@Kylie

To each it's own I guess. Personally, I enjoyed the no pause button, that only makes up fo a more tension filled atmosphere, as you'll need to make sure you are on a safe zone before taking your mind and concentration of the game.

What's wrong with the online features?

There can be no doubt they are all in aww (add Atlus to the list too).  No marketting, no real hype, nothing at all and look at what has become of a game that might not have even come to the US (highly probable that it would never have made it out of Japan if not for Atlus stepping in)

There is no praise higher for ANY game than to sell more copies than you could have ever imagined (like the sellouts they had, with Atlus APPOLOGIZING for not making enough copies of the game)  When it beats even their high expectations, you know you have something special on your hands.

Congratz Atlus and From Software.  You deserve the praise and we are all Proud of You.

Uncharted 2 for me.... Demon's Souls great but it's not for me.

You do know you can just load the game up with you not logged into PSN and then after getting in game (loading your save or starting a new game) just press the PS button and proceed to log back in right?

The game will ask you to log in when you try to start and/or load a game but just choose cancel. It will then start the game in offline mode.

Doing something as simple as this will allow you to be online with the PS3 while not forcing you to use Demon's Souls online features.

Not trying to be a jerk here, but have you even played the game?

Fair enough, I can relate to that, because there have been times where I needed to lay down the game to study or to go work, but I've found that if you do a hard exit from the game (Hit the PS button and choose Quit Game), the next time you start up the game, you'll be on the same area with the same amount of progress you had.

It's not the same thing as pause, and it's more tedious if you compare the time it takes to start up the game once again, but it's something worth to look after if you ever get to play the game again ;)

Quite frakly the stateside reception of Demon's Souls shouldn't be such a surprise. JRPG's have been loosing popularity in the west and DS is probably the most innovative JRPG to come out in a long long time. From what I've sen DS plays more like a WRPG than like a typical JRPG.

I'm curious how Final Fantasy XIII will be recieved in the west, considering it's lack of innovation and the fact that's it's a step backwards (in terms of gameplay) from FF12. I think reviewers will use DS as an example of a niche game made by a small developer that is a more impressive achievement than a high budged hyped sequel made by one of Japan's biggest developers.

I will say YES to a certain extend.

This game is HARD CORE!!

Full story: http://www.gamespot.com/best-of/game-of-the-year/index.html?page=2

as long as its a ps3 game thats fine by me.

Both of those games are praise-worthy.