Twitch Will Be Playing This Notoriously Difficult Game

Plenty of people haven’t been able to beat Dark Souls on their own. Now Twitch is hoping that a communal effort might make that obstacle a little less difficult to overcome, asking “Can Twitch play Dark Souls?” in its latest viewer-controlled experiment.

You can see how the world is doing by visiting the Dark Souls feed on Twitch, but don’t go in expecting a Voltron-esque effort of men and women from around the world coming together to effortlessly guide a warrior on to victory.

As you may have heard a few dozen times at this point, Dark Souls is a notoriously difficult game to concur, no matter how “good a gamer” you are. Some things are made easier by having multiple people take part in a project but, as we’ve found out with previous Twitch Plays offerings, that’s not exactly the case when you’re talking about thousands of people trying to control a single video game.

I’ve been watching for a good 15 minutes now and so far the masses have managed to bumble around a dark room, use a couple of items and swing their weapon at thin air. The group’s single greatest achievement so far has been managing to guide the character up a few stairs before some yahoo forced the character to roll off to the side. Oh, and there’s been sooo much rolling.

While the world has been able to finish Halo and even Pokemon in the past, Dark Souls is a different beast altogether. The world is a labyrinth where the slightest misstep often causes death. Resources are scarce, to people using them willy-nilly is a huge hindrance. Also, enemies are ferocious and require pattern recognition and careful timing to beat. That’s not exactly something you can pull off too easily when dozens upon dozens of people are chiming in on what should happen next.

Still, it’s a heck of a lot of fun to watch and, every now and again, I’m sure the community will pull off something amazing.

For those unfamiliar with how Twitch Plays work, viewers are able to add comments to the chat thread that will actually move the character in the game. Enter a simple “F” to move the character forward, for instance, or “R1” to do a normal attack.

This makes for an interesting social experiment. Rather than try to get organized and diplomatically decide on what/who/when things should take place, folks are just spamming command after command and watching the poor character stumble about.

While folks have bested Dark Souls upside-down, with Guitar Hero instruments and even their voice, “Can Twitch Play Dark Souls” has to be the most difficult task to date. I have my fingers crossed that I’ll happen to be around the next time the community stumbles upon a boss fight.