAQ for Elden Ring's seamless co-op mod, Yui posited the question "Will you make a similar mod for Dark Souls?" and then answered "No."

At the time, I wondered whether that was due to some technical obstacle, given the game runs on a different engine from Elden Ring and DS3. But clearly that isn't the case. Then again, Yui's seamless co-op mod is specifically for Dark Souls: Remastered, so strictly speaking his initial statement holds true.

Meanwhile, FromSoftware is gearing up to release its own take on seamless co-op, with Elden Ring: Nightreign arriving on May 29. Morgan took it for a spin back in February, and while he enjoyed it, it wasn't quite the Elden Ring co-op experience he expected. "Nightreign's fixation on pure combat and forward momentum is already showing its limits," he wrote in his preview. "The more efficient we got at wiping out mob camps, sprinting to the next one, and upgrading our flasks at churches, the more it felt like the majority of playing Nightreign is thwacking various loot piñatas with a stick until the real fun begins."

If you've played Dark Souls, chances are you remember Blighttown—and none too fondly. Rickety, thin platforms occupied by scab-coated poison dart shooters. Precarious walks above a fatal drop into the accursed toxic swamp below. And, lest we forget, the deadliest enemy of all: The framerate absolutely tanking on the Xbox 360. You remake-players on those fancy modern rigs don't know how good you've got it.

I had previously tucked this nightmare back into the recesses of my mind, where it belongs, starving in the shadows. However, Grimrukh—co-creator of WIP mega-mod Dark Souls: Nightfall—has emerged from his silence on X to inform everyone that Miyazaki and co. architected this terror with "from scaled copy/pastes of these 10 bits of wood" (via GamesRadar+).

I am staring, dear reader, at these 10 scraps of unassuming timber, and I am wrought with a sort of existential dread, much in the same way that one might look at the vial containing a supervirus in an apocalypse movie—possessed of a creeping, unrelenting realisation that something so fundamentally terrifying can come from such humble origins. In isolation, these 10 solitary assets are nothing more than slabs of low-poly lumber, but combined in the right configuration set teenage Harvey's controller a-flying.

It does remind me of just how savvy and efficient FromSoftware can truly be. While Elden Ring did catch a bit of flak for its asset reuse, it's hard to overly complain when the end result left its mark on a generation of players—it being one of the biggest games of its decade and all. That the game's developers were able to cobble together its most infamous zone from a mere handful of planks is nothing short of inspiring. Also, terrifying.

Anyway, Grimrukh's fun fact also came as a bit of a relief to those waiting for Nightfall, since his last tweet was made in October of 2024, wherein he said "I've been hit with pneumonia immediately after getting back from an overseas trip and it's not a fun time." Instead, as he now reveals, he's merely been locked in "Grim's cave, where he is working on Nightfall almost every day and isn't allowed to leave until it's done."

I'm personally glad to hear he's feeling better, even if I whole-heartedly resent him for informing me that I can have my blood pressure raised by 10 bits of muddily-textured digital scrap arranged just-so. It's also good to hear that Nightfall is still in progress, since the ultra-ambitious add-on was announced way back in 2020 and is yet to see the light of day.

Typically I open these news stories with a quippy hook or an interesting bit of imagery—something to get you into the right mindset. In this case, however, I am stunned into metaphorical silence, because goddamn, this might be one of the most impressive challenge runs I've ever seen.

Souls streamer dinossindgeil, also known as Nico, has successfully beaten every mainline base Souls game (Dark Souls 1-3, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, and Demons Souls) without getting hit. Back-to-back. Without levelling up in any of them. This genuinely awe-inspiring achievement was managed on a Stream over the weekend, though you can watch his final moments of triumph on the streamer's YouTube channel below.

After finally snuffing out the Soul of Cinder in Dark Souls 3, Nico immediately bursts into tears—his partner rushes over to hug him: "We did it," he pretty much weeps. "Almost two years, almost two years. Oh my god, we did it … that was perfect RNG, literally perfect RNG, it couldn't have been any better."

It's hard to overstate how titanic of an achievement this is. I cannot even possibly fathom the mental fortitude it takes to beat seven entire souls games without taking a single hit. What's mad is that this is actually something Nico has done before, just without the level 1 limitation.

Back in 2022, he completed the same challenge—with the aid of levels and items aplenty, of course. It took him about 120 days back then. It's not at all surprising that this one took longer, though—limiting your power progression in these games is a challenge on its own, requiring you to use specific items and builds to combat the uphill struggle. Let alone doing it seven times. In a row. Without getting hit. The full VoD, just to put it in perspective, is about 11 hours long—that's a herculean amount of focus to sustain for that amount of time. The mind boggles.

Once Nico's had time to calm down and, understandably, work out the catharsis through his eyeducts, he asks his viewership: "That was good entertainment, right?" Before dedicating the run to Lilly, his late cat. "I promised to myself that I'm gonna finish it for her, no matter what happens. I didn't want to stop doing it because I kinda promised it." Jeez, now I'm getting all choked up.

As for what's next? "I'm gonna do something different now, guys." Fair enough. "Some are souls [runs] of course, some variety sh*t as well … I will figure something out guys, I'm not 100% sure." I reckon a nap's in order, and maybe some therapy. "What a day," Nico concludes, before signing off. "I wanna just get naked and run around the city right now."

The Elden Ring Seamless Co-op mod is one of the best unofficial addons for FromSoftware's fantasy RPG. Not only does it let you traverse the Lands Between with pals, but it also frees you from the usual constraints of FromSoft multiplayer. As our own Wes Fenlon enthused last year, the mod "makes Elden Ring feel like a true cooperative game through and through, rather than a cooperative experience cobbled together around FromSoftware's trademark odd online systems."

After injecting co-op into Armored Core 6 last year, the creator of the mods, who simply goes by Yui, has turned their attention to another FromSoft game: Dark Souls 3. On Friday, Yui posted a video of the Dark Souls 3 Seamless Co-op mod in action, describing it as a "mod which removes all multiplayer boundaries and allows for connections to persist after death."

The video shows Yui and a friend making their way through the Lothric castle area of Dark Souls 3, kicking off with a battle against the Dancer of the Boreal Valley. Together, they tie the dancer into knots, though this isn't that remarkable since you can fight bosses with other players in DS3 anyway. But normally a win brings that multiplayer session to an end.

Once the dancer has spun its last pirouette, however, the pair carry on into the castle itself, carving their way through a bunch of regular enemies before arriving at a bonfire and teleporting to Firelink Shrine. Both players arrive at the shrine without issue, then warp back to the castle to carry on their adventure, all without DS3 once glitching or crashing or throwing a massive tantrum.

I have to say, it looks glorious, and once again highlights how much fun FromSoft's games are when you can bring a friend along. Yui doesn't provide many other details about the mod or how it works, but they do specify you'll be able to "play with friends from the tutorial to the very end of the game, with synchronised progress, and no resummoning or interruptions." Further, they add "Invasions are optional and active by default" and that players "Can adjust the multiplayer scaling of the enemies to [their] liking." In other words, it's a fully functional co-op mode for Dark Souls 3, just like the Seamless Co-op mod for Elden Ring.

There's no word on when the mod will actually be released, Yui simply says it's "work in progress." The modder does appear to have had a change of heart over making further co-op mods after their work on Elden Ring. In an FAQ on the Elden Ring Seamless Co-op mod's nexusmods page, Yui posited the question "Will you make a similar mod for Dark Souls?" to which they then answered "No." It's possible they meant specifically Dark Souls, which runs on much older tech than Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring, and is presumably much more difficult to create a seamless multiplayer mode for.

In any case, it's great to see Yui bringing their excellent multiplayer modding skills to other FromSoft games. It's possible FromSoft itself has taken a leaf from the modder's book, given its next project, Elden Ring Neightrein, is a multiplayer-centric version of the RPG. Certainly, FromSoft is aware of Yui's work, and even stated it might 'consider ideas like that' with future games.

I am suffering, dear reader, from a Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice deficiency. Despite having a massive impact on the industry at large, with soulslikes copy-catting more mechanics from Sekiro than their namesake, snagging timed blocks and posture staggers, FromSoftware chose to stick to what it knew.

It has officially been more than five years since Sekiro fundamentally altered my brain chemistry, and I am hankering. Imitators may enter the stage and do a damn fine job—Lies of P was great, Lords of the Fallen 2023 was solid, and I'm currently scratching the itch with Nine Sols, a game I'm astonished I missed. But everything only reminds me of her, man. Is this what Bloodborne players feel like?

Despite all this, the vibes I'm getting from the game none of us expected to be announced might just sate my bloodlust for a time. Elden Ring: Nightreign looks supremely, deliciously weird—a spin-off, self-contained, multiplayer, non-live service game where you and two mates drop in to romp around the lands between in an ever-shrinking storm.

Just the trailer has my Sekiro-loving maw salivating like an accursed beast, but our very own Wes Fenlon happened to play around six hours of the thing, and it's enough to make me get down on all fours and bark. I am positively feral for it.

Wes says the cast of Nightreign dash "around on foot like they're set to permanent fast-forward, now nimbly mantling cliffs and walls", and states that it reminds him of "the sudden popularity of bootleg, hacked versions of Street Fighter 2 arcade machines that sped up the combat and added wild special moves like mid-air fireballs". I am rattling the bars of my cage and bellowing 'Sekiro, my son, you've returned from the war!' because that sounds exactly like Sekiro.

While slow, deliberate combat has been a mainstay of the souls series for a time, Sekiro was the first real attempt to iterate on that formula. It did away with fat rolling and customisable equipment, and instead gave you a simple set of defensive tools—timed parrying, mikiri counters, and jumps—along with a few different ninja tools to preserve customisation. The result was a game that played and felt faster than anything FromSoftware would produce until Armoured Core 6.

Elden Ring flirted with the idea of working in more Sekiro-isms, sure, but it only ever teased. Bosses were fast and frenetic like never before, and the game had a jump button that was even a good defensive counter for some of them, like my boy Hoarah Loux. Bonus points if you guess which boss was my favourite. Heck, Shadow of the Erdtree even added a tear that gives you a limited timed block mechanic, mercilessly locked behind a DLC that takes a couple dozen hours to reach even if you're rushing there. FromSoftware, please, just let me relive the glory days.

My inconsolable, mouth-frothing excitement has only been further raised to a fever pitch by Wes' breakdown of the playable characters in Nightreign. They all seem like the Wolf has had his soul sundered into several pieces. The Wylder has a grappling hook, the Duchess is a glass cannon who can only quick-step, and there's even an enigmatic "Parryer" that's not been fully revealed, but that FromSoftware promises will "have a moveset based around the Deflecting Hard Tear parry mechanic in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree." This is too much, I'm comin' down with a case of the vapours.

Listen—Nightreign is a spin-off, so we don't know what FromSoftware is working on next as its big mainline piece. It could be another Elden Ring, it could be Armoured Core 7, it could even be (please please please) Sekiro 2. Or it could be something completely out of left field. But if the combat of Nightreign is as fast-paced and electric as promised, the hungry soul in my chest is in for a feast.

Even though Shadow of the Erdtree only arrived in June, the beast still hungers. The beast is us, and we're hungering for more Elden Ring. During the PlayStation Partner Awards in Japan, as reported by IGN Japan, director Hidetaka Miyazaki unsurprisingly found himself fielding questions about the possibility of more Elden Ring—though we already knew Shadow of the Erdtree would be its only expansion. But what about a sequel?

