Review: How I learned to stop worrying and love the deathly delights of 'Elden Ring'

Looking back, I don't know why I agreed to do this, why I submitted myself to video game masochism. I don't know why I thought my first experience with a FromSoftware game would be like every other video game review: 30 hours gone, game finished, review written, thank you and goodnight.

And yet — 30 hours into Elden Ring, I've barely made a dent. I didn't realize until now that I could have so much fun making myself so miserable.

Beauty and brutality

is forbidding, majestic, and sick in every sense of theauthor George R. R. Martin, the rest by mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki. Its setting, the Lands Between, is filled with countless little delights, like the roaming sheep that roll away armadillo style when you get too close. But they're also home to countless nightmares, like giant dragonflies that harass you while you're menaced by roving bands of desiccated peasants, towering knights, or flame-breathing dragons. These vast landscapes largely replace the dense, layered levels that was famous for. In , though, the opportunity to survey diverse terrain — whether a noxious swampland or gusty prairie — produces an injection of gaming dopamine (and some genuine fear, too).