Dark and Darker Demo Thoughts

 I got a chance to give the Dark and Darker demo a go.  Here are some thoughts.

 Good: Premise of a PvPvE dungeon crawler where players join in a dungeon to kill monsters, get loot, and then either fight to the death or hide long enough to escape.

 Bad: Literally everything about this game.

 The combat is terrible.  I laugh thinking about how many players complain about New World combat currently (not balanced, desync, yadda, yadda).  They need to spend a minute in the combat of Dark and Darker and maybe they'll be thankful for New World's combat.  After an hour of playing Dark and Darker I cannot bring myself to play any more.  It is slow and lacks any meaningful feedback to the player.

 As it's just a demo I didn't expect any sort of "introduction to the game" mode, but this is definitely something the game needs to have if it is going to launch.  Nothing is explained and new players will find themselves dead quickly with no understanding of  what they are supposed to be doing.  Even "New Player Guides" on YouTube have a hard time explaining what you are supposed to do in this game.

 I think the only redeeming quality of the game is the promise of some PvP action but the combat is so horrible that I can't imagine anyone but the most hardcore of players sticking it out.  Though I may be wrong as I was flabbergasted when I checked out the demo player numbers on Steam Charts and saw the peak at 100,000+ concurrent players and averages hovering around 70,000 daily peak.  I feel like I'm missing something; how are that many people OK with this clunky combat?

More popular than I'd of expected!

 

 Give me New World grade action combat and this PvPvE concept and I'm all over it, but as it is Dark and Darker is going in the history bin for me.  I cannot get past the terrible combat to comment on any other part of the game.  There is no way I am dealing with a game that handles like a 1990s adventure game.  Can anyone explain to me how on earth they enjoy this combat?  Is the PvPvE aspect that much of an attraction?  Are we as a community this starved for this type of game?  TELL ME WHAT I AM MISSING HERE!!!