I am a masochist; that is why I asked to review Risen, a game by Piranha Bytes - the company best known for creating the Gothic series of decidedly European role-playing games. Gothic is not known for being user friendly; the controls in that game series are antiquated, there’s no hand holding and the system is awesomely brutal and unforgiving to the player.

Everything is difficult - from learning how to use a bow and finding a way to use the game's sparse magic system  to getting skills,  gold and supplies that you need –   actually takes a lot of work. Risen is a tick kinder than those games but it is admittedly a tough experience to swallow. Yet, I am still enjoying the game no matter how many times I’m killed by a seemingly harmless rat or a vulture or attacked by an NPC for some unknown reason. So I come to the conclusion that I am some sort of masochist because, despite all my hardships in this game world, despite all the failure and the reloading of save games, when you triumph in a game like this you have proven something to yourself.

It's the video game equivalent of climbing Mount Everest; you may lose some toes getting there but at least you can say "hey a survived Mount-Freaking Everest."

Will I survive Risen? I'm halfway up the mountain at this point, and i'm going to finish this game if it kills me. And if you are wondering – Risen is what Gothic 3 should have been.