Dark Souls speed run is a tour de force of tolerance

by Jordan Mallory on Oct 16th 2011 9:00PM

Generally speaking, speed runs fall into one of two categories: "That's completely nuts" and "I should feel bad for ever trying to play this game." Most speed runs can be classified as the former; incredible displays of memorization and timing that reduce hour-long sequences into minutes. They're fun to watch, and sometimes even educational.

Speed runs like SexyShoiko's Dark Souls play-through, however, make us ashamed of the countless hours we've painstakingly bled into this unforgiving beast of a game. Over a series of seven YouTube videos (part 1 above, 2 through 7 after the break) SexyShoiko manages to topple the entire title in less than an hour and a half, which is completely bewildering. We'd call him/her a masochist, but that term seems inapplicable to someone who is quite clearly the master of their own domain.

[Thanks, everyone who sent this in!]

Source: YouTube

Tags: dark-souls, From-Software, microsoft, Namco-Bandai, playstation, project-dark, ps3, speed-run, xbox

Reader Comments (89)

@ItchyBarracuda
Im not a virgin, your comment is still a load of senseless garbage

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN dude, someone give him a medal because he just set a freaking world record in both Dark Soul's final time and sheer badassery.

@Jetleo1
I've always had a fascination with speed runs but I've always been ridiculed for it. I gotta say though, having seen some really impressive speed runs (all of half life 1 in under 40 minutes?!) this one is up there for me, personally. Quite impressive indeed.

inb4 the inevitable"WAHH IF HE PLAYS SO FAST HE CANT ENJOY DA GAME AND ATMOSPHEREEE"
There's a reason he was able to do this.
*applause*

@Helghast102 Obviously he's played the game at least once or else he wouldn't know what items he needed to get or the order of boss fights he needed to do in the speed run.

@Helghast102 lol I don't think people actually read ur comment - just the caps :(

@Jay Z
(That's what I implied, let's keep it a secret, eh?)

Was this the same guy from the Demon's Souls speed run the 'Stiq posted?

I have yet to get past the taurus demon... I am a hollow shell of a man, don't look at me I'm hideous .

@covertpetersen

Try a plunging attack.

@covertpetersen

Do like he did and enchant your weapon with lightning. You'll make short work of him.

@covertpetersen

*pats pats*

That's ok, I'm with you. Savoring the game like a sweet wine.
I think I just beat the Taurus Demon last Wednesday.

@covertpetersen - All you have to do is go in his area, walk until he arrives, and then sprint back to the ladder and climb up. Plunging attack his head, then run toward the other end of the map. Wait till he runs over to you, then run past him back to the ladder. Rinse and repeat. Only takes 4 times or so.

@covertpetersen

Wait till you get to the Capra Demon, that's where I'm stuck now, playing as a thief, getting raped in under 10 seconds before I can even make it to the stairs. I felt like such a badass after beating the gargoyles, but now the game is reminding me just how much I suck.

This game is such a cruel jerk, why do I love it so much?

@Luciano

The Capra Demon is actually relitively easy once you know what to do.

As soon as you get through the fog, go for his dogs. If you can kill those immediately the rest of the fight is cake. I beat him by rolling and slashing on dog immediately, then ran up the stairs to the left. Since the dog is faster than Capra the dog will get to you first, kill the dog and you should be good to go.

With Capra, you essentially win or lose that battle in the first 5 to 10 seconds

...My play through of DS took me over 75 hours...

@jtrjuwrue5iiejie5ijeie3i5 It probably took SexyShoiko 1.5 times that to get the whole run perfectly plotted ;)

@antiZER0

Probably closer to double.

I can't watch, I'm not even that far into the game yet.

@jtrjuwrue5iiejie5ijeie3i5 - I was right around there as well, to get to lvl 80 and beat the game. I spent way too much time lost in Blight Town, and just generally avoiding areas (like Capra, which kicked my ass over and over).

An hour and a half is an incredible time.

@stiqlol - Find a map. You'll thank yourself. Other than that, the only real secret to the area is keeping your shield up constantly, and using the spider shield if you have it (blocks poison darts I think).

How does someone work this stuff out? He is rolling with such extreme precision and just knows exactly what to do....

@LEONLEONLEON

Obviously he knows what hes doing, infact its the japanese version and they have a few months ahead of others to learn the game.

@Faenix Actually they only got it about two weeks before everybody else.

@baddates77

was only weeks? felt like months I was waiting for my chance. My bad XD

@Faenix Haha! I know what you mean.

This man isn't human. I've spent 90 minutes farming souls to level up...

@afrosheen
Perhaps he's a soul!

@arucious
Perhaps even...a DARK SOUL.
DURR HURR HURR

@afrosheen I spent 10 hrs in the area where you arrive after the asylum ;s

@Viiral
dont feel bad i couldn't be two skeletons from that area i was pissed none the less.....and a sad sad man i am.

