I shudder to think what the gaming landscape would look like without Hidetaka Miyazaki. In 2009 Demon’s Souls was released alongside games that wrapped the player in cotton wool via endless tutorials and giant objective markers – little did they know they were dinosaurs and Souls was the asteroid.
At first, this series was an ultra-niche curiosity. Thirteen years later they’ve blossomed into the smash-hit Elden Ring, which has eclipsed everything that’s come before, Souls has gone fully mainstream. And it’s about damn time.
I’ve beaten every previous Souls title and was eagerly anticipating Elden Ring, though figured I’d wait a few weeks for launch bugs to be squashed and to allow me to finish up a few other titles. But then those 10/10 reviews started tumbling in one after another and I’m only human dammit. Launch day it was.
And so, for the last month, I’ve been glued to the Lands Between. When I wasn’t playing the game I was thinking about playing it, my girlfriend and friends are sick of hearing me gabble on about it, my housemates are patiently putting up with hours of intense choral music – even my dreams started to be Elden Ring themed.
Hell, I even managed to parlay my obsession into cold hard cash by successfully pitching articles about the game to editors, thus enabling me to psychologically file away the hours poured into the game as ‘research’.
A game hasn’t sucked me in this fully since Breath of the Wild and it’s beyond exciting to know that the medium can still do this to me. Many were the times I sat down to play and time simply vanished. There was always one more horizon to look beyond, one more boss that just needed a little more finesse to beat, or a weapon I wanted to experiment with. Wow, how come it got dark so early today?
Perhaps the only real downside is that so much praise has been heaped on Elden Ring there’s not much new left to say. Banging on about how much trust it puts in you to figure out its systems, the flexibility with which you can appreciate each encounter, or the intensely incredible visual design is just going to make me sound like a broken record.
So, for now, all I’ll say is I feel intensely privileged that Elden Ring released at a moment in my life where I had the time and skills to fully devote myself to it. It’s my favourite Souls game by far, there’s not going to be anything better coming out this year, and it’s making itself at home in my mental “greatest games of all time” list.
After 80 hours of concentrated fun, I’ve seen the credits and put it down in order to play something else for a bit. But the Lands Between still call out to me: there are whole areas I still haven’t set foot in and bosses practically asking to be bashed around the head with my +25 weapons. I’ll be back, but until then…
Oh! Elden Ring!
Pixel Hunted 
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