I have a confession to make. In addition to my backlog/Steam pile of shame, I have roughly thirty games in my ‘demos’ category. I add them whenever there’s a Next Fest on Steam or a Wholesome Direct. It’s kind of a secondary Wishlist for me, but it’s also a good way to check out a game without paying for it.
Side note: I used to be a casual game player. All the casual game websites had an hour demo for the vast majority of the games. This was taken for granted, and i’ts been heartening to see that more and more indie devs are doing this. I wish Triple A games would, but they don’t need to. The main reason is to draw people into playing the game, which is usually the biggest hurdle to overcome.
I try to be open-minded about demos, but there are a few things that will make me quit out immediately. One is first-person point of view. It makes me nauseous to a varying degree, ranging from mild discomfort to feeling like I’m going to vomit. If there’s an FOV, I can fiddle with that to mitigate it to some degree, but it’s always there, regardess.
Number two is platforming. I just can’t do it, and I’m old enough that I’m not going to bother trying it again.
Side note: I really really really wish people would understand when I say I can’t do something, gamewise, I mean it literally. It’s not a question of ‘gitting gud’ or practice. I. Cannot. Do. It. It’s a physical limitation, not a mentality or an attitude. I had an argument with someone in the chat of one of Krupa’s plat streams about PvP. It’s rampant in the From games, and I hate it. I will jump off a cliff rather than give them the satisfaction of killing me.
This other person, let’s call them Lee, argued robustly that it was just a matter of practice. “You had to practice to get good at PvE,” they said. Oh, sweet summer child. First of all, I never have gotten good at PvE. I can do it, but that’s not the same thing. Secondly, they are two completely different thing Fighting against AI or the environment is still within my control to some extent. Fighting against another person, someone who only does that? Yeah, no. Oh, and I say that because anyone PvPing randos at this point means that’s all they do. Which means they’re fucking good at it.
Lee just would not let it go. I was willing to drop the topic with a ‘let’s agree to disagree’, but they could not stop reiterating that I just had to practice and within time, I would be able to do it. Like, dude. No. Stop. I spent hours in Dark Souls parrying the Silver Knights in Anor Londo (everyone suggests this enemy to practice on because they have a very predictable moveset). By the end of my practice session, I could parry the ones with the straight swords about 75% of the time and not even half the time for the spear guys.
That’s just one enemy in the game. Every type of enemy has a different parry window, and every shield has a different parry window as well. In other words, because I cannot parry naturally, I had no chance of learing every parry window for every type of enemy.
The parry is different in every From game. My reflexes, which have never been good, have only gotten worse over time. My medical crisis totally wiped out my depth perception and my ability to accurately assess spatial differences. And my reflexes are completely shot. In other words, there is no way in hell I can do PvP. I don’t know why this is so hard to accept. Actually, I do. For Western people, especially cishet men, they have been indoctrinated to believe that they can do anything and that their opinion on anything is the most important one.
I let it drop because I knew I was not going to change Lee’s mind, and I did not want to argue about it any longer. And I’m secure enough not to have to have the last word (except in my head). It would be amusing how much it flusters/scares cishet men to plainly state that I cannot do something if it wasn’t profoundly annoying/frustrating. It’s also sad, really. I think it’s a gift to know what I cannot do so I won’t waste time on it. And I’m talking about something I truly cannot do rather than something I don’t want to/won’t do.
I know that’s the whole basis of ableism, which I don’t want to get into because that’s not the point of this post.
Because of this, though, it’s sometimes hard to know when it’s a can’t and when it’s a won’t. For example, teaching myself the Double Fan Form has been a trial. It’s fucking hard, yo. I’m still on posture 20 out of 48. In fact, I’ve parked myself on this posture for the past week just to give myself a chance to breathe. And to clean up the postures I’ve already learned. And noticed the mistakes I’ve been making it all along.
I had my private lesson yesterday, and I exclaimed to my teacher, “It’s so fucking hard!” about the form because, well, it’s so fucking hard. We went over a few tips to make it easier to open the left-hand fan, but that’s not the main problem. The biggest issue is that the two hands are constantly doing different things. And my brain struggles to deal with that.
With the Double Saber Form, the hands are generally mimicking or mirroring each other. Or one is just being held steady while the other does the movement. In the Double Fan Form, the two fans sometimes, oftentimes, do completely different things.
Another issue is that my brain broke during my medical crisis. That means it’s harder for me to remember things than it was in the past. I can watch a posture intently and minutely, and still immediately forget what I had just watched. This is really not what the post is about, so I won’t go into that right now. My point is that sometimes, it’s hard to know when it’s a can’t and when it’s a won’t.
Back to games. An inadequate tutorial is a no-go. I’m not talking about FromSoft’s tutorials because that’s a whole different thing. I’m talking about tutorials that are not clear as to how you actually play the game. I try to give some grace to indie devs, but if I don’t know how to play a game, I can’t actually play the game.
I will fully admit that some of this is my own fault. Why? Because my mind simply does not work in the same way as most people’s. For most of my life, I felt as if my brain was broken. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I began to wonder if maybe I was neurodivergent. I was going to get tested for it when I had my medical crisis, which pushed everything else to the back of my mind.
I have more to say, but that’s all for today.