Watch Twitch play ‘Dark Souls’ and feel the struggle

Game streaming platform Twitch serves as an example of what can happen when many people get together to accomplish a single task. Its initial crowning achievement, Twitch Plays Pokemon, actually inspired a game about the process called ‘Choice Chamber’ and continues to go on strong, currently playing ‘Pokemon Battle Revolution‘ for the Wii after playing the series’ completed ‘Pokemon Alpha Sapphire’ in July.

Except now, Twitch is trying to play one of the most frustrating games of the modern era, and it’s getting its ass kicked.

Twitch Plays Dark is group play on a sadomasochistic level. ‘Dark Souls,’ released for PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2011,  is a game so legendarily brutal that normal humans with a brain, two hands and above average-dexterity curse its name. It has unforgiving game mechanics, including the fact that you use the same resource to both build experience and buy items, and ultra-tough bosses. In terms of difficulty, ‘Pokemon’ is arithmetic and ‘Dark Souls’ is quantum physics.

But if you love watching people get straight-up owned, here’s the live stream:

Twitch players have been slogging through the Undead Asylum — the game’s tutorial — for nearly four days now. Now , they’re doing battle with the Asylum Demon, and it’s safe to say the struggle is real.

The kicker, of course, is that you don’t need to kill the Asylum Demon to progress through the game — there’s an escape door that bypasses the battle. But the collective hivemind of Twitch has yet to lock into synchronicity, as the battle is quickly reduced to shambles.

In addition to setting walk speeds and inputting movements, Twitch players have the option of democracy, directing the character by majority votes, or anarchy, essentially inputting all directions raw. It will be interesting to see whether one or the other can finally get the group out of tutorial hell, so they can finally experience the real nightmares that await beyond.

➤ Twitch Plays Dark [Twitch]

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