There are no prizes for guessing that he wouldn't just drop a big sequel announcement off-the-cuff at an awards show. "We don't have any particular plans to develop Elden Ring 2," Miyazaki said. But there's a big gulf between not having any specific plans and saying it will categorically never happen.

FromSoftware didn't want to dilute the story of Elden Ring by releasing it piecemeal through multiple expansions, but that doesn't preclude the studio from telling new stories within that setting. Which is good news, because it's a killer setting. Indeed, Miyazaki went on to clarify that his answer was not meant to imply that Elden Ring has reached the end of the line. It could still have a future.

"I want to convey that we are not denying the possibility of developing the Elden Ring IP in some form in the future,” he said. Pretty vague! Technically, "developing the IP" doesn't even mean a videogame. Previously, Miyazaki has discussed how Elden Ring could be adapted into a movie or TV show, as long FromSoftware found a "strong partner".

To be honest, I don't think I'm all that down for a big or small screen adaptation—Elden Ring's approach to storytelling is not one I think would translate particularly well, and it only works as brilliantly as it does because of the exceptional videogame it inhabits. Just watching a bunch of weirdos spouting vague gibberish for a couple of hours? Well, I can do that in the pub.

With that in mind, I'm hoping for a new Elden Ring game, eventually. Though likely not for a while—even though FromSoftware knocked out Shadow of the Erdtree exceptionally quickly.

No matter how good you think you are at Elden Ring, Twitch streamer MissMikkaa is better. This isn't me being hard on you, dear reader, it's just a statement of fact—this absolute monster has beaten the game's bosses with an acoustic guitar and slain Melania with one hand (and a dance pad, then on a dance pad and a controller at the same time in two different playthroughs).

Now, like Rock Lee shrugging off his training weights, MissMikkaa has done a playthrough with her controller—except there's a secret, second set of training weights underneath, because she's done it all at level one. Eight times. With each run getting subsequently harder.

In case you're unfamiliar with the concept of New Game+ mechanics in souls games, they're a vehicle to punish your masochistic urges—by which I mean they allow you to embark on subsequent playthroughs with all of your gear, souls, and levels intact, but at a higher difficulty. For Elden Ring, these NG+ playthroughs—called "journeys"—cap out their increased difficulty at around journey 7/8.

MissMikkaa, seeing this quiet suggestion to maybe grind out some runes and get her stats up, decided—nah, who needs it. 269 hours (over the 8 playthroughs to get there) later, the streamer has accomplished her goal: "In total I died 2145 times to bosses in NG+7".

While levels might not be in MissMikkaa's favour,, her equipment certainly was up to snuff—with clever employment of her physick flask and talismans being her only saving grace, though she made it a point of pride to avoid using "summons, great runes, throwing pots, sorceries nor incantations." 

Funnily enough, Malenia—a boss so hard it inspired a living legend to kill her 2,000 times—wasn't even the one to give MissMikkaa the most trouble. That award goes to those freaking dual gargoyles in the Siofra Aqueduct: "Here is the Malenia kill, which took me 63 tries. The hardest boss was Valiant Gargoyles DUO, which took me a whopping 405 tries." 

You might think to yourself—gee, that's an achievement. I bet she's going to take a nice, long break from Elden Ring, she's got a while before the DLC comes out after all. Wrong. MissMikkaa has already set out to do a no-healing run—though she'll mercifully be levelling up this time, using the character she forges in that particular crucible to embark on the upcoming Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.  

Come, ye weary tarnished! FromSoftware has dropped another trailer for its long-awaited Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, which you can go ahead and set your hollowed eyes on right now. Maybe with a pair of shades handy, because everything's a little on fire and I don't want you to hurt your eyes.

The trailer itself—a gorgeous cinematic filled with beautiful character designs, goosebumps-prompting music and glossy 3D renders, details how the "tyranny of Messmer's flame" prompted a war that saw Miquella (of whom Malenia is infamously the blade) abandon his "golden flesh, his blinding strength, even his fate. But we are not deterred. We choose to follow." 

Several of the freaky boss monsters and enemies from the earlier trailer make an appearance here, too, such as the Chinese Lion Dance-inspired freak and the giant burning wicker man—there's a couple of those, actually, marching over the scorched landscape, which makes me very concerned we'll have to fight multiple.

I'm honestly just happy for the Elden Ring enjoyers among us living in a golden age of new details after the well had stayed dry for months. Announced early last year, Shadow of the Erdtree quickly gave rise to a sea of speculation and, well, desperation as the months ticked on with nary a peep from father FromSoftware.

Such was entirely in-keeping with the studio's tight lips, though, the silence only broken almost a whole year later when an actual trailer broke with a release date, making it all but the sole reason for a week's delay to Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail. In fact, something similar happened with the base game itself, which took such a merry roundabout route to its later release that "going hollow" became common parlance for waiting an eternity for game news among soulslike enjoyers.

And now we're here with a fresh batch of frames to comb through one-by-one. I'm personally looking forward to all the off-the-wall theories about just what Miquella's motives were before travelling to the Land of Shadow. Maybe they had better wi-fi there, who's to say.

To celebrate the upcoming Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree, Bandai Namco is putting on a competition to test fans' love and knowledge of the soulslike, and the winners will be treated to some stunning and strange prizes. 

The Return to Grace video contest involves fans creating their own Elden Ring videos or trailers that capture their most cherished memories with each one of the Tarnished. There's obviously a lot players could record for this competition, but according to the official website, as long as you "show us your deep understanding of the world of Elden Ring and ability to capture its story," you should be fine. 

It's worth giving this contest a go, if only to try and snag some of the wacky prizes that are on offer. The best trailer will win a life-size statue of Messmer the Impaler, which clocks in at around 10 feet tall. I've recently been trying to restyle my living room, but I'm not sure that a 10-foot-tall statue of Messmer is the answer to my feng shui problems. I don't even know how I would get it into my flat or if it would even fit, for that matter. 

Luckily, the other prizes are less ostentatious and a bit more apartment-friendly. The best narrative, action, and direction trailers will win a life-size replica of Malenia's arm, which you can also buy for $389. While the best comedy, use of sound, armour design, and most original use of Elden Ring will get a Helmet of Messmer statue. 

If you need to bulk up your own game footage, Bandai Namco has also provided some assets that can be used. However, submissions can't infringe upon any third party intellectual property rights. You must also be 18 or older and a resident of the United States to enter the competition. 

Once your credentials are in order, there's nothing else stopping you from entering into the video competition. You can submit your trailer now up until June 2, 2024, 11:59:59 pm PT or 2:59:59 pm ET. 

But if the prizes on offer don't look very appealing, then you can always just go about collecting memorabilia the old-fashioned way—with cash. You can buy the Elden Ring sword that Ranni gives to the Tarnished towards the end of her quest line. It's five feet long and costs $500, so while it certainly looks cool, it may deal one hell of a blow to your bank account. 

Elden Ring hype at PCG has exploded as of late thanks to the dramatic Shadow of the Erdtree reveal, with multiple team members jumping back into the dark action-RPG masterpiece in preparation to once more do deadly battle with fearsome beasts and bosses.

Of all of Elden Ring's bosses, big bad demigod uber boss Malenia is arguably the most feared by Elden Ring players (OK, basically everyone but the legendary Let Me Solo Her), with the One-Armed Valkyrie and Goddess of Rot boasting she has 'never known defeat'. The result of finally besting Malenia, therefore, is very memorable and a real achievement.

And, what better way to commemorate handing a defeat to Malenia than to also hand defeat to your own bank account by buying this 1:1 scale replica of the demigod's arm? For $389, the Arm of Malenia offers up a polyresin replica reproduction of the appendage, as well as a display stand upon which to show-off your trophy. You can check it out below.

I've got to say it does look pretty darn cool. There is loads of intricate detailing on display, a realistic-looking gold-bronze finish, and some basic articulation in the joints, too. If I had this arm I'm quite sure I'd have it hold something stupid, like a beer, or something a touch more practical for PC gaming, like a gaming headset. I could defo see my SteelSeries Arctis Pro hanging from it.

I suppose if you fancied cosplaying the fearsome warrior then this would be an awesome addition to your outfit, too. I mean, you'd have to lose functionality of your own arm for a spell, but when the replacement looks this good I think it would be worth the trade-off. Of course, if you owned this arm then I feel you'd then almost be contractually mandated to acquire or make a replica of Malenia's katana, the deadly Hand of Malenia. Throw in one of the many wearable replicas of Malenia's helmet available right now and you'd be along way towards having an undefeatable Malenia costume. Fearsome.

The Arm of Malenia's high cost does get you a bit of exclusivity, too, with its maker, Pure Arts, only making 3,500 of them worldwide. The arm is officially licensed by Bandai Namco and is due to ship to buyers in December this year. Personally, though, I'd rather weep in defeat to Malenia for the hundredth time than weep while reading the statement from my utterly defeated bank balance.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is undoubtedly the most exciting thing coming (presumably) this year for FromSoftware fans, but the Dark Souls 3 mod Archthrones also has a ton of juice. The ambitious total conversion just showed off a new area, The High Lord's Temple, and it looks like it runs great on Steam Deck to boot.

Archthrones will remix areas from Dark Souls 2 and 3 to tell its own story in the setting, and the High Lord's Temple riffs on one of Dark Souls 3's most incongruous areas. Though its catacombs are located under a swamp (and, bafflingly, over another different swamp), Carthus was supposedly a desert kingdom.

The High Lord's Temple, named for big boy skeleton boss High Lord Wolnir, gives a look at scorching, sandy Carthus in its prime, before some timey-wimey, dimensional shenanigans sent it underground. The warmly-lit citadel under a bright blue sky makes for a nice contrast with the shadowy, claustrophobic catacombs of the base game, and the footage shows a player doing battle with robed apparitions instead of the nasty skeleton guys we're used to.

There's a great big bell at a scenic overlook that I can only assume opens a gate or summons a boss or something, and I'm excited to see how this level unfolds in the full mod. It also seems to be running well on the Steam Deck, even if the handheld's 800p resolution doesn't look the best blown up on my 1440p monitor.

Archthrones currently has no set release date, but you can follow development via its Twitter and YouTube pages. For another exciting Soulsborne total conversion to look forward to, the Nightfall mod for the OG Dark Souls looks positively sick.

Frogs (the animal) have become an indie darling in the past couple of years—as our former features producer Nat Clayton pointed out last year, people like 'em. They're round, they're cute, they're in Frog Detective, what's not to like? A lot. 

Listen, I like a little round green guy as much as the next person, but gaming's croaks gallery is often just as upsetting as it is soothing. Below the iceberg of the friend-shaped blob lies an underbelly of gnarly-looking rejects that've slimed their way from the swamps of hell. I'm here to remind you of them, because the only way to know you've escaped the abyss is to stare into it every now and then.

But first, let me set out some expectations: not everything on this list is (strictly-speaking) a frog. Some are toads or basilisks—one's even a rabbit that's been warped by unspeakable sorcery. The frog's energy is more important than the scientific definition.

Secondly, a frog can be upsetting even if it's not physically repulsive to look at, either through its game mechanics or the moral fibre of its being. Some tick all three boxes, others only tick one or two. All of them are terrible. With that aside: welcome to my psychic prison-zoo. It's bad here.

