‘Dark Souls’ is most certainly a game that enjoys going out of it's way to kick you into the dirt. It's hard alright, excruciatingly hard. With it's main motto being “Prepare to die”, you best be prepared to do exactly that, quite a lot in fact. There's no doubt that this is the spiritual successor to ‘Demons Souls’ and as such, plays just like the original, with some tweaks to the old mechanics making the gameplay really slick. There are some fairly major frame rate issues found in some areas of the game, places with wide open areas such as Blighttown can cause the frames to drop as low as 20fps for many players which certainly impedes on the enjoyment of the game. The collector's edition of ‘Dark Souls’ offers a fantastic hardback art book, a digital mini-strategy guide, the original Dark Souls sound track and a behind the scenes DVD. The artbook I think is fantastic, all the artist impressions of the creatures found in game really look awesome, I'm a big fan of it, the digital strategy guide was also fairly useful however it only covers the early hours of the game and states that they will be releasing a full strategy guide to purchase at a later date. The behind the scenes DVD didn't really have much going for it, mainly just a bunch of trailers for the game and an interview on the ideologies for the dark souls universe in japanese with subtitles. If you were looking for anything on the development process for the game you're going to be a little disappointed here.

The game overall is fantastic has many gorgeous experiences within it's dark and dangerous world, based on the game itself, I'd give it 5 stars easily, however due to the quality of the collector's e­dition, I'll give it 4 out of 5.

Visually stunning, and impressive in scope, Dark Souls harks back to a time when games didn't hold your hand, or provide detailed and laborious tutorials. Dark Souls is hard, and unashamedly so. However, while being difficult, Dark Souls is also fair, whenever you die it is easy to see what you did that caused it, and the drive to not make the same mistake again can drive you through the game.

And the satisfaction you feel when you finally down that one enemy who has eluded you- Priceless. Possibly worth a rent first if you're concerned about difficulty, but if you aren't I unreservedly recommend this game.

after seeing heaps of gameplay from previous installments i was hoping to get this on 360, and when i did i didn't expect it to be so difficult be prepared for many hours in one area leveling up. too bad you cant save where you want but it adds to the tension in trying NOT TO DIE!!! but over all AWESOME i recommend it to people who want an insane hack n slash game