Back at TGS 2008 when I played Demon’s Souls I was the only one in my group who left the demo booth unimpressed. I had picked the mage and didn’t quite care for how it controlled. I also managed to die so many times that the Lady of the Booth came over and started giving me tips on how not to be so awful at the game.

It did not help.

I chalked it up to a sour first experience and ended up buying the game around release. I went with the class that gave an awesome ring this time and managed to make decent progress. Still, the game didn’t quite work for me and I ended up selling it. When I heard that Dark Souls, the spiritual successor, would be released this year, I figured I would just ignore it like I do to so many other games.

That has proven to be impossible.

My friends, Facebook and Twitter feeds are all aflutter about Dark Souls. People are talking about this game more than I could have imagined. And with a good reason.

Dark Souls is the school lunch table of video games.

It was bound to happen. With many of today’s developers children of the Famicom era of gaming, they must have remembered talking about games at lunch with their friends.

“Did you find the item under the horse shaped rock?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what it is for. Did you get to the door by the cliff?”
“Yeah, but I don't know how to unlock it.”
“Oh, you have to beat the giant rooster first.”
“You can kill that?”

If that conversation doesn’t make you taste peanut butter jelly sandwiches and Twinkies in the back of your throat, I guess your mother just fed you better. But you have to be tasting school lunch right about now. I know all this Dark Souls discussion does it for me.

And I have only played the game for fifteen minutes.

I have to throw that on the table. I don’t like playing the actual game. Just like Demon’s Souls, it isn’t for me. But the discussions that it has started are delicious. Hearing about people discover things for the first time, hearing their struggles about not being able to beat a boss for the first fifteen times, it all makes me feel like the kid who didn’t get the game for Christmas. But I still know lots about it just from everyone talking so much.

And that seems to be enough for me.

The game in the fifteen minutes I played, wasn’t different enough from Demon’s Souls. That is, it didn’t change what I didn’t like. Of course, they had no reason to, they weren’t trying to please me.

But the good news is that I don’t have to play it. All I have to do is take a look at my Twitter feed to get an insight into what people are doing and experiencing in the game. Their stories become a part of me. I imagine what they are going through, and play the game with them in this sense. I applaud their successes and I wince at their losses.

And it feels really nice.