The Basilisk (Dark Souls, Elden Ring)

These guys are the first and most obvious choice when one asks themselves: 'What video game frogs haunt my nightmares?'

Consider the basilisk. Upsetting, bulbous eyes that are a mere facade for the beady pin-pricks below them. A maw of razor-sharp teeth. In the place of a humble croak, the basilisk instead spews petrifying fog that will curse you dead. They represent both a physical and a psychic danger.

Part of it's their typical introduction in Dark Souls—you're trudging through a dark sewer, when you suddenly plunge through a hole in the ground. A trio of the buggers are upon you in moments: Completely alien, breathing mist with a cryptic status bar, swarming you in an enclosed space—immediately memorable, objectively awful.

Oggdo Bogdo (Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Fallen Order)

Oggdo Bogdo is an accursed bastard that wields the soulslike genre's most hated mechanic: the grapple. Shockingly fast for something that looks like it weighs 5 tons, Oggdo Bogdo's first appearance in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is just a little too early for you to handle, but it's not even the worst version of this hellbeast. No, that comes from the game's sequel.

While its initial cameo is frustrating, it's manageable—Cal's a touch more mobile in Survivor, and he has a wider range of tools to deal with the cad. You get a poncho for your efforts and it's a good time. Then you go back to town and there's a force tear waiting for you. You enter it out of curiosity.

You find two of them. Two of them.

Yes, they still have the insta-kill grab attack. Yes, they're just as aggressive. No, there's basically no reason why you should fight them this early, but you can. And you will, because you want to punish yourself. 

I stuck around and bashed my head against the wall of the Oggdo Bogdo duo simply because it was there. I needed to prove that I could overcome this nightmare from the deep—and I did, though I'm certain part of my soul was devoured along the way.

The Addled Frog (Baldur's Gate 3)

This thing was so upsetting that Larian Studios commissioned a whole animation around its accursed existence. Physically, there's nothing wrong with it—the studio just has a fascination with making random animals capable of extreme violence.

While you can talk to this creature after you've dealt with the local hag, doing so beforehand will likely cause you to come to blows with it. It has an attack called venomous discharge that deals a bunch of poison damage in an AoE, and it starts combat with Mirror Image. What's more, it bounces the first ranged attack you make against it back at its assailant.

It's not actually that hard to kill, seeing as you can just fire AoE spells at it, but you're unlikely to have many of those to-hand in the early game. What's most upsetting about this creature is the innocent guise it inhabits—you go in expecting a pleasant little chat with a hoppy fella, then end up scrambling to chug healing potions while it punishes you for your hubris.

Frogger (Frogger: The Great Quest)

Now we're cooking with (toxic, swamp) gas. Frogger is one of gaming's simplest icons—he's a little frog, he hops across the road, that's it. But for some reason the eldritch minds at Papa Yeti Studio decided he needed an adventure-platformer reboot in 2001.

The problem is, Frogger acts with all the naive optimism of Spyro despite having the proportions of a small man, and he's kind of a creep, too. Frogger's entire quest is to, and I quote, "Find a Princess before [he] busts." I'm not making that up, this is well-documented.

In fairness, this is because Frogger wants to become a Prince. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on him—maybe frogs are relegated to a lower social caste, and he simply wants to experience some upward mobility. Maybe he wants to abolish the monarchy once he's there. None of that excuses the fairy frogmother that shows up immediately after his wish, though.

I don't know if she has Frogger's same moral corruption of the spirit, I just… I don't like looking at her. It's the lips, maybe? Moving on.

Crazy Frog (Crazy Frog Racer, Crazy Frog Racer 2)

I remember Crazy Frog (A.K.A The Annoying Thing). I remember how he lingered on early-to-mid 2000s flash websites like a plague. I remember how he haunted the radio, how his imprisoned babbling warbled from the Nokia phone. Did you know they made a racing game based around him? Did you know they made two of them? Here's some 12-year old gameplay courtesy of YouTube channel GXZ95. 

You could play as a host of characters from the CFEU (the Crazy Frog Extended Universe), such as The Annoying Thing, Flash, Drone, and The Annoying Thing but with a fishing hat this time. Bobo is there. He's a ninja monkey with banana nunchucks. Who are any of these people?

The Gigantoad (Final Fantasy 14)

There's a dungeon in FF14 that strikes fear into the heart of the dungeon roulette: The Aurum Vale. Its infamous first room is wide, open, and has a huge clump of easily-aggroed enemies at its centre. What's more, you can be yanked into it by these horrible creations from a vengeful god.

I don't have many positive things to say about the Gigantoad's visual design either. In FF11, the Gigantoad is a royal, noble creature—in FF14, it looks like a sleep-deprived egg that someone put spines and legs onto. It breathes like it's hyperventilating and it looks at the world as if it was wronged by the very air it breathes. To the pits of hades with thee.

Buzz (Spyro 3, the original one)

I liked Toys for Bob's character redesigns for the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. They're cute, colourful, well-animated, and they made the adult dragons dilfs for some reason. But they massacred my boy Buzz—in that they made him visually appealing. Those of us who played the game on the PS1 remember his true form.

The result of arcane sorceries that turned an innocent rabbit into a monster, this unpleasant, crunchy nugget of a being's idle animations made it look like he was undulating. He had a row of razor-sharp teeth that never shut, and he could survive dips in lava—which is around 700-1,000 degrees Celsius on average.  

This means that Buzz could probably live on the surface of the planet Venus, which is about 465 degrees Celsius—and probably where this hell-sent spawn belongs. Shoot him into space.

The Toad Prince (The Witcher 3)

This one came recommended by our Guides Writer Sean Martin. While I've never had the pleasure of brawling with the Witcher 3's Toad Prince, I can certainly see why it left an impression.

This cur has all the hallmarks of an absolutely awful frog-like boss—annoying acid spit, frustratingly fast stomps that knock you back, an absurd amount of health—and he can attack you with his tongue.

It's just occurred to me now that the frog/toad's tongue gives game developers a licence to make a boss that's slow, but attacks fast. For instance: imagine if you were fighting a golem in a game, but a little compartment in its chest opened and a guy with a whip started snapping at you. That's how frogs in games work, and it's always terrible.

The Demon of Song (Dark Souls 2)

Dark Souls 2 dared to ask: you know the frog Mario suit from Super Mario Bros. 3? What if it was like that, but utterly horrible. Also it has the voice of an angel.

It's a shame really, because the ambience it lends to Dark Souls 2's Shrine of Amana is absolutely lovely. It's one of the rare places where the game's sometimes-crunchy graphics and weird overcast lighting drift away, replaced by lovely luminescent lights and old ruins.

Then you get there and it's some big creep in a frog suit. It even cowers inside its stolen flesh as a living shield. Then it picks you up with its mouth and freakily long man-arms and slams you into the ground again, and again, and again, until the words 'You Died' are a relief.

Granted, I don't remember the boss itself being much harder than the rest of the game's rogues' gallery, but there's something sad about dealing with a bunch of mages, clawing your way towards a beautiful voice, then finding out it's a failed singer-songwriter crammed into an amphibian like a skinsuit.

Amphibians (Divinity: Original Sin 2)

Larian: We need to talk about your frogs, because this is twice you've made a terrifying early-game frog encounter in your game's first Act.

The issue with these guys is less to do with their specific design and more to do with the way Divinity: Original Sin 2's first act is structured. I went into that in some more detail recently, but the short version is that Fort Joy has a bunch of deadly fights that are easy to stumble into when you're under-levelled. This is one of them.

These guys are a pushover if you go into the brawl prepared—or with an Undead, who will happily soak up their poison damage. But if you dare make the reasonable assumption that the first early-game area you're led to by an NPC also contains a good starting fight, you'll be left hopping mad.

I think a crucial test of a game's visual identity is how well it holds up to a demaster. Bloodborne, for instance, manages to remain recognisably and wonderfully itself when you turn it into some kind of PS1-style kart racer, and it's in no small part down to the talent of both the demaster's makers and FromSoft's art team. And hey, perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that applies to other games in the studio's catalogue too.

Pixel Souls: Demastered is a mod for Dark Souls: Remastered that "changes all textures, icons, fonts, and visual effects into pixel art based on the original game textures." On top of that, it also puts the game's sound effects through a fuzzy, lo-fi filter to give the game a "fun, somewhat cursed, 'retro' feel." It was done using author thegreatgramcracker's own "custom image processing algorithm," with a little bit of personal input and tweaking from the modder themself. AI wasn't used for any part of the mod.

It works incredibly well, if you ask me, and turns Dark Souls into a weird PSP version of itself soundtracked by the hottest tunes a sound card from 2005 can handle. Most of those tunes, by the way, are just de-rezzed versions of the original DS soundtrack, but the author secured permission from Soulsborne YouTuber and musician Illusory Wall to use their 8-bit remixes of the Firelink Shrine and Gwyn's Theme tracks from original Dark Souls. They're looking for more like those, too, if you happen to have a generous heart and some retro Dark Souls remixes lying around.

Installing the mod is pretty straightforward, you just need to download the main mod file from Nexus Mods and extract the contents over to your Dark Souls: Remastered Steam directory, overwriting whatever files are already in there. If you don't fancy the low-fi tunes to restore humanity to, you can skip the "sound" folder (do the same for the "font" folder if you don't want to replace the usual DS fonts, too).

If you want the low quality models for things like your equipment, just download the optional extra file from Nexus and extract that over after you've installed the main mod. The author is a little bit iffy on these, though, saying that they're not all at a quality they'd like just yet. Still, I think they look pretty good for the most part, and I'd recommend installing the whole thing if you're determined to embark on a low-res Dark Souls playthrough. 

Dark Souls is an interconnected game—if you datamine out a full model of Lordran, you're able to look at the entire breadth of it like it's a model train set, from the swamps of Blighttown to the hallowed halls of Anor Londo.

Back when the game first came to PC, its port was pretty shocking—it took about six years before the remastered version sorted most complaints out. But we're PC gamers. If a game isn't modded to have rig-melting textures or Dewmer rocket boots, what are we even doing here?

Fromsoftserve and their DSR Graphics Overhaul mod (thanks, Gamesradar) is one such attempt to polish the classic to a mirror sheen. This thing's really impressive. Far from just a bunch of texture packs, fromsoftserve has been laboriously giving the whole game a facelift: bringing dynamic shadows to Lordran, making Anor Londo's windows see-through, and even adding new meshes to far-off locations. 

This adds to the game's feeling of interconnectedness, letting you see anything from anywhere, as long as you'd be able to draw a reasonable line of sight to it. Turns out that FromSoftware were kind of banking on the draw distance, though.

"My graphics overhaul mod allows you to easily cheese Capra Demon with firebombs," writes fromsoftserve, before demonstrating their character hucking bombs all the way from the Taurus Demon fight to the Capra Demon down below. The modder relishes the fact that this works, and their explanations are pretty in-keeping with the rest of the game's design.

"This is one of my favourite changes in my mod," fromsoftserve wrote in a reply. "Because it makes sense that he'd be visible from here, as that's his actual boss room location. Plus, most new players still wouldn't notice it, I'd think. but for skilled players, they can take advantage."

Overall, there's some great work being done here. Fromsoftserve is going over Lordran with a fine comb, fixing small details that only a long-time fan would notice. You can keep up to date with the devs logs on their YouTube channel. Also, considering how much trouble the Capra Demon gave me back in 2011, I relish the sight of him and his freaking dogs getting lit up.

