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Over the last few years RPG fans have been treated with about as much warmth and compassion that a toothless methhead receives on a busy street selling open mouth kisses for money. You know it’s been a rough year when the most prolific titles worth mentioning are luke warm turds from BioWare (Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age 2), both of which had a lasting impression shorter than a midget on it’s knees.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it a few times before, but the dark fantasy classic and PS3 exclusive Demon’s Souls is easily the most memorable game I have played in nearly a decade which left me and many others foaming at the mouth for a sequel. After much silence, From Software finally spoke and revealed there would be in fact no Demon’s Souls 2 causing the entire fanbase to collectively moan and stick loaded guns in their mouths.

But shortly after, it was announced that they are currently working on a secret title named Project Dark. With the limited amount of gameplay footage that was disclosed, it was obvious that we were looking at a spiritual sequel to Demon’s Souls. Once the dust finally settled and fanboys stopped touching themselves, Project Dark was revealed as a new cross-platform game called Dark Souls which is in theory Demon’s Souls 2, but not exactly since Sony is no longer a publisher of the series (cue celebration).

So what this means for the fans is that Sony cannot claim Dark Souls as their own which results in Xbox 360 owners joining in on the fun. The game will still be a PS3 exclusive in Japan but really, nothing bad ever seems to happen to Japan so I guess they had this one coming.

Dark Souls makes me excited in ways only my psychiatrist would understand.

Dark Souls is expected to share much in common with it’s predecessor and also improve upon co-op play, weapon variety and should be even more savagely brutal. Believe me when I say this is extremely good news for those who enjoyed the original, and bad news for those who couldn’t pass the first level and traded it in for 3D Dot Game Heroes.

Now it’s still too early to say but it would appear that the unheralded success of Demon’s Souls has left an impression on a few other gaming studios around the world which RPG fans will greatly benefit from.

One of the studios who took the most notice was none other than Atlus, Demon’s Souls publisher. Atlus was cut out of the Dark Souls equation for reasons I don’t care about but it is certainly worth noting that they are publishing their own flavor of awesome straight from the vein of the title they helped launch in the first place.

The Cursed Crusade is the latest dark fantasy epic they have sunk their talons into and it shares enough in common with Demon’s Souls for fans of the game to take notice. It’s a third person medieval RPG with fantastic looking combat, atmosphere, dungeon crawling and co-op play. If the difficulty offers a stiff challenge for the player, we might just have another winner.

The Cursed Crusade is apparently more fun with a friend. I'll let you know what that's like.

So now we have Dark Souls and The Cursed Crusade to look forward to, and just when you were thinking lightning doesn’t often strike twice (it does, ask the hobo I wrapped in sheet metal and left in a thunder storm), we have yet another wildcard to take note of. EA has stepped up with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning which is yet another 3rd person fantasy RPG being released sometime in the near future.

You’re probably thinking this is too good to be true much like when you dreamt you had sex for the first time but woke up to your dog licking your penis. Well it likely is, seeing that Electronic Arts has their giant ass print on it.

If EA has taught us anything it's that whatever they touch will turn into soggy barf .

Word on the street is that co-op will not be an option for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I won’t judge the game until I play it but no multiplayer on a game like this is like telling your kids that you’ll take them to the zoo but in reality you drop them off at an orphanage.

You don’t actually think EA will get this right do you? It has quite the star studded support team if you haven’t heard, from a script written by Forgotten Realms R.A. Salvatore, to designs by Todd Mcfarlane (Spawn, Spider-Man) and game design by Ken Rolston of Elder Scrolls fame. To be totally honest that sounds like a smorgasbord of washed up, overrated has-beens. I’m expecting to hear that the Beach Boys were invited to do the music but let the pieces fall where they may.

It would seem that 2011 is queued up with a few interesting RPG titles to try out and quite frankly it’s about time. I’m putting my money on Dark Souls to come out on top, at least in my books.

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