42 Great Games Like Demon's Souls

The PlayStation 5 DualSense controller added new features over the PlayStation 4 DualShock controller. It added a higher-quality microphone, a larger more sensitive touchpad, longer battery and more robust USB C charger cable. That last one is a welcome addition as DualShock controllers charge cables often wore out over time.

In addition to these improvements it added two new features:

• Haptic Feedback - Detailed vibration and movement from within the controller to extend immersion of the game to your hands: the pattering of rain or a blast of energy.
• Adaptive Triggers - The triggers on the controller can be made harder or softer to press by the game. This offers a nuanced way to feel more in the game, while also to provide more information about aiming.

The games in this list all use these Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers functionality.
 

Online games are often about immediate communication either spoken or typed in the heat of battle or survival. There are some online games that encourage communication much more like writing a letter to someone.

These games offer players the chance to write a note and then place it in the game world for others to discover. They can also, of course, also read messages and notes from other players.

With a little guidance it can be a lovely way to introduce children to the skill of letter writing, as well as engaging with other players online without the usual bad language (although that can happen here too).

Games like Subnautica, offer the ability to leave time capsules for others, that include a handful items, a short text message and a screenshot. Similarly, games like, Dark Souls and Demons Souls enable you to leave messages for other players to help them with tips. In Nier Automata you find the bodies of other fallen players that have a customized message left on them when they met their end.

Other games weave the letters and messages into the gameplay. Kind Words, for example, is a game all about responding to letters that other people have sent. The Things We Lost In The Flood, builds its play around the ability to send and find messages in bottles. In Animal Crossing New Horizons on the 3DS you can also put messages in bottles for other players to find.
 

Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. As much as resilience involves "bouncing back" from these difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth.

Games, by design, present players with adversity and much of the joy of gaming comes from taking on and overcoming unnecessary obstacles. Whether you’re saving the universe from an alien invasion or tending crops in your animal community, playing games mimics the process of resilience.

This list of games that can help foster various forms of psychological resilience is compiled with the expert help of Take This. They aim to decrease the stigma, and increase the support for, mental health in the game enthusiast community and inside the game industry. They encourage a game community that welcomes and supports people experiencing mental health challenges, and that recognizes the humanity and mental health of game creators.

The Portal series tell a narrative that you are going to fail. You’re told to give up, but if you ignore this barrage of discouragement you can use it as a way to strengthen your resolve and complete the puzzles even if you have failed twenty times in the process. The Stanley Parable is all about trying again. You can try and re-try your decision making, reaching a variety of different endings.

Dark Souls is a hallmark for a punishing challenge that require resilience. You journey through elaborate lands to adventure, explore, and take heed lest they encounter a battle with a boss or enemy. Celeste is the story of Madeline and the enemies she overcomes while climbing Celeste Mountain. The game specifically calls out that Madeline has anxiety, and the challenges she faces in the environment reflect her own internal struggles and triumphs. Cuphead challenges players to battle relentless bosses in combat-heavy play. Cartoonish and playful, it balances challenging players to grow in skill and offers plenty of entertaining environments and aesthetics to keep you playing.

In Kingdom Hearts you meet many characters that need help - and many boss battles feel almost insurmountable. With help from friends like Donald and Goofy, the player character Sora overcomes the darkness to save his friends and bring hope back to the world. Death Squared is a co-op puzzle game where one player’s mistake makes everyone else lose. You learn cooperative resilience in trying again admits humorous judgments from the unseen “hosts” of the game.

In Animal Crossing you get help from the animal neighbours. You learn to lean on this social and environmental resilience to persevere at building social connections with computer villagers and friends online. Stardew Valley’s farming is about growing and maintaining a homestead. Interweaving the busy work are relationships with the other villagers, many of whom are social models for resilience in their storylines.
 

PlayStation 5 Activity Cards are a part of the operating system that provide a quick and easy way to see your progress, and get helping progressing (or finding what you’ve missed) in games. It’s a really neat part of the system that you can pop-up while playing by pressing the PlayStation button on the controller.

They are like your very own guide, tailored to your current play through, providing information on progress, tips on things you've missed, more things to do (and how long they will take) and short videos of how to complete objectives (that you can pin to the side of the screen while you are playing).

However, as with the use of PS5 Dual Sense features, different games do this in different ways. Some just include Activity Cards to load and save your game or access a game mode (which saves time but isn't a game changer) while others go to town on tips, hints and other helpful ways to get more from their game.

