Dark Souls - Covenant of Humanity

USgamer has a two part editorial for Dark Souls. You can read the first part here.

The name for the PC version says it all, really. Dark Souls: Prepare to Die. In a time where games don't so much hold your hand as they do smother you in positive feedback, Dark Souls stands as an anomaly. Beloved for its savagery and lauded for its fair-but-tough-as-Battletoads design, From Software's action role-playing game provides no quarters, no allowance for mistakes. Where victory in another game is all but predestined, Dark Souls will contest every second you spend alive; a nightmarish Horatius at the bridge. To reach the end of the bleak, sprawling pilgrimage that the game puts you on, you'd need more than time. You'd need perfect execution, a fierce sense of obstinacy and the willingness to die again and again. 

The second part continues the article.

What do you do when you've done it all? What do you do when you've beaten one of the most unforgiving experiences known to gaming kind? You go back to the beginning, prepared to prove that flesh trumps binary.  

"People either get addicted to trying out new builds and beating the game (PvE) over and over, or they become a Darkwraith and pledge to make the game as hard as it is for everyone else as it was for them. It's as if beating this game gives you the same motivation the the games bosses have; you want to kill anyone who is trying to beat Dark Souls." jpflagg remarks. 

A good example would be those affiliated with the Gravelord Servant Covenant. Considered by many to be even more antagonistic than the Darkwraiths, Gravelords seem to live exclusively for a solitary purpose: to hurt.