It would be hard to overstate Dark Souls' influence at this point, spawning not only its own subgenre but altering the sensibilities of a broad array of games outside of the soulslike mould. If you ask me, the results have been mixed—partly, I think, because it's difficult to define the game's formula and the source of its success. Then there are the sequels, which have caused endless debates about which is the greatest of the Dark Souls trilogy. One thing usually gets agreed upon though: it isn't Dark Souls 2.

The original game is lauded for a lot of different things, but one element that elevates it above its peers is its much talked about world design. From the Undead Burg to Sen's Fortress and the depths of The Tomb of Giants, Dark Souls has a landscape that folds back on itself, connecting each space in surprising ways that nonetheless enrich the understanding of its story. The vertical nature of it, one area stacked upon another, remains uniquely captivating. It's the only game I know of whose world can be so evocatively encapsulated by a single, striking map. It truly makes you feel like there's hundreds of feet of rock above you when you're trapped deep below the earth. 

Dark Souls 2 doesn't have this. Its world is divided into dead end paths, each its own corner cut off from the rest. A now infamous elevator from the top of a tower in the middle of a valley inexplicably takes you into the heart of a volcano. Fast travel is introduced from the start, too, removing that sense of isolation and making it so that no journey ever feels like one of the original's monumental undertakings. Home is only ever a loading screen away. Much has been said of Dark Souls 2's troubled production, and that it shows the scars of that is no surprise, but what is surprising is just how many ideas it still manages to pull off. There are places like a misty forest full of invisible foes, a set of islands above the clouds inhabited by dragons and time travelling trips to the past through fallen giant's memories. Regardless, for many people who'd been so enamoured with the first game, this was a big step down.

While the small-scale level design of individual areas, with shortcuts and hidden routes that send you in a loop, can be found in plenty of its imitators, Dark Souls' impeccable approach to world design is singular. Even FromSoft's own sequels and spiritual successors, whether that's Bloodborne or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, don't have such a coherent world. It's not hard to imagine why, because even Dark Souls itself struggles to pull it all together. Late game area Lost Izalith, for instance, is full of recycled enemies and a barely functional boss fight involving some truly terrible platforming the game wasn't built for, and shows the cracks in the games ambitious design.

Yet, in a twist of fate, while the original game's magic has never been replicated, the maligned Dark Souls 2 is the one whose ideas are now starting to dominate the evolution of soulslikes. 

The real Dark Souls starts here

While its world design never reaches the heights of the original, the sequel invests much more into player choice. There are numerous systems buried within the game that allow players to modify the experience to suit their whims. Combat is more nuanced and customisable, introducing power stances that create new movesets when you wield two similar weapons in each hand. There are more ways to approach a fight than there are in the original, and arguably even Dark Souls 3. 

If that system sounds familiar, it's because Elden Ring does the same thing. FromSoft's latest actually shares many of Dark Souls 2's sensibilities, putting players in the driving seat of their experience instead of throwing them down an obstacle course full of skeletons with the lights off. Even ingrained series and genre expectations, like the ability to respec the player character stats later in the game, only started with 2. Elden Ring is no less lacking in the intricate world design of the first Dark Souls, too big to weave its spaces around each other, but people love it—Souls fans and newcomers alike. And Elden Ring's immense popularity is owed in part to the philosophy of Dark Souls 2.

Dark Souls 3 also follows 2's footsteps, favouring a similar world structure with divergent, dead-end paths with fast travel available from the start. Even the central hub, its Firelink Shrine, is completely cut off from the rest of the game world. In fact, it leans harder into the idea of a mish-mash world with its geography making very little literal sense. If people hated it about 2, they'd come around to it by the time 3 was released, with plenty of praise heaped upon the threequel, which was nowhere near as maligned by fans.

Even outside of FromSoft's library, Dark Souls 2's sensibilities have not only taken root but are growing fruit. The upcoming Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty introduces a system similar to the Bonfire Ascetics that allow you to bump an area to its New Game Plus variant, in turn obtaining more powerful gear if you can tackle the tougher foes. Wo Long has banners which provide a mirror function: small flags that can be discovered and raised throughout an area to bring down enemy morale, reducing their stats and making the game easier. You can see an enemy's rank in relation to your own when you meet them and decide for yourself whether you want to tackle a super tough foe for greater rewards or hunt down a banner and bring them down a peg first. 

Dark Souls 2's greatest contribution might simply be in making the infamously (perhaps overstated) gruelling nature of the original more accessible with considerations like fast travel, ways to undo mistakes, and systems like Soul Memory to prevent players being invaded by veterans who have fought their way to end game weapons to harass low level beginners. Almost every soulslike since has incorporated many of these quality of life touches. The Surge, Code Vein, Mortal Shell, Ashen, Nioh…take your pick. The very things people claimed to hate about the sequel are now the backbone of the genre. I think we've reached a point where I'd be shocked to find one of these games without fast travel of some kind or the ability to reroll on my stats. 

The path less travelled

In searching for ways to build upon FromSoft's success, after failing to outright copy it, it feels like numerous developers have found themselves in the same position as the team behind Dark Souls 2. Instead of trying to repeat the tricks of Dark Souls, it's a lateral move, building on the things that were less developed in the original. It opens with a shadow mirror image of a grand city we never visit. Its true ending, unlocked by completing all its DLC, concludes with the player walking away from the throne to find their own path. How appropriate. People wanted more of the same, which it doesn't deliver, but time has proven that approach to be the right one. 

It would be easy now for developers to chase after Elden Ring's success. To mimic its mechanics and themes. Inevitably, it would be a folly to do that. A subgenre as specific as the soulslike won't survive through mere imitation. We already have Elden Ring. Instead, perhaps they should be asking: What would Dark Souls 2 do?

A Skyrim modder with the handle Jonx0r recently uploaded a proof-of concept mockup of Dark Souls 3's starting area in the cutting edge Unreal Engine 5, presenting FromSoftware's 2016 classic in a literal new light. The modder explained that they pursued this project as a way of learning the ins and outs of Epic's new engine.

Epic's Unreal Engine 5 middleware has some beefy graphical might backing it up, and like Unreal Engines 3 and 4 before it, looks poised to take over the games industry with developers like CD Projekt and Bioware jumping ship from in-house tech to adopt the new engine for future projects. We got a tantalizing first glimpse of its potential with the Matrix Awakens demo released alongside the 2021 Game Awards and finally brought to PC last April.

Unreal Engine 5 is also a friendly tool for hobbyists and indie developers, many of whom have taken to Unreal to create current-gen versions of classic gaming vistas like Skyrim's starting village of Riverwood. Remake projects always have a risk of running roughshod over an original game's art style, but the stakes aren't exactly sky high to have an independent modder reinterpret a classic scene with new tech. This isn't the Demon's Souls Remake muscling in as the new "default" while the original languishes on PS3 with no online support (the Demon's Souls Remake Hater has clearly logged on).

And Jonx0r has made something quite pretty and interesting here. As far as I can tell, they imported the map, model, and animations straight from Dark Souls 3 itself, with the primary visual change being Unreal 5's advanced lighting. Firelink really pops with the new lighting and shadows, and I especially love the way the shrine's central bonfire cuts against its newly darkened interior. Also? Great little ripples on the puddles in the shrine and Iudex Gundyr's arena. It's the little things, you know?

All in all Jonx0r's provided a neat look at an alternate, 2023 Firelink Shrine, and if you're interested in seeing more of their work you can check out Jonx0r's YouTube channel and Nexus Mods page.

Dark Souls: Archthrones, an ambitious total conversion mod for Dark Souls 3, got its first substantial gameplay trailer on January 4. The 15-minute video shows off three levels from the mod, as well as the team's approach to combining remixed content from throughout the Soulsborne games with new, bespoke assets.

The gameplay trailer begins in the Rainswept Outpost, Archthrones' own "you have to die in this tutorial before reaching the hub area" level. Fittingly, it ends with a gnarly HD homage to Demon's Souls' Vanguard, complete with oozing bug eyes and spider legs sprouting out of its chest. Upon getting predictably pancaked by the beefy boy, the player wakes up in the Nexus of Embers, a green, warmly-lit redux of DS3's Firelink Shrine. 

It reminds me of the Ringed City's look, or else those ruins levels from 2D Sonic games. Curiously, the Sculptor from Sekiro can be spotted hanging out here, presumably functioning as a merchant, and the titular Archthrones all have the Golden Order Greatsword from Elden Ring as warp points to the individual levels.

In a big ole' "Leo Dicaprio pointing excitedly at the screen" moment, the second level showcased is the Ruins of Blue, aka Heide's Tower of Flame from Dark Souls 2, ported to DS3's engine and given a stormy makeover. 

This gameplay also reveals that Archthrones will sport a variation on Elden Ring's guard counter mechanic, with the player's shield flashing on blocking blows from a wandering Heide Knight. In the Dragon Rider's boss room from DS2, the player instead finds an agile, crow-themed miniboss with the moveset of the Nightjar Ninja from Sekiro (you know, the wooooo guys.)

The level then diverges from DS2, with the path to No Man's Wharf instead leading up into a new tower behind the original level. At the top, the player enters an arena seemingly lifted from the bottom of Irithyll Dungeon and encounters the Disgraced Knight, a boss with Iudex Gundyr's moveset, a fresh coat of paint, and a few surprise tricks like tossing out Estus-blocking Lloyd's Talismans.

The last level shown is the War-Torn Village, an autumnal reskin of DS3's Undead Settlement with new enemies and an alternate path through the level. After fending off a Bloodborne Executioner reskinned to look like Basuzo, the player enters the Curse Rotted Greatwood's arena and finds the Angelic Wall Guardian, a riff on the first Dark Souls' Iron Golem with some new tracking projectile attacks.

The whole thing reminds me most of classic rom hacks like Kaizo Mario or Undertale creator Toby Fox's Earthbound Halloween Hack. There's a ton of potential in creating a sort of Dark Souls Master Quest out of pre-existing content, and Archthrones is further elevated by its custom art, models, lighting, and music.

If the notion of a Dark Souls total conversion sounds familiar, you're probably thinking of Nightfall, a similarly-impressive upcoming fanmade sequel to Dark Souls 1. Archthrones currently has no release date, but you can follow the mod's progress on YouTube and support its creators on Patreon.

After 120 days of trying and multiple restarts, streamer dinossindgeil—or Dino—broke into happy tears yesterday as he became the second recorded player to complete "God Run 3": A playthrough of Demon's Souls (the remake), every Dark Souls game, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring in which he took no hits whatsoever.

The rules were simple: Dino had to play the games back-to-back—sans DLC—without taking a single hit in any of them. The only caveat was that fall damage didn't count, meaning Dino could take advantage of rings that buffed damage at low HP by repeatedly chucking himself off high ledges. If an enemy managed to hurt him, he had to start back at square one in Demon's Souls. As you can imagine, that was a pretty painful experience when it happened.

When Dino began the run 120 days ago, he was returning to the other Soulsborne games after several months of playing Elden Ring exclusively, making the early attempts a mind-bending exercise in shaking off months of Elden Ring muscle memory while relearning the intricacies of the other Souls games. As someone who still occasionally writes "2020" when I fill out forms, this sounds pretty much like witchcraft.

