#EGX2014 Preview: Lords Of The Fallen

Before I begin this preview of Lords of the Fallen I feel it’s important to point out that the demo booth I was playing was frequently glitching. I waited 5 minutes for the game to load and found my character running where I wasn’t telling him to go and there were numerous camera blips. I’m not an expert Dark Souls player, but I’m good enough to normally duck, weave and kill for a bit, and seeing as Lords of the Fallen is being compared to that series of games a lot, I figured this skill would be beneficial. The demo took you down a series of tight corridors with a few open spaces, leading to another big open space, which then ended with a boss fight. To some degree it felt like an on rail game at times. Run forward; kill enemies, run forward, etc.

After taking out the first few enemies and then failing to get around the first big monster, I ran the gauntlet again… and again I died. The camera kept coming in far too close for me to make sense of what was occurring around me and led to me getting frustrated at the game for dying, but not at fault of my own. After a few more failed attempts I decided to do a full on Forrest Gump and just ran and surprisingly this tactic worked and I got to a checkpoint. “Brilliant”, I thought until turning around and seeing all the enemies I aggroed running towards me. I did not last long. This game will initially punish you if you try to just run through it.

  

I figured the checkpoint was going to be full of the aggroed enemies when I respawned and I had ruined the playthrough for myself, however upon respawning they were nowhere to be seen. Going through a tunnel in front of me I fought a shielded enemy and yet again the camera decided to stick extremely close to me. You seem to be punished in this game for trying to fight in tight a space, which means that you just shouldn’t do it, however I do not think that is an intentional design mechanic.

Finally I found myself at the end boss and sat back for a bit to try and figure out how he fought. To some degree I understood and was able to whittle his health bar down a bit, but he killed me on multiple attempts and with a queue forming behind, and various technical hiccups, I decided to step away.

Lords of the Fallen is out at the end of October and there is definitely a lot of promise there and even though I’ve heard positive things from other people that have played it, I can’t ignore the level of technical hiccups I saw in the demo. It could be that the demo was an old build and the main game will be fine, however I would not be shocked if a patch is released prior to release or very soon after release. Problems aside it promises to be entertaining for fans of Dark Souls that need a new action RPG to sink their teeth in to.