Beginning Dark Souls

I waited two days after finding Dark Souls for $15. When I decided to buy it, I went back in and discovered the shop was having a 20% off sale so I landed my Xbox 360 copy of Dark Souls for $12. You just can't beat that. So there's my first tip for new Dark Souls players: shop around for a good deal; you don't have to pay $60 plus tax at Best Buy. The PC version on Steam is $40 which is a bargain itself.

The game doesn't give you much information due to the way it's delivered. The story is sparse and there is little to no tutorial content; you're essentially thrown directly into the fire. Some tips to get you started:

• Proceed with caution; don't aggro groups of enemies. You want to pick one-on-one fights until you have a good sense for the combat system.
• Keep your shield up. Look for a shield that has 100% physical damage protection so you can rely on it to protect you from most attacks.
• Learn your weapons' attacks. Each weapon is quite different but they all have a quick attack (RB), strong attack (RT), and jump attack (tap Fwd and quickly hit RT).
• Don't watch a bunch of walkthrough videos before playing. Half the fun of the game is figuring out what to do and where to do it (remember Dragon Warrior).
• When leveling up, don't put points into resistance. Focus on vitality, endurance, and one or two stats depending on the weapon(s) you want to use.
• The game doesn't give you much information explicitly, so spend time and pay attention to item descriptions and stats.