Yes, yes. I’m very aware that I’ve barely touched this blog and that it’s covered with dust and that I am a bad person. Moving on.
I am basically a child in a 21 year old’s body. I act on impulse, I’m stubborn and I scare easily. Most of all though, I like being involved in things. Using my blog as a public psychiatrist aside, for the past few weeks my friends have spoken of nothing else but a game that came out in 2011 and has recently reappeared on everybody’s radar with a bang.
I’m talking about Dark Souls.
Reading tweets back and forth between players is like reading tweets in another language. What the hell is a Quelaag? Who or what is Gwyndolin? And quite frankly, Ceaseless Discharge sounds like something you should get checked out by the doctor. Messages of fury and claims that the game was impossible and that they’ll never go back to it are swiftly replaced with tweets of pure joy. They’d done it – they’d conquered whichever wretched Hell beast they were up against.
All of this intrigued me. I’d seen bits about Dark Souls, I even played the demo once, and was enjoying it until I saw the Asylum Demon and NOPED the hell out of there. I’d heard people singing its praises, but there was always one thing always put me off actually buying it. And that’s its famed difficulty.
Modern games have spoiled us. Think about it. We get excessively long tutorial missions, characters become bullet sponges and for crying out loud, we even get regenerating health bars. Dark Souls is not a nice game. It even tells you that on the back of the box. It doesn’t spoil you or hold your hand, it aims to test you. If you die, it’s your fault. You have to plan ahead, meticulously noting enemy movements and spawns while upgrading your weapons and levelling up your character properly. You enter into an attack and you can’t cancel it – you can’t simply dodge out of the way at the last minute. Even replenishing health isn’t simple. Rest at a bonfire and all those enemies you just killed pop back up to life. Basically, it’s all on you.
And that’s why Dark Souls scares me so much. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m pretty rubbish at games. My impatience truly is my downfall. Wait behind this boulder until the enemy walks past? Hell no! Let’s just run ahead, he’ll definitely not catch me, and even if he does I’m more powerful than him anyway. This’ll be a cakewalk. Oh wait, he caught me. Aaand now I’m dead. Rinse and repeat until I actually do what the game has been gently hinting at me to do and wait, or I get lucky and manage to kill the guard and his cronies.
But hey, I’m a big girl now. I like to think that I can learn from my mistakes. I’ve bought myself a copy of Dark Souls.
Here goes nothing.