The God Run 3 is, you may have surmised, the third in the line of Soulsborne God Runs. The first God Run was composed of Demon's Souls, the Dark Souls series, and Bloodborne, the second added Sekiro, and the third bolts Elden Ring onto the already gruelling trial. 

This is the second time that the God Run 3 has been completed, at least on stream. Back in September, a Spanish streamer called BushidoYu also managed the feat, though they took a few breaks where Dino marathoned the games for hours each day. Dino actually made a very supportive reaction video when BushidoYu completed their run, remarking that other streamers attempting The God Run 3 were "fantastic at what they do and they deserve these runs for sure as well".

FromSoft games have a long and proud tradition of absolutely ridiculous challenge runs. Barely a month after release, players were already completing level one runs of Elden Ring, and it was only last month that a streamer beat the game on a dance pad having already beaten it using just one hand. It's nice to know that, however skilled I ever feel playing these games, there will always be someone ready to clown on me with a superabundance of talent and patience.

Praise the sun, for the entire Dark Souls trilogy is finally back online. Over nine months after being deactivated, FromSoftware has at long last re-enabled online features for Dark Souls Remastered.

The game, along with Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3, had its PvP servers shut down on PC back in January. This was thanks to a serious security vulnerability that was discovered for Dark Souls 3, which allowed some pretty malicious code to be run through its online functionality. It took an entire four months to hear any further news when FromSoftware finally announced that the servers would be returning "progressively," starting with the third game in the trilogy.

Three months after that, Dark Souls 3 was finally back. At the time, FromSoftware said it was working "to restore these features for all other Dark Souls titles." Unfortunately, when Dark Souls 2 was resurrected in October, the developer revealed that one original Dark Souls game would get left behind. Prepare to Die Edition was found to have "an aging system" supporting its online features and was promptly nixed from FromSoftware's to-do list. 

That just left Dark Souls: Remastered, completing the developer's nine-month-long journey to squash the security vulnerability and bring the game back. FromSoftware kept its final triumph very brief, tweeting: "Thank you once again for your patience, understanding, and support."

It's wild that it's taken almost the entirety of 2022 to restore three of the four games deactivated. But at least Dark Souls players are now free to invade, summon and slap together some cheeky (and occasionally massively unhelpful) messages to bamboozle and amuse fellow players in whichever game they like. Except for PtDE, sorry.

Two months after Dark Souls 3's servers sprung back to life, and nine months after the servers for the entire Souls series went offline, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin (SOTFS) is back online. And that's pretty much where the good news ends.

The original version of DS2, which runs on DX9 and lacks the additions and reconfigured encounters of SOTSF, will have to wait a little longer to get its servers back up and running. From said only that base DS2's online features would be back online "at a later date," which is a scarily elastic timespan.

Still, it's a better prognosis than the one given to Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (the original, pre-remaster version of DS1): that game won't be coming back online at all.

"We have determined that we will not be able to support online services for the PC version of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition that was released in 2012," said From, putting the blame on the "aging system" that supports the game's online features.

It's not too surprising: you can't even buy that version of the game any more, but it's a sad end for the original Dark Souls, which just passed its PC release's tenth anniversary. Sure, the game was incredibly janky, barely playable on keyboard and mouse, and has since been supplanted by a remastered version, but you'd hope the game that kicked off the PC's love affair with Souls games would go out with more bang and less whimper. Plus, Prepare to Die Edition still has over double the number of mods available for it than the remaster, more than a few of which centre around online play.

But it's not meant to be. From is, of course, still promising to restore the servers for Dark Souls Remastered, so it's not like DS1's online play has winked out of existence. Judging by how long it took to fix DS2: SOTSF after restoring DS3, though, we probably still have a few months of serverless Souls ahead of us before things are back to normal.

This is a fraught world, but we can fight to change it for the better. We can petition FromSoftware to bring back the limited-time promo weapon reskins added to Dark Souls 2 in 2014 to hype up The Lost Crowns DLCs⁠—a shocking omission from the Scholar of the First Sin definitive edition of the game. Wait, what did you have in mind?

Illusory Wall, the Dark Souls content creator behind the petition, released a video today covering the history of the promo weapons. I have fond memories of this time⁠. After the release of Dark Souls 2 in spring 2014, it was quickly followed by a DLC trilogy released over the summer, The Lost Crowns.

There was this great sense of mystery and excitement as the game got these huge updates each month, and this was enhanced by the promo weapons. In the leadup to the release of each DLC, a chest in the hub area of Majula would be updated to contain a unique reskin of one of the game's base weapons. With Crown of the Sunken King, it got a dark blue steel Murakumo curved greatsword, while later additions included a snow-white katana and a one-handed blade colored after the series' iconic Moonlight Greatsword.

After each weapon cycled out, it was impossible to get again via normal means. The reskinned weapons were not brought back in the Scholar of the First Sin GOTY edition/remix of Dark Souls 2. I recently replayed Scholar, and I know my experience could have benefitted from a blue Murakumo.

In addition to going into greater detail on the timeline and background of the weapon skins in the video, Illusory Wall points out that their absence does undermine Scholar's status as the "definitive" version of Dark Souls 2. To address this, the YouTuber has launched that Change.org petition asking FromSoft to add the weapons back to the Majula chest⁠—potentially as a promotional tie-in for Dark Souls 2's servers coming back online (that's still happening, right?)

The petition's just passed 1,900 signatures at the time of writing. Is it a little silly? Perhaps. Is it also very funny? Definitely. Would I like to be reunited with my beloved blue Murakumo? You'd better believe it. If you're interested in Illusory Walls' other videos, the YouTuber's been running an Elden Ring Dissected series on the game's mechanics. These videos began with a particularly illuminating look at the game's fall damage system⁠—it may feel random, but there's actually a method to the madness. 

Update 9/24/22: As reported by GamesRadar, Dark Souls 3's PC servers are now back up and running, though FromSoftware did not announce the change or clarify what went wrong. Servers for the other two Dark Souls games remain offline, with no roadmap of when they might come back.

Original Story: After seven months of silence, Darks Souls 3 PvP servers on PC finally roared back to life at the end of August. It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last long, because a month later they're offline again.

Complaints about the gone-again servers began to appear on Steam yesterday, as players complained that they couldn't connect to servers, or in some cases launch the game at all. The problem appeared suddenly and was clearly widespread, but there was no indication about what had happened. The most recent announcement about Dark Souls 3 on Steam was posted in August, announcing the reactivation of servers.

A purported FromSoft player support message posted to Reddit yesterday acknowledged that Dark Souls 3 players on Steam were having problems logging into game servers, and promised that the matter was being investigated. For now though, the servers remain offline, and the problem was made public a few hours ago via the official Dark Souls 3 Twitter account, suggesting that another extended wait could be coming.

"At this time, there is a confirmed issue with Dark Souls 3 online play via the Steam platform," the message states. "We are investigating the source of the problem and will inform you as soon as more details become available. Thank you for your patience."

The PC servers for all Dark Souls games went offline in January because of a security vulnerability that enabled malicious code to be run through their online functionality. The problem went unaddressed for months because FromSoft was dealing with the obvious priority of Elden Ring. But now we're pushing the end of September, Dark Souls 1 and 2 remain offline, and Dark Souls 3 couldn't even make it a month before running into more problems—and fans are understandably frustrated.

• "Here we go again. See you in eight months guys."
• "It's a real shame. The games are so lonely without player messages and bloodstains. I've been doing my yearly series replay and it's just so much quieter and sadder than usual."
• "You've got to be kidding me; the PC side of Fromsoft is an absolute clown show. It's been like that ever since they put that awful DS1 PC port out. They really don't give a rat's ass about their PC crowd do they?"
• "Aaahhhh shit here we go again"

Bandai Namco declined to comment on the issue further, so for now there's nothing for Dark Souls players to do but hope that it doesn't take another eight months to fix this time around. In the meantime, if you're feeling lost and lonely in the world of Dark Souls 3, there's an Official-Unofficial Server for Dark Souls 3 mod that might help ease the pain.

After a quiet seven months for Dark Souls 3 PvPers, the PC servers have finally whirred back to life today, reviving the game's online features which have lain dormant since the discovery of a serious security vulnerability in the game's code back in January.

That means Dark Souls 3 players can once again enjoy all the thrills of player invasions, summoning, and contorting the game's soapstone messaging system to write some of the filthiest things imaginable. In the tweet announcing DS3's online resurrection, FromSoft indicated that the same features for Dark Souls 1 and 2 would follow in short order. With any luck, it won't take over half a year this time.

The vulnerability that caused all this furore was quite a nasty one. Publicised by a Souls enthusiast called SkeleMann, the exploit allowed attackers to gain low-level access to players' PCs and do stuff like steal login info, run programs, or just brick people's machines entirely. Luckily, the servers were shut down before there were any documented cases of it being used maliciously, but it's still pretty terrifying when you consider how many people still play the original Dark Souls games every day.

It's been a long time, but it's good to see Dark Souls slowly regain consciousness. For a while there, players were beginning to worry that the studio might just leave the servers offline forever, especially when the series' multiplayer tags disappeared from its Steam pages. FromSoft has been distracted by Elden Ring's launch for most of 2022, which goes some way to explaining why it's taken so long to get the Souls games back in working order, but it's still kind of wild that a set of games as famous and storied as these seemed to get left in limbo for a whole half-year.

But the age of dark is behind us, now begins the age of light (and perpetual, agonising griefing). We can put down the mods that attempted ersatz recreations of Dark Souls' online features and once again enjoy being crushed into jam by strangers from across the globe. On second thought, maybe I'll just leave it offline.

Dark Souls 3 is a bit of a drag, right? It's all foreboding this, doomsaying that, and long stretches of grey sky that terminate in wan, dispirited horizons. I bet not a single one of its gibbering inhabitants has ever done anything cool like smoke and ride a motorcycle. They're all too busy picking through the ashes of a dead kingdom and feeling sorry for themselves.

Well, no longer. Dark Souls 3 May Cry—released in March by a creator named Shigu—finally does the necessary if unobvious task of importing Devil May Cry's Dante into Lothric, along with his weapons and moveset. The work that's been done to the game's standard animations is pretty impressive: Dante transitions from the standard moveset of DS3's combat into the frenzied staccato of DMC's leaps and stabs without missing a beat.

Currently, the mod only equips Dante with Force Edge, Alastor, and Devil Sword Sparda, and it doesn't look like you're going to be changing him out of that outfit any time soon. Still, the author does tantalisingly say that these are the only weapons that are available "currently," suggesting we might see Ebony and Ivory tear up Lothric one day yet. But even if we don't, the mod we've already got is impressive enough on its own.

We aren't seeing many new Dark Souls mods at the moment, probably because a lot of those creators are hard at work modding Elden Ring. Still, even if most of the modders are off engaging in profane acts of lumberjacking, it's nice to know the classics can still wow us with a surprise every now and then.

Dark Souls is serious business. Except when it's not. The game of cursed undead hollows, the ending of ages, cycles of death and rebirth? It's also a game where half the players run around swinging oversized weapons with no clothes on, while the other half pull together every piece of armor they find and transform themselves into mobile trash cans.

That's why it's perfect for Fashion Souls, the game-within-a-game where players ignore armor stats to create stylish outfits. Invasions don't have to be about sneaking into another player's game to murder them from behind; they can be about showing off how chic you are. The Age of Fire is temporary. Drip is forever.

