Dark Souls
Mar. 28th, 2022 08:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingIt turns out that I’m really bad at Elden Ring. This is frustrating not so much because I suck, but more because so many other people have been like, “Oh yeah I beat the game in like 48 hours lololol.” The social media buzz surrounding Elden Ring has already faded because everyone has apparently already finished it…
…which reminds me a lot of what happened with Squid Game. Like, here I am, still thinking about Squid Game because it’s a good piece of art, but do most people even remember that it was popular for a hot second a few months ago? And if something like Squid Game can’t stay relevant for more than two weeks, what chance does anything I make have of even being seen? So I’m feeling kind of depressed…
…and I’m just sort of waiting for someone to make a guide to the opening of the game that’s actually useful for beginners so that I can figure out what I’m supposed to do.
I guess I’m so tits-deep in the indie scene that sometimes I forget that a lot of people who play video games are stupidly competitive. It’s a little cringe to be honest. It’s like sometimes, back when the NYC subway was still a thing people used, you’d go down to a station late at night, and while you were waiting for the train you might catch sight of rats fucking in the loose garbage. The rats were really into the garbage and the fucking, and more power to them, but everyone ignored it both because it’s kind of gross and also because that’s not the sort of memory you want to carry home with you. That’s how I feel about people bragging about how good they are at video games on the internet, and this definitely applies to the culture surrounding FromSoftware games.
Meanwhile, a friend recently shared some really gorgeous and creepy fan art of Little Nightmares II, and I started playing that instead. I was having a lot of fun until I got to an action-oriented set piece around the middle of the game in the “hospital” level. I’ve played through it more than fifty times across several days, and I’ve read walkthroughs and watched YouTube videos of people doing it, but I just can’t make it to the end of the sequence. I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that, while me being bad at video games is definitely part of the problem, there might also be an issue with the controls on the Nintendo Switch port not working properly. I guess, if I really want to finish this game, I can wait for it to go on sale and then play it on PS4.
So anyway, I finally started playing Dark Souls. And I don’t mean to be edgy or anything, but after Elden Ring and Little Nightmares II, it doesn’t feel that difficult. I’m really enjoying myself, and I realize that this is exactly what I like about the Zelda series – navigating through beautiful and interesting architecture that encourages the development of spatial memory and rewards attention to detail. I know it’s technically the other way around, but I keep thinking, “This is just like Hollow Knight!”
…which reminds me a lot of what happened with Squid Game. Like, here I am, still thinking about Squid Game because it’s a good piece of art, but do most people even remember that it was popular for a hot second a few months ago? And if something like Squid Game can’t stay relevant for more than two weeks, what chance does anything I make have of even being seen? So I’m feeling kind of depressed…
…and I’m just sort of waiting for someone to make a guide to the opening of the game that’s actually useful for beginners so that I can figure out what I’m supposed to do.
I guess I’m so tits-deep in the indie scene that sometimes I forget that a lot of people who play video games are stupidly competitive. It’s a little cringe to be honest. It’s like sometimes, back when the NYC subway was still a thing people used, you’d go down to a station late at night, and while you were waiting for the train you might catch sight of rats fucking in the loose garbage. The rats were really into the garbage and the fucking, and more power to them, but everyone ignored it both because it’s kind of gross and also because that’s not the sort of memory you want to carry home with you. That’s how I feel about people bragging about how good they are at video games on the internet, and this definitely applies to the culture surrounding FromSoftware games.
Meanwhile, a friend recently shared some really gorgeous and creepy fan art of Little Nightmares II, and I started playing that instead. I was having a lot of fun until I got to an action-oriented set piece around the middle of the game in the “hospital” level. I’ve played through it more than fifty times across several days, and I’ve read walkthroughs and watched YouTube videos of people doing it, but I just can’t make it to the end of the sequence. I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that, while me being bad at video games is definitely part of the problem, there might also be an issue with the controls on the Nintendo Switch port not working properly. I guess, if I really want to finish this game, I can wait for it to go on sale and then play it on PS4.
So anyway, I finally started playing Dark Souls. And I don’t mean to be edgy or anything, but after Elden Ring and Little Nightmares II, it doesn’t feel that difficult. I’m really enjoying myself, and I realize that this is exactly what I like about the Zelda series – navigating through beautiful and interesting architecture that encourages the development of spatial memory and rewards attention to detail. I know it’s technically the other way around, but I keep thinking, “This is just like Hollow Knight!”
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Date: 2022-04-01 08:23 pm (UTC)