As one player put it, "Honestly, I'm just really enjoying them in Control where they tell me where to go when I'm lost in the wonderfully convoluted building. Then in Maquette it's extremely useful to just get a step solved for me when otherwise I'd switch to another game. These are the kind of frustrations that generally stop me from beating games. It's like having a Prima guide on my PS button."

The games in this list are those we think do a great job with Activity Cards. This not only provides quick travel, fast loading, how long main- and side-quests will take, tips and video guides but is a real reason to consider buying the PlayStation 5 version over the Xbox Series X|S.
 

We spend our lives in buildings every day. Our homes, offices, shopping malls, cathedrals, stations, bridges and even public toilets have all been designed. Video games mirror and magnify this built environment in different ways.

Some, like Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto and Forza Horizon recreate virtual versions of familiar places. Others, like The Witcher, Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and Eastshade, create their own cities and buildings. Then there are games like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, Biomutant, Enslaved or The Last Of Us that drop you in a once-great but now ruined architecture.

Along with these pre-built spaces, there are also games that invite you to affect and rebuilt the architecture of a world. Games like Townscaper allow you to easily create series of buildings and consider how one structure relates to those around it -- like a street-scene generator. Then there are games like Animal Crossing, that offer a social context in which to apply your architectural and landscaping skills.

Then there are games that build spaces that would be impossible in real life. From the Escher-like Manifold Garden to the scale-confounding Superliminal, these games can play with perspective and movement to not only confuse the player but open new possibilities in perceiving buildings.

Finally, there are games with breathtaking architecture. Whether it's the atmospheric lighting of Control, the climbable buildings of the Uncharted series or Shadow of the Colossus vast cathedral-like structures, video games often create original spaces that stop you in your tracks.

The video games in this list create space to notice, reflect and try your hand at architecture. They are fun, but they are also important because the design of the spaces we spend time in have profound effects on how we feel, think and move.
 

Some games hold your hand and lead you forward with respect for your time and ability. This is lovely. There are some other games, though, that intentionally make the going tough.

These tough masters aren't afraid to let us lose progress, waste our time, or feel frustrated. In fact, they revel in their ability to take us to the very edge of throwing something.
 

After the Wii's success, PlayStation added motion controls to its PlayStation 3 controller. Although a novelty at first, this continued to mature in PlayStation 4 games and its DualShock 4 controller that included motion detection as well as a Touchpad and speaker.

The games in this list make intelligent use of the motion controls and other interactive features of the DualShock PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 controller.

This ranges from games like Journey that lets you control the direction you are looking with controller motion, to Tearaway that uses the gyroscope and touch pad to launch objects from the controller to the screen. Then there are games like Gravity Rush that use motion to direct movement.

Some of these games use motion controls to complement traditional use of sticks for aiming and movement. You can use the Motion Aiming accessibility search to find more of these games on the database.
 

The British Academy Games Awards are presented annually to recognise, honour and reward outstanding creative achievement in Games. The awards categories reflect the wealth and diversity of the games sector.

The awards started in 2004 and are presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). For parents, they are a great way of discovering brilliant games to play in their family. The games included here are from these categories:

• The Family Games Award highlights games that will work really well for parents and children. These often include multiplayer features and feature a cast of family-friendly characters.
• The Games Beyond Entertainment award is also of interest as this highlights more unusual games with an emphasis on storytelling that addresses topics that parents may find appealing themselves.

 

Games offer us challenges on many levels. When someone plays a game too much it’s easy to think they are taking an easy route to something entertaining, like junk food. But video games are generally hard work. It takes time to understand their systems, mechanics, objectives and worlds.

There are a small group of games that hone this challenge down to the mechanics of moving around the environment. Whereas many games simplify getting around, these games make the complexity and depth of their movement systems part of the joy of playing them.

Rather than relying on the stats of your character or player, you have to execute the moves yourself with timing proficiency and instinct. Rather than offering assistance, these games leave you to it. Whether you rise through the league tables, or just improve compared to your family, the satisfaction or getting to grips with something so monumentally challenging is really satisfying.

This might be understanding how the propulsion of your car lets you take to the air and hit a perfect shot in Rocket League. Or, perhaps, it’s using the limited running and jumping slightly better than other players to get a win in Fall Guys. Maybe it’s learning the perfect combination of angles and trajectories in Videoball. Or it could be learning the complex move lists in a game like Street Fighter.

These games all have in common, a complex control system that can be put to use in imaginative and creative ways to get the edge over your opponents.