@afrosheen that is crazy japanese for you XD i don't think they are human sometimes you should see them play monster hunter lol

Now I feel like shit that it took me a few hours to beat the Taurus demon, I dont want to watch the other videos...

42 Hours for my first play through and 97 Hours to Platinum. I guess I should try to match this guys run now!

I was impressed until I saw him use the save exploit. Garbage.

@Einshtein What save exploit?

@chrono Pretty sure he's referring to the world reset that happens after quitting and reentering the game. At the start of the second video he knocks the guy off the ledge to kill him quickly then reloads to have the loot back up on the cliff.

However of note is that the same thing would have happened had he just come back later. Say after ringing the second bell. Essentially the named NPC loot will always appear where they spawned if they died someway that would stop you from looting it.

@GamingCthulhu Im pretty sure that's NOT an exploit, it's more a of a method to fix the item spawn.
There REAL save exploit was when he fell off of the beam in the cathedral, he had to quit game and reload before he died, it cost him about 20 seconds

@Helghast102 Aww yea just got to that point. Yea about 30 seconds more time. He'd have had to run back from the Anor Londo fire pit. Still would be nice to see him correct that one issue so far. Still working through the videos.

@GamingCthulhu

He also re-loaded when fighting Seath, since some clams got into the boss arena with him and were going to murder him.

And again against Bed of Chaos, but I don't know how much time that saved him compared to just running to the other side. In fact the entire Bed of Chaos fight was rather sloppy compared to the rest of the video, since he missed with his arrows several times, and he kept trying to block the swipes when heading to the core, when you can easily roll under them, even in heavy armor.

He falcon punched ceaseless demon!

Just blows my mind. I haven't started my copy yet, but I can't get enough of the videos. I've only seen to Blighttown though.

haha, I've spent a dozen hours and I'm still in the Undead Parish...i have killed everything i've crossed paths with though, including both black knights and the Dragon...but I'm basically nowhere...

I've played 5 hours and I'm stuck going up the stairs to fight the Taurus demon or down the stairs to fight the other dude,

@bbranden Taurus is easy. Enter that section, climb the ladder on the right, kill 2 dudes, jump down and run to the middle of the bridge. Run back to the ladder after Taurus appears, climb up the. Do a falling attack. Ladder, drop attack a few more times and he's toast.

@bbranden
For the taurus demon, you can climb up the ladder to the right of the foggy doorway. Once up there you can do a plunging attack off of there. I killed him with the Black Knight Sword in one plunge.

For the guy downstairs, I killed him before the demon. I bought a bunch of arrows, lured him upstairs, and outside on to the stairway and took shots at him. He'll walk back inside, so, I just kept luring him out and shooting him several, several times until he died. It took me a while, but it was safe.

@You Mad

Achievement/Trophy Unlocked: Apples and Oranges!
Description: You compared Skyrim and Dark Souls in an article about Dark Souls
Reward: Infinite Down-Votes!

@Everyone else

Achievement/Trophy Unlocked: Swing and a miss!
Description: You failed to get the joke. Maybe someone can explain it to you later?
Reward: -1 Laugh

Wow that's pretty ridiculous! It's fun to watch knowing I'll never achieve this. Not sure if I'd even attempt a speedrun even after I'be fully mastered the game.

He got as far in 30 minutes as I got in 30 hours. My only question mark for this being a valid speed run is that it doesn't look like it is the most recently patched version because that lava demon that falls into the lava pit where he is punching its hand I'm pretty sure he doesn't follow you all the way back there anymore. I couldn't get him to do that but he was still an easy cheapo kill hiding behind some rocks and attacking his tentacles.

@GleepGlop

That exploit still works with the latest patch.

I'm thinking it must frustrate some folks that SexyShoiko is running past mobs people spend hours farming or trying to beat

O__-|-

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Dark Souls

Dark Souls speed run is a tour de force of tolerance

Reader Comments (89)

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 9:12AM xenophy said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:09PM Jetleo1 said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 8:39PM applefleas said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:26PM Helghast102 said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 9:52AM Jay Z said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 12:58PM mangosango said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 1:29PM Helghast102 said

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Posted: Oct 17th 2011 2:21AM kentuckyfried said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 9:25AM BananaBoat said

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Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:33PM LEONLEONLEON said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:38PM Faenix said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 10:54PM baddates77 said

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Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:33PM afrosheen said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:38PM arucious said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 11:12PM pluupy said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 5:28AM Viiral said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 7:23AM originalzombieslayer888 said

Posted: Oct 17th 2011 9:20AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:38PM Faenix said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:47PM GamingCthulhu said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:48PM Einshtein said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 9:57PM chrono said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 10:02PM GamingCthulhu said

Posted: Oct 16th 2011 10:07PM Helghast102 said

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Posted: Oct 16th 2011 11:31PM Hyperion45 said

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