For those of you that also like to be brutally murdered again and again in one of the most difficult games on the market: I have good news for you!

As you might know, considering you are visiting this post, the Dark Souls 2 launch was pretty messy with many people left in the dark (get it? hehe, dark as in Dark Souls) with the game crashing on start-up or simply displaying a black screen after trying to start a new game. But thankfully the solution is quite simple.

Welcome to Dark Souls 2

After looking around for awhile and seeing many vague comments like “F♥♥♥ From Software!” and “Why the f♥♥♥ can’t you make f♥♥♥ing games that work you f♥♥♥s” that somehow did not help me get to the root of the problem, I figured it might be a codec problem. After all, Dark Souls and most other games generally do start with a intro into the story and we all know what happens when you try to play a video without the proper codec (read: nothing).

Alas, even after installing Shark007′s Codec Pack (don’t install K-Lite please, it will make your computer unstable) Dark Souls was still no go. Then I remembered that I have the N-version of Windows (which means it didn’t come with Windows Media Player and related technology pre-installed, due to some European anti-monopoly law fuckery).

Onwards! The Solution:

Lo and behold! The majestic black screen bugfix!

Just download the following media pack from Microsoft, install and restart. You’ll be up and hollow within no-time!