The legendary fashion police took this to another level, judging the style of players they invaded and either rewarding them with items or punishing their fashion crimes with death. There are plenty of ways to kick the bucket in Dark Souls, but being stabbed by a man in fabulous butterfly-themed ensemble has to be right up there. Though some believed they were nothing but myth, we tracked down one of the fashion police.

This is Tales from the Hard Drive: PC Gamer's documentary series about the kinds of stories that take on life outside the games that birthed them. Each episode is focused on a real story that has become enshrined as gaming folklore, told and retold across decades on message boards and Discord servers and skeptical Reddit threads. These tall tales represent what we love most about PC gaming: the ways truly passionate players can imprint their own personalities on our shared virtual worlds.

Tales from the Hard Drive demanded a a world-class voice, which is why we brought on Lenval Brown, the incredible narrator of Disco Elysium: The Final Cut to help us tell them.

In Episode 1 we told the story of Angwe, also known as the Terror of Menethil Harbor. Angwe was World of Warcraft's infamous serial killer: an unstoppable rogue who went on a months-long ganking spree that became the stuff of forum legend. 

In Episode 2 we met the Fuel Rats, players of Elite Dangerous who help out pilots who run out of gas in the deep dark. And given that it's set in a replica of the Milky Way 100,000 light years across, in Elite Dangerous the dark gets real deep.

In Episode 3 we spoke to Dr. Wasteland, the heroic healer who became a legend in DayZ's early days, proving that even a grim post-apocalyptic survival sim had space for altruism.

In Episode 4 we covered World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood plague, talking to an ex-Blizzard raid designer and one of the many players who was on the ground when a pandemic hit Azeroth. We also interviewed an epidemiologist, who had some interesting things to say about the blood plague's real-world parallels.

In Episode 5 we pulled apart the EVE Online scam that took 16 months of undercover work, and resulted in the loss of a valuable ship—as well as a broken heart.

Make sure to subscribe to PC Gamer's YouTube channel to catch the rest of Tales From the Hard Drive rolling out this summer. 

Souls series dataminer Lance McDonald was the first to spot a new Dark Souls 3 update for Steam users with access to the game's debug branches, via SteamDB. Presumably it’s for testing the long-awaited return of the game's online features.

The changes are documented under the "Depots" tab on the game's SteamDB page, and the "bnedebug" and "pgdebug" branches added on July 21s are the first changes of this nature in two years. It's difficult to imagine Bandai Namco having any reason to tinker with the 6-year-old game other than addressing its protracted server outage. Notably, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 have no such changes documented on their respective SteamDB pages.

It's the thinnest of gruel for fans of a game that has been missing its online features for 183 days and counting. Bandai Namco shut down the servers of all three Dark Souls games at the end of January following the discovery of a catastrophic security vulnerability in the games' netcode, one that could have theoretically offered malicious users remote access to players' computers.

It's quite the pickle, and FromSoft and Bamco's attention has been understandably taken up by Elden Ring. In May, Bandai Namco publicly assured players that the Souls series servers would be coming back, but has been pretty quiet ever since.

Despite the presence of some occasional exploits and griefing, the companies seem to have overcome this security vulnerability with Elden Ring's online implementation, if it was present in the first place. FromSoft's tactical reuse of assets and tech from game to game has largely proved to its advantage, but there were worries that this vulnerability could have extended to its most popular game.

If McDonald’s findings are true, it appears that the Souls series servers won't be coming back all at once, with service instead getting restored piecemeal starting with Dark Souls 3. It makes sense that FromSoft and Bamco would start there, given that DS3 is the most recent release with the liveliest playerbase on Steam. Until then, our vigilant Souls Watch will continue until joyful GiantDads are once again fast rolling across the Undead Burg's cobblestones.

For all that Elden Ring is now FromSoftware's biggest seller, the Dark Souls series is still the one that put them on the gaming map, and definitely has millions of fans. Well, here's one for those who really liked the Dark Souls comics, or who are generally connoisseurs of tie-in novels, because Dark Souls is getting one.

Normally that'd be guff, grist for the fandom mill, but the upcoming Dark Souls: Masque of Vindication is written by none other than Michael A. Stackpole, perhaps best known for his widely-published 1990s Star Wars novels I, Jedi and the popular Rogue Squadron series. He's also written several comics.

Getting started writing tie-ins in the late 1980s with BattleTech, Stackpole is definitely a name you've heard if you're at all interested in this kind of thing. According to his Twitter, he's been at work on the Dark Souls novel since at least 2019, but clearly none of us noticed.

American publisher Yen Press and Japanese publisher Kadokawa are teaming up for this release, with Yen releasing the English edition and Kadokawa the Japanese. Dark Souls: Masque of Vindication will release simultaneously in both languages on October 25, 2022.

After months of speculation and unconfirmed reports of incoming fixes, FromSoftware has finally, officially confirmed that it is bringing back online servers for the Dark Souls games on PC.

The story goes back to the beginning of 2022, when the discovery of a serious security vulnerability in Dark Souls 3 led publisher Bandai Namco to suspend PvP servers for all Dark Souls games on PC. Bandai and FromSoftware initially said that the servers would be kept offline until after the release of Elden Ring, giving the expectation that service would be restored relatively soon after, but that didn't happen. Four months later they remain MIA.

A Reddit post from earlier this month claimed that a Bandai Namco support rep had said that help was on the way, and now we finally have it straight from the source. 

"We are currently in the process of restoring the online servers for the Dark Souls series on PC," FromSoftware said in an email sent to PC Gamer. "We plan to restore online service for each game progressively, bringing back servers for Dark Souls 3 once we complete the necessary work to correct the problem."

"We will provide additional updates as soon as the restoration schedule is finalized. We want to thank all our players for your patience and understanding as we work to fix this issue."

There's no timeline on the fixes, and the statement about bringing back "each game progressively" is a bit confusing: To my reading it suggests they'll be done in order (1, 2, 3), but the mention of Dark Souls 3 specifically indicates that it will be first—which makes more sense, since it's being played so much more than the others. But that's just details: The important thing is that it's happening, and that the process is far enough along that FromSoftware and Bandai are finally willing to say so. I've reached out for more information on the timeline for fixes and will update if I receive a reply.

The Dark Souls games have been offline for (checks calendar) 113 days now, and while Bandai Namco has promised it's "actively working" on a fix, that's a frustratingly vague assurance for those among us who still play these games daily. I know one person like that, and I only know around a dozen people.

Also spare a thought for Souls newcomers, who may be inspired to play the trilogy in a post-Elden Ring bout of enthusiasm. While the game is offline, features like cooperative play are non-existent, and likewise, the ever-useful soapstone messages won't be there to warn of ambushes, or to point out nice places for jumping. 

Don't worry though, because modders have come to the rescue. Created by modder KingBoreHaha, the Community Message Mod is available for both Dark Souls Remastered and the old Prepare to Die edition, and as the name implies, it adds over 200 "community-submitted soapstone messages". 

Fair warning, though. I don't think you should expect these messages to be on brand. it's possible that some (or most) will be extremely unhelpful too. Here are some examples, without the context of where they're placed in-game:

• Welcome to Stinksville, population: you
• I shit my pants.
• Bigass fucking worm here
• Thank you for purchasing WinRAR.
• Don’t get slorped
• It sure was nice for Manus to invite us to see the Abyss, ay Luigi? I hope he made lotta spaghetti!
• we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.
• hehe oniom
• Try jumping

I can see how two of those could be vaguely helpful (the one about the bigass worm; possibly the one that references Manus). But yeah... the messages themselves are pretty silly. Some of them are funny, some of them are dorky, some of them I just don't understand because I'm getting old.

Arguably more interesting, is that some of the soapstone messages in the mod are accompanied by special effects. The mod listing specifies that there's at least one giant cat (that attacks you), but others will inflict you with status effects, among other things. "Anything could happen, watch out!"

Sounds like a fun way to bring Lordran back to life while we wait for online to start working again. Bandai Namco "don't have an estimate of when this is expected to happen".

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

When I think back to my first playthrough of Dark Souls I feel a mixture of delight and abject terror. It's one of my favourite games, and it seems to me, one of the best games ever made. That is partly due to the way I can navigate the entire map of Lordran in my head. But it's also because of the generous handful of moments I remember vividly over 10 years later (by contrast, I don't remember anything about Far Cry 6, except that it had guns and trees).

Chief among these cherished Dark Souls memories is being invaded for the first time. I was trying to summon a co-operative buddy to help me with the Capra Demon. I was running to the boss from Firelink Shrine, rather than the Upper Undead Burg bonfire, because I was an idiot. I think I had around three or four 'humanities' up my sleeve—an item required to summon co-op friends—and no longer had any interest in hoarding them, because it was time to murder that bastard demon and his dog.

I'd been invaded a few times already, of course. In the weeks following Dark Souls' release the servers were running hot. Let me explain to you the kind of Souls player I am. I spent most of my first Dark Souls playthrough in my jocks because I didn't understand equip load. I died to the Taurus Demon for at least a week straight. The very first thing I did after beating the tutorial was pick a fight with the Crestfallen Warrior (RIP: he fell off a cliff). I sucked, and frankly, still kinda suck at these games.

That being the case, when someone invaded me I would basically give up. Everyone in the entire world, I assumed, is better at Dark Souls than me. Sure, I'd raise my shield and circle strafe them for a while, but I would do so resignedly, knowing it was only delaying the inevitable. Usually it was me—an utter prole with a sword and board—against players with weaponry and magic I had no idea existed. I'd raise my greatsword (for which I probably didn't have the required stats), and before it started coming down the invader would have set me on fire, or electrified me to death, or backstabbed me, or something.

Ah, that cruel Souls twist of tying co-operative play to the possibility of invasion. I remember it being the one thing I genuinely disliked. But of course, that all changed the very moment I managed to, kinda by accident, beat an invader. The telltale signs of an invasion were present: fog walls blocking my passage to other areas of the map, and then, of course, the notification confirming my worst fear.

I don't really remember what build my invading opponent had, but as the glowing red figure marched towards me, I don't remember feeling particularly positive about my chances. Thanks to an online guide, I'd managed to acquire the drake sword. Slightly emboldened by that weapon's early-game strength, and magically no longer fat rolling, I did my usual circle-strafing, shield-raising ritual. I got the opponent down to past halfway, and then, extremely accidentally, probably as a result of desperate button mashing, I performed a parry that demolished the stupid red fool.

So many emotions followed. Happiness, hope, self-absorption. Somewhere among these feelings was the suspicion I'd never be able to beat an invader again. And, of course, soon after, complete demoralisation returned, as the Capra Demon's viscous pup took me down for the umpteenth time. Back to Firelink Shrine we go. Aren't we having great fun?

Last week we reported on the slightly unusual situation that's developed with the Dark Souls games on PC. Essentially, the games have been offline since January, when a major exploit was made public, and this was swiftly followed by the release of developer FromSoft's Elden Ring—by any metric, the biggest title of the year so far.

While it's understandable that the developer's attention has been elsewhere, this now means that the Souls games, one of the best and most influential series of the last decade, haven't been working properly on PC for about four months. In the course of writing the above article PCG contacted publisher Bandai Namco multiple times, and didn't get a response.

