Dark Souls Remastered

Lordran only knows what we’d do without you.

- Dave Meikleham

Despite being one of the best games of the last generation, FromSoftware’s fine hack’n’slasher could cripple Xbox 360. In its most demanding areas—we’re looking at you, Blighttown—Lordran’s labyrinthine environments would cause drops to a borderline unplayable 15fps. Thankfully, those performance woes are a thing of the past in this very solid (if unspectacular) redux. Not that Dark Souls Remastered isn’t utterly spectacular taken as a whole. This is still one of the finest action-adventures ever made, combining peerless, utterly absorbing sword/axe/halberd fights with a twisting, elegantly designed world that never fails to captivate. While the remastering job may be slightly unambitious—visually, the game has more or less remained untouched— the jump to a locked 60fps on both Xbox One and Xbox One X makes Dark Souls more responsive and riveting than ever before. It’s still bloody hard, of course. FromSoftware’s combat model is as exacting as they come, with even the lowest rung enemies capable of downing your sometimes living/ sometimes walking corpse warrior with a few good hits. Every skirmish brings knife-edge tension, with each counter, sword swipe and block potentially the difference between hard-won victory and face-palming defeat. Weighty, precise, and methodical in the most moreish fashion possible, few games have ever matched Dark Souls’ electrifying combat in the seven years since its initial release.