Two HD Classic Remakes Dated and Punishing Sequel Announced

Okay guys, a few updated products have a release date, and a new product has been announced and I'm quite interested in two of them and frothing at the mouth for another. The PS3 got some good news over the past few days.

First up, Ubisoft announced that they will be releasing the remastered trilogies of Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell from last gen consoles for the PS3 on March 22nd of this year. The Splinter Cell HD collection will have Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, and Chaos Theory. The Prince of Persia HD collection will have Sands of Time, Warrior Within, and The Two Thrones. I'm quite curious to see how these two last-gen trilogies are updated and how they'll look on the PS3 hardware.

I'm not quite as psyched about these as the prospect of a Metal Gear HD release. I mean, I love those six games as much as the next guy, but two of those three games in that rumored collection are among my Top 3 of all time and that's hard to beat. But hey, these are still six great games so keep an eye out if you have a PS3 and haven't played them before.

Now for the news I'm really excited about. 2009's Demon's Souls was one of the most punishingly difficult games of the last decade. Yet it was absolutely awesome for that very reason. It was never cheap and had great level design and controls and there are very few games that give you the sense of accomplishment that Demon's Souls did every time you got a step further. Hell, it was one of my Top 5 games of 2009.

Now Demon's Souls, despite being an RPG, barely had any story depth to speak of. So the sequel, Dark Souls, will be in a new world and apparently have a different story as well. It will keep the unique online component from the first title and give more of an open-world design. It will also include more customization for your character rather than just picking a class from the get-go. The first alluded to that as the class pretty much just gave opening stats. Knights who start with a brunt force offense could later be turned into powerful magic users.

It will also keep it's punishing difficulty meaning that, like the first one I can expect to have another real love/hate relationship with this beast. No release date has been give so I'm expecting an early-mid 2012 release. Buy some extra controllers, because you'll be snapping quite a few of them.

Ah Hell. This is gonna hurt isn't it?