The concern about when and indeed if the servers were ever coming back has been growing. Now, someone at Bandai Namco support has delivered the message Souls fans want to hear. Redditor Relevant_Heart_1751 contacted the publisher to ask when they'd be able to play their games again, and received the following response:

bandai_namco_confirmed_the_servers_will_be_back from r/darksouls3

"I'm getting back to you in regards to your inquiry if the Dark Souls servers for the PC will be back online.

"I'm happy to confirm that the developers are actively working on resolving the issue in question and re-launching the Dark Souls servers for PC as soon as possible. For the moment, we do not have an estimate of when this is expected to happen."

Well that wasn't so hard, was it. It nevertheless remains mystifying why the developer and publisher have been so quiet about this issue, which has been dragging on for way too long. Elden Ring's success makes it understandable that FromSoft's initial priority was to support that very popular, very new title as it greeted millions of players. But the games that made Elden Ring possible deserve a little better than being left on the step and ignored.

Elden Ring being such a smash hit felt like the deserved culmination of a long and rich action-RPG lineage. Its success was only possible because of the games behind it, so it's ironic and unfortunate that in the background of Elden Ring's success, the Souls games on PC feel abandoned—even if ultimately that may only prove temporary.

The servers for all the Souls titles have been down now since January 23 on PC. The last official statement was February 9. At the time, Bandai Namco said the servers wouldn't return until after Elden Ring's launch and that it would tell us when "as soon as the schedule is determined."

103 days since the Souls servers went down, they're still down. What's going on?

The problem with the games was a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, which could allow an attacker to run code on the PCs of all players in the game. The exploit was never used but, in theory, would have allowed an attacker to execute code on every online player's machine at once: and these are games that still attract tens of thousands of players daily.

The exploit was first publicised by Redditor Jonientz, after which the servers went down, and later was documented by the account tremwil on Github in March.

"Contrary to popular belief, this is NOT a peer-to-peer networking exploit," writes tremwil. "It is related to the matchmaking server and thus much more severe, since you do not need to partake in any multiplayer activity to be vulnerable due to another matchmaking server vulnerability.

"In Dark Souls 3, a malicious attacker abusing this would have been able to reliably execute a payload of up to 1.3MiB of shellcode on every online player's machine within seconds."

That's bad, right? It's obvious why the immediate action was removing the online elements from PC entirely (the games still work fine on consoles), but the real problem seems to be that this hit just before Elden Ring became the biggest game in the world.

An interesting twist is that, when the exploit was first being talked about, it was apparently present in the Elden Ring closed beta test. FromSoft subsequently ensured that it was not present in the release version of Elden Ring.

The Dark Souls games have now been offline for most of 2022, with no news of a fix, or even a suggested timeframe for a fix, and the publisher just doesn't seem to want to say anything. It's hard to shake the sense that either Elden Ring's success has focused too much attention elsewhere, or that this exploit may be an even worse problem (in terms of restoring the games' functionality) than it appears.

Whatever the reasons, these are not 'ancient' titles with no reasonable expectation of support. They've sold incredibly well, people have paid good money for them, and the online play is a fundamental part of the appeal. This is not just a PvP issue: core elements of the game's singleplayer experience, like the messaging system, are online functions.

Just under four months without even saying 'we're working on it' makes it feel like the games are stuck in limbo. The problem now even has its own parody twitter account:

While the community memes mostly involve gallows humour.

Or lore-appropriate resignation.

There is nothing on when Souls players on PC can expect to be able to play these games properly again. I've contacted Bandai Namco at various points over recent months for comment, as have other PCG staff, but the publisher's not saying anything. The closest we got was that it should have an update to give soon in mid-April, which subsequently didn't materialise.

The situation is not in the least bit helped by the fact that all the 'online' Steam tags in the Souls games have now been removed, which obviously stoked fears that online would not be returning in any form. That is surely unthinkable, but they are currently being sold as singleplayer games only.

It's one hell of a way to treat a series that, as of 2020, had sold 28.7 million copies for Bandai Namco. The Souls games have been an incredible part of gaming's last decade, and are so widely influential the name became a genre. They are also, and this is perhaps the most important point, magnificent games that just don't work as they should do on PC—and haven't for months—while no-one seems to want to say when or if they will again.

Perhaps it was just the perfect storm, and will pass. Perhaps FromSoft will drop a fix tonight. Perhaps Bandai Namco should just address the issue with a bit of transparency. What is for sure is that the gaming success story of the year is completely overshadowing what's happened with its great predecessors.

Dark Souls is an iconic game for reasons that we've dissected plenty enough on these pages. What's less talked about is that the series has also been known to be quite janky—just look at the dreadful PC port of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, and the improving but still iffy performance of Elden Ring on PC.

Unfortunately, Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game, a tabletop RPG released last week, inherited the series' lesser traits, with Polygon reporting that players were frustrated by the amount of errors and inconsistencies in the game. Now, however, the game's designer Steamforged Games has acknowledged the scale of the problems and is seemingly determined to set things right.

In a statement on their blog, Steamforged Games issued "a sincere apology," and said that they are preparing to reprint the book. Here's the important bit:

"We want to make it clear that we take this matter extremely seriously and therefore have decided the best course of action is to order reprints of the book, issuing replacement copies to those customers who have already bought or pre-ordered the Standard Edition and/or Collector’s Edition."

They added that the PDF version will also be reissued.

Because of the sheer number of errors, Steamforged can't yet give a timescale for when the reprints will be sent out other than "coming soon". The list of problems really is quite extensive, and includes things like casters not having the starting stats to use one of their "Recommended" weapons, and confusion over the Death system (which is particularly egregious given that death and rebirth are kind of a central theme to Dark Souls).

When these problems were first raised, Steamforged said that "these concerns shouldn't affect the playability of the game," but it looks like the continuing tide of complaints has tipped them into action.

In January, Bandai Namco deactivated the PvP servers for the PC editions of the Dark Souls games after discovering a serious security vulnerability in Dark Souls 3. Bandai said the service suspension was temporary, but then updated in February to say that because of the time required to ensure the problem was fully solved, online services for the Dark Souls games on PC would not be restored until sometime after the launch of Elden Ring.

Six weeks after Elden Ring's release, however, there's still no sign of multiplayer returning to the Souls games—and in fact, it's looking like Dark Souls multiplayer could be gone much longer than expected, possibly even permanently. As first reported by The Outerhaven, all references to online play in Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls 3 have been removed. They are now tagged as singleplayer games only.

The tags are gone, but references to online multiplayer options remain in some of the game descriptions. Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition promises "PVP arena and online matchmaking system [with] quick matching for players to play 1vs1, 2vs2 and 4 player battle royal," the Remastered edition offers "The Way of the Multiplayer (up to 6 players with dedicated servers)" and Dark Souls 2 features an "updated multiplayer system [that] enables improved online interaction to bring forward cooperative and competitive play."

You can see the change in the Dark Souls 2 page now, compared with how it looked in February 2019:

It's possible that publisher Bandai Namco removed the tags to avoid confusion or accusations of false or misleading advertising on the Steam page, but if that's the case it suggests that the security issues that came to light earlier this year, whatever they are, are much more serious and difficult to address than anticipated. Some fans, however, are concerned that it signals a more permanent state of affairs—that Bandai Namco is washing its hands of the situation and moving on.

I've reached out to Bandai Namco to ask what's going on, and will update if I receive a reply. In the meantime, if you're worried that Souls multiplayer won't be back, find hope in the words and forbearance of redditor bobface222: "Elden Ring sold 47 gajillion copies. That's going to be their priority for a while."

Dark Souls is a majestic fantasy world of grimness and grandeur, a game set in the ruins of what was once the land of the lords. It is also a world where you can literally throw shit at enemies, in the form of an item somewhat coyly named a dung pie.

It's kind of surprising it's taken this long for someone to pose the question, but here comes youtuber LilAggy to ask: can you beat Dark Souls just flinging crap at enemies?

To explain, a dung pie has two effects. It builds up the toxicity status of the player, while also inflicting the toxic status on its target. The in-game purpose of this is that, in the hellish Blighttown, there are multiple enemies that can infect you with an extremely deadly strain of the toxic effect: but you can negate this by pre-poisoning yourself with a less virulent form of toxicity from the dung pie. I dunno what the chosen undead does, lick it or something.

The fact it inflicts toxic makes this a top-tier trolling item in PvP, but as LilAggy shows it can also be used to inflict toxic on bosses, at which point it absolutely eats through their health bars. The streamer spent about seven-and-a-half hours on this run (the above video is a 24 minute highlight reel) and one of the charming aspects of it is the lack of planning, which does seem to fit the theme: when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Ultimately LilAggy does emerge triumphant, the Dark Lord of poop, though the Gwyn sequences are worth watching for one attempt where Gwyn should die, looks like he's going to die, but just... stops dying, and then demolishes LilAggy with a two-hit combo. It's almost like the king of the gods' honour was so offended that he just stops the universe for a moment.

Even Gwyn, however, cannot escape the toxic taint indefinitely. And now you know that, yes, it is possible to complete Dark Souls just by flinging balls of shit around. Oh and for future poo-flingers, the item's in Elden Ring too. Get tossing.

It's Valentine's Day. The day where couples get to celebrate their love for one another and where the rest of us look forward to maybe, just maybe, finding someone that tolerates our bullshit. I promise that I'm not bitter about being single. I pinky promise, in fact. So as a laugh, I'm going to write out what it would be like to date all of Dark Souls' bosses.

While playing Dark Souls on-stream, my community and I had a good chuckle at the thought of dating Ornstein and Smough. If you had to, which would you pick as your boyfriend? There was a bit of back-and-forth about who would be the better spooner and who would give a better hug. And now here we are. So without further ado, it's time to introduce you to dating in Dark Souls. 

Bell Gargoyles:

You've been messaging Gar on Tinder for a bit. He's a little dry but you can't help but want to hear more about his exciting, "elevated" job. You get to the bar for your date, you sit, you order a drink while you wait. He comes strutting in in a grey jacket and wait… hold on. He's brought his mate. What is going on? Turns out Gar doesn't like going out alone and brought his friend, hoping you may have summoned a pal along too. You spend the majority of the night listening to them talk about bouldering.

Capra Demon:

You go on a park date because he has a couple cute dogs in his Hinge profile pictures. They look cute, so it's a good incentive to meet him. You get to the park and the dogs are on you in an instant. Barking, nudging, begging for pets, and honestly it's a little much. You can barely get to the guy because they're getting in the way and you're tripping yourself up on their leads. Capra is unfazed though and only has eyes for you. It's quite cute.

Asylum Demon:

He's kind of an asshole, you know? Doesn't like you going out. Comes home after work and expects you to cook even though you've been working too. You're not even sure you remember how this romance started, but you're ready to get out of the relationship as soon as possible.

Stray Demon:

You date for a while but you realise he's an even shittier version of your ex, Asylum.

Firesage Demon:

Hm, perhaps you have a type. At least Firesage had a bunch of nice candles and did a few magic tricks.

Ceaseless Discharge:

Alright, alright, there are so many jokes I could make about CD. If we're being honest though, he's kind of a pushover. He cares a lot about the people in his life, and took you on a lovely date to a spa. Just don't ever say a bad word about his mother or he might get a little heated.

Moonlight Butterfly:

She's great. Maybe the coolest person you've ever taken on a date, and if you're being honest you can't believe someone that pretty would ever be seen with you. Great fashion, ballet background, and a glittery giggle. She's a little fleeting though. Can't ever sit still, talks a lot about astrology, and if you take your eyes off her for a minute, she's probably floated off to see another mate. Lovely, but maybe not quite ready to settle down.

