Are we Falling for this game?

Are you alright? The guy next to me leans over and asks, a worried look on his face. Crap. He’s on to me. I’m playing Lords of the Fallen, a Hack ‘n’ slash heavily influenced by Dark Souls. When I play games of this intensity, I start mouth breathing pretty heavily (think combination of Darth Vader and nervous stoat), eventually graduating into continuous angry muttering. I would feel bad for my neighbour, but I’m too busy getting killed for the 33rd time, and saying unprintable things about the mother of the First Boss. Lords of the Fallen is a blast.

You are Harkyn, a criminal in a world where no sins are forgotten (literally tattooed on your face, in fact). The rulers of the world are apparently close to banishing evil from humans (which sounds like it might involve lots of brainwashing and murder, but whatever). However, an ancient enemy, a broken God, has decided to attack the human realm with his army of demons. Harkyn has been offered a chance at redemption. He must use his sins and beat back the army. I can tell you from the 2+ hours I played, that this involves little diplomacy but lots of murdering everything you see with a hammer.

This is the story from the official website. It’s is revealed slowly, and I spent most of the time being brutalised by the sword of the second boss, so I can’t really comment on how accurate it is. What I can tell you about is the gameplay. It would be difficult to talk about any part of Lords of the Fallen without mentioning Dark Souls (a Hack ‘n’ Slash notorious for its brutal difficulty). If you’ve already played it, then the game will seem very familiar to you. The mechanics, the storytelling, the art style and the general feel of the game are all pretty similar. You do get a real sense however, that while the developers have been quite conservative with their core design, they really have tried to embellish the old formula. It also looks very, very pretty running on a PS4.

The most notable difference is the fact that the difficulty is slightly less intense. This doesn’t mean it’s easy. I was allowed to record my game session, and I died a total of 72 times (this is partly due to the fact that I had to use a controller, which I suck ass at using. I think at one point I was just doing forward rolls for about 3 minutes). When you die, your experience from your previous life is slowly depleted, unless you find your “ghost”, upon which the remaining XP is restored. XP can be banked at checkpoints to upgrade your attributes and skills. However, If you choose to play balls-to-the-wall you can keep the XP, increasing your multiplier, but with the risk of losing all of it if you die and can’t find your ghost.

There are six potential classes, ranging from the lumbering tank of the warrior, to the extremely quick and fragile rogue. There are also the usual multitude of weapon and armour options, allowing for a lot of customisation. The core mechanic of the game appears to be thus: Die, try a different strategy and combination of gear, rinse and repeat until you find one that works. This sounds dull. It’s not. The balance on the game is very well done-at the start it’s all absurdly frustrating, but this evaporates fairly quickly, and you start feeling like an unconquerable badass. Naturally, the game punishes your hubris, and kills you again. But importantly, when you die, it usually feels like it was because you did something stupid, rather than the game.

There are a couple of weaknesses. I only played for a couple of hours, so I couldn’t really get into the story. However, from first glance it does seem a bit derivative, and the gameplay is very linear. Harkyn is gruff white male with dirty past/beard combo #3712, but that’s not specific to Lords of the Fallen. In addition, considering the number of control options, the PC port is almost certainly going time, and saying unprintable things about the to be horrendous, but you can always play with a controller.

There are problems certainly – it feels a bit too close to Dark Souls, the learning curve is initially very steep and profoundly frustrating. But there are moments when, after a change in strategy, you hit the sweet spot, get the perfect combo and crush some demonic’ warlords face in with a huge hammer, that I guarantee you feel like the most powerful guy on the planet. And when you inevitably die a minute later, instead of rage quitting you just mutter “I’ll piss on your corpse, fucker” then jump back in. The feeling of success after intense effort is profoundly satisfying, and unbelievably fun. In the end, that’s all I want from a game.