Masahiro Sakurai is a Japanese game-design veteran. He created the Kirby series and the Smash Bros. series for Nintendo, and now he and his team at Sora are hard at work on Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS. A busy man, no doubt, but even he found the time to hardcore-play Dark Souls for a while, an experience he wrote about for his column in this week’s Famitsu magazine.
His first impression? About what you’d figure. “It’s a game with the sort of difficulty level where you’re killed instantly if you let your guard down,” he wrote. ” Every mistake causes you to pay a severe penalty. You’re constantly watching out for back attacks and pincer attacks, always tapping on stone bridges before you cross them. Every corner you come across takes on vital meaning. What if there’s some foe I can’t defeat on the other side? Should I try not to make any sound? Am I all right on stamina? What if there are enemies on both sides? Anything behind me right now? And so on, and so on.”