Gaping Dragon:

Me, me, me. It's all about "me" with Gaping Dragon. This dude just does not shut up. He's so mouthy you can barely get a word in edgeways. And not only does he take up a lot of your conversations, he also takes up a lot of room. Always takes up at least three quarters of your sofa, leaves his bag and all his belongings on your bed. Just a messy lad through and through. Any date with him is about him, and him alone, so enjoy nodding, smiling, and talking about his interest in Undead Burg's sewer system.

Taurus Demon:

Taurus Demon loves the gym. This guy lifts and can do an impressive height of box jumps. He'll try to show you clips of his PBs, any opportunity he gets. Though he's very much into the gym and his health, he's not exactly interested in much else.

Sif:

Sif is a wolf. I'm not even going to imagine dating a straight-up wolf, but I like the idea of living in a little cabin in the woods with your cool sword-wielding dog for the rest of your days.

Pinwheel:

Pinwheel is cheating on his wife and he's terrible at lying about it. You can see how nervous the guy is throughout your date. Though he'll sometimes get into talking about his research, he's always looking over his shoulder trying to make sure no one spots him. It's absolutely because he's not supposed to be here and he's probably got a family elsewhere. You even see a picture of his kid as it falls out of his wallet. What an asshole.

The Four Kings:

The Four Kings is the name of the band your new beau is part of. It's obviously styled after My Chemical Romance, though all members of the band would deny that at any opportunity. Your particular partner is infrequently seen without the rest of his bandmates, and most times you can see him are when he's at practice in his mum's basement. The music, you can't lie, kind of bangs.

Gravelord Nito:

Growing up, Nito was the quiet kind in class. He listened to Cannibal Corpse, and scribbled skeletons and ghosts in his margins of his work books. He got through school without really talking to anyone and no one really thought much of where he was going to end up. He's now a highly successful businessman with lots of "yes" men, willing to theoretically sell their soul just to sit at his table. In the quiet of the night, you suspect his interests are still somewhat disturbing but hey, he at least knows the best wine bars in town.

Dark Sun Gwyndolin:

You never meet Gwynie. You message for a while back and forth about your interests and she seems pretty cool. When you start getting close though, you spot that her photos are of an Instagram model and try to confront her about it. She immediately ghosts you. I guess it was all an illusion.

Chaos Witch Quelaag:

Quelaag is hot, which feels like an understatement. She's got long legs, great hair, and keeps a pet tarantula around she sometimes takes on walks. She's really cool, except that she always seems to be looking to borrow some money. You've heard she's actually been like that for a while, spending it on something or someone secret. You get the feeling that although you're on a date with her, she's almost always looking out for herself first and foremost. Cool, hot, and emotionally unavailable. Figures.

Iron Golem:

Stone-faced, but dedicated. Though you can't get much of a read on Golem easily, he's there for you. When he's committed, he's committed. He's kind, he's tall, but more than anything, he's clumsy. This guy will absolutely drop a glass of red wine on your carpet, or break a plate when washing up. He pays any fees to fix the mess but you have to have patience with the poor guy's antics.

Bed of Chaos:

She likes plants. You go to her apartment and it smells like soils and flowers. Sadly, she's not great at keeping plants alive so it also kind of smells like the rotting of overwatered cactuses she's desperately trying to revive. Bed is trying her very best, so you can't tell her she needs to repot her Birds of Paradise because that'll make her cry.

Seath the Scaleless:

Seath doesn't care about you too much. This guy takes you out to a really nice meal and spends a lot of time looking at his phone checking in on the stock market. It's only when the waiter winks at you that he becomes jealous and protective over what he rightfully thinks is his—gross. You try to talk about his family a couple of times, but none of them speak to him anymore after he came into a lot of money and property. You wonder how he got it all, but fear asking is a bad idea.

Priscilla:

She loves anime. Her bed is more plushie than it is bed and she's on her way to becoming a furry you're pretty sure. She has at least three fake tails she's told you about, though she wouldn't dare wear them in public. Though Priscilla is lovely and well-meaning, you do get the feeling that she's grown up in a bubble and is a little immature. If you're being honest, you don't really date. You just hang out, eat ice cream, and talk about Demon Slayer.

Centipede Demon:

Cent is a sweetheart, actually. He's even a little shy at first. You've had mutual friends for ages and you never paid too much attention to him. Cent always stood in the corners of rooms at parties, until you mentioned you like spicy food. Suddenly he was off, chatting with you about a dish he makes called lava noodles. You eventually try them and they make your stomach hurt for a week, but you're glad you could get Cent out of his shell just a little.

Ornstein and Smough:

These guys are best friends and you 'accidentally' manage to date them both. You started seeing Smough after you got hammered on a night out. He's tall and enjoys his job a lot. He didn't really like vegetables, and eats almost exclusively meat but he gave good, almost crushing, hugs. But then came along Ornstein. You can't describe it, but there was something electric about him. He gave you all the attention in the world and could spearhead any conversation with ease. You start seeing Ornstein behind Smough's back and when they find out, they agree it's all your fault and hate you now. Yeah, you kind of deserved that, but now you have to hide behind pillars whenever you see them in public.

Gwyn, Lord of Cinder:

You're sick of dating guys your age at this point. They're all immature and have very little life experience. But you're out at a bar and Gwyn offers to buy you a drink. He's older, and looks a little tired, like he's holding the whole world together or something, but he's nice. He's got a lot of experience and happens to be the CEO of a business empire he's been the custodian of for a very long time. Things don't work out because he's a bit controlling but honestly, those late nights listening to him play the piano were lovely while they lasted.

Steamforged Games recently announced an officially licensed Dark Souls roleplaying game which, like much of its previous work, will be based on the D&D 5th edition ruleset. It'll be something of a homecoming project for the specialist studio, which exploded into prominence thanks to the wild success of Dark Souls: The Board Game, a lavish production that raised over $5 million on kickstarter.

Realising it was onto a good thing, Steamforged has subsequently done many more game adaptations, including Resident Evil board games 

The developer has been drip-feeding information about the new approach it's taken with the Dark Souls RPG, but has now revealed that at the core of its system will be one of the game's signature elements: What happens when you die.

"There are no death saves in Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game. You hit 0 Position [health/stamina], and you’re dead. Until you respawn by the bonfire, of course.

"You’ll have lost all your collected souls—yep, sorry, levelling up might take a bit longer—and there’s a significant risk you’ll lose part of yourself."

This of course makes complete sense, but is also a rule brimming with potential.

"You’ll begin your campaign with a character concept. Each time you die, you risk parts of yourself being whittled away, leaving you a husk. A mindless hollow. And a quick note: if, during a combat, half of your party dies, then the whole party fails. And wakes up, at a bonfire, soulless and needing to start all over again…"

Steamforged reckons this makes the game world's rules a "little bit tougher, that little bit more bleak" which also aligns with Dark Souls' whole vibe. Of all the spinoffs the game has inspired, a tabeltop RPG does seem like one of the best fits: The world of these games is already constructed around ambiguities ripe for the exploration, with countless dark passages of history waiting for player imaginations to illuminate.

Dark Souls: the Roleplaying Game will be available to pre-order from tomorrow.

A group of Dark Souls modders essentially took the original game and put it into a blender. Called Dark Souls: Nightfall, the mod is a collage of late-game areas with remixed sets of enemies to fight. The full thing won't be released until sometime after Elden Ring, but a demo of the mod was made available earlier this week.

It's unclear in the demo where exactly Nightfall sits in the Souls timeline, but I suspect, like in Dark Souls 3, the world's most important locations have started to converge. That's why the full release will use existing level pieces to create a new map with unique bosses and characters. The demo begins in the lava-soaked ruins of Lost Izalith and transitions to Darkroot Garden, and the enemies either completely unique or plucked from the original game and its DLC.

What's most impressive about Dark Souls: Nightfall is how it incorporates all of the Souls series (including Bloodborne and Sekiro) into its new mechanics. You have the equivalent of Estus Flasks to heal, but counter-attacks against enemies will also heal your recently lost health, like in Bloodborne. This gives the mod room to ramp up how many enemies you face at a time and rewards you for playing aggressively. Depending on how brave you feel, you can press a key to swap into a two-handed stance to perform more combo attacks at the cost of losing your ability to heal.

The combat encounters echo the ones you'd see in a typical From Software game. Archers snipe at you while melee enemies rush you. Normally, you'd bolt toward the archer or pull one enemy around a corner, but in Dark Souls: Nightfall, you have the ability to maintain pressure without losing much health in the process. Bigger enemies show up and cautious play returns, but I'm sure with more time, you could hone your skill at the two-handed stance (which introduces a short teleport in place of a roll) to clean up tougher foes.

The level design isn't quite as considered as it is in the original game, which features a tightly designed world that loops back around on itself a lot. But what's there is stretched out to provide a nice rhythm for exploring and fighting. There's even a gag where a lone tree enemy stands in a wide open room, and then inexplicably walks into lava and dies in front of you. The demo is labyrinthine and funny in the ways few games that try to ape Dark Souls are able to be.

Dark Souls: Nightfall could be a wonderful reason to return to the game that helped popularize an entire genre. A lot of Dark Souls mods focus on heightening the difficulty by doing ridiculous things like turning every enemy into a boss, or they're purely jokes, like one that lets you play as the game's creator Hidetaka Miyazaki. Dark Souls: Nightfall, on the other hand, appears to take its aim to be a sequel seriously.

The enormous success of the Souls series has led elements of the community to somewhat deify one of the key creative forces behind it, Hidetaka Miyazaki. While these games are worked on by hundreds of coders and artists, Miyazaki's stamp on the final product is always unmistakable, from his deeply melancholy and oft-grim tales of heroism to the sense of slapstick humour that pervades these bleak and deadly landscapes.

Miyazaki himself remains something of an enigmatic figure: He gives great interviews without ever really saying much, and part of the games' magic is that their surprises are kept hidden from players until release. I guess all this preamble leads up to a very silly thing, which is that now you can bum around in Dark Souls as the director of Dark Souls.

The Miyazaki as Dragon mod replaces human and hollow player characters in dragonform with a pretty spectacular likeness of the man himself ('dragonform' is a transformation that comes with one of the game's covenants). The mod comes in both Dark Souls and Dark Souls Remastered flavours, and the 3D model is the same one previously used to put Miyazaki in Sekiro, which you can see below.

The best element of this mod is that it comes with an additional mod called Miyazaki as Dragon Phantoms that allows both invaders and summons to be Miyazaki. I'm not sure how mods work with Dark Souls' network play (and the game servers are currently down anyway) but this seems like an opportunity too good to pass up: So once they're back I'm gonna give it a whirl and try hunt down some hosts as the director of vengeance.

The Dark Souls modding scene has produced some great stuff on PC over the years, and is inevitably going to die down somewhat when Elden Ring aka Dark Souls 4 releases (though ambitious projects like Daughters of Ash remain ongoing).

Over recent years modders have done the lord's work in proving what outrageous BS the Bed of Chaos is, added custom maps, let you play through the entire game as your favourite boss, and re-jigged the game in some horrible/ingenious ways. And hey, if you don't fancy playing as Miyazaki, why not try it as CJ from San Andreas.