‘Dark Souls’ Beaten With Voice, No Pleas For Mercy, Surprisingly [Video]

The Dark Souls series of games is widely regarded as one of the hardest video game franchises out there, and it can be frustrating even if you are playing with a regular controller. There are players, however, that do not think beating such an excruciatingly challenging series with the traditional sticks is quite hard enough. One brave soul, known by the moniker bearzly, has taken pursuit of this frustration to a level beyond.

According to Tech Times, the YouTuber know as bearzly grew weary of what challenge Dark Souls had to offer long ago, and he seems to have developed an addiction to making the game more frustrating. Most people who have grown to feel like Dark Souls no longer offers a sufficient challenge impose rules such as the inability to use health recovery items, and in some cases even banning themselves from using weapons.

What bearzly did was prohibit traditional controllers. He has beaten Dark Souls with a myriad of different controllers, including a Guitar Hero guitar, a set of Rock Band drums, and according to Gamespot, a pair of Donkey Kong bongos. Through the help of a computer program called VoiceAttack, bearzly was able to ditch any controller and simply use his voice. It took him about 30 hours to accomplish the herculean feat, and he died 485 times. This is a lot even for a new player to the franchise, but most players don’t play Dark Souls with the aid of only their voice.

What makes the games in the Dark Souls series so challenging is that it must be learned. In order to beat the games, you must perfectly assess how the enemies you face interact with the environments, and then learn how to avoid their attacks. After you have done that, you then have to learn how to actually kill your foes. This may sound like I’m pointing out concepts that are common in most games, but in Dark Souls, you must perform these tasks to perfection. Dark Souls will expect payment for your mistakes, and the price is steep. Most enemies will kill you in a few hits, and by the first time that you’ve been hit, it is often too late to recover. Once you do get killed, you do not get the luxury of checkpoints in the same way that most games offer. When you die, all the enemies you have killed previously respawn, and it is often a challenge reaching the place where you died.

Many who follow gaming news are intimidated by the prospect of even playing Dark Souls. Regardless of this fact, Dark Souls has sold over 2.3 million copies worldwide, and Dark Souls 3 is due to come out sometime in 2016.

[Image via FromSoftware/Namco Bandai Games]