While I’m dealing with the issue of my sore and tender left thumb, I haven’t been gaming much because I would obviously need my thumb to use my controller. In some games, it’s not actively involved, but I need it to at least hold the controller. In my favorite games (Dark Souls, duh), I need it to maneuver the D-pad and the left stick, of course.
Speaking of Dark Souls, which we are because there’s no hint of a whiff of Elden Ring in the near future except for this and I can’t go for an appreciable amount of time without talking about something FromSoft-related, I’ve been watching videos of Dark Souls playthroughs. One is a n00b from Outside Xtra who is being guided by the Dark Souls ‘expert’ in the group. He’s not an expert by far, but he is the only one who has finished the game–and Bloodborne. And, I think, Sekiro. Oh, and Demon’s Souls Remake. I watched the first two episodes, but I doubt I’ll watch the rest. Ellen, the one playing, is actually pretty good at the game, but…she has a bad attitude when she plays these kinds of games. Luke is guiding her and she gets really impatient every time she makes a mistake, but always blames the game. It’s the camera or the mob or the corner, but it’s never her. She’s extremely competitive and it shows when she plays. It’s one reason I don’t like it when the Oxbox plays competitive games and she’s one of the players. She’s a very sore loser and a smug winner.
I actually couldn’t watch Luke’s Bloodborne playthrough because he was too fucking good at the game. He one-shot several bosses and rarely had much trouble with them. He had more difficulty with the areas and would get overly upset/frustrated when he died. He didn’t blame the game, but it was stressful to watch him play. Plus, my jealousy at how good he was at the game.
It’s difficult for me to find someone I like to watch play FromSoft games because my specific requirements are very picky. One, no sexism/bro behavior. This one is really difficult to clear, even by female gamers. There was one I stopped watching after fifteen minutes because it was ‘take that, bitch!’ when she killed every fucking enemy. I can deal with the occasional bitch, but the frequency was really annoying, especially as I felt she was just trying to be the cool girl*.
I don’t want someone who is too good at the game because part of the fun is watching someone struggle as they slowly get better. Someone who can one-shot every boss, well, that isn’t fun for me. I also like people who react to what’s happening on screen, but who don’t scream and shout about every little thing. There’s a guy called Jacksepticeye who is Irish and really popular. I like the Irish accent so I thought I’d check him out. I turned him off after five seconds because he SCREAMS at the top of his lungs all the time. This seems to be the M.O. of so many streamers. I don’t get it at all.
One woman I really like is Kay Plays because she’s so chill. In addition, she tries things just to see if they work, things I would never have thought of, and then they do work, much to my surprise. I had to stop watching her, however, because she was too good at the game. This is totally on me, but it’s difficult to watch someone do something in five minutes that took me two hours to do.
Speaking of which, watching all that Dark Souls made me want to play it myself again. I fired it up and–my controller wouldn’t work. What the hell? I unplugged and replugged it back in (Xbox One). Didn’t work. I could press the start button and that worked, but not the actual buttons themselves. What? I tried Dark Souls III. That worked. But not the original. I verified files. I tried a few things I found in the forums. Nothing worked. I was confused because I had put nearly 200 hours into the game with no problems before. I was frustrated so I went back to the basics and restarted Steam. If that hadn’t worked, I would have gone nuclear and restarted my laptop.
It worked, thankfully, and I played about forty-five minutes of the game, starting a new one (Pyro, of course!) before quitting. My thumb was aching and I want it to get better as soon as possible. I made it past the Taurus Demon and couldn’t help thinking that it had taken me, easily, five or six hours to do this bit plus much tears the first time I played the game.
I have it down pat. Breeze past the Asylum Demon, make it to Firelink Shrine with no problems. Race around Firelink doing these specific things–pick up the Zwei from the graveyard (without killing any skellies or getting killed), go to New Londo to get the Fire Keeper Soul (and then die immediately because I can’t fight the ghosts because I refused to use the Transient Curse), give it to Anastacia to beef up my Estus Flask, then annoyance-mash through Petrus’s dialogue. I forgot to go to the bottom of the elevator and get my six homeward bones so I did that a bit later. Even though I don’t like traversing back and forth endlessly without fast travel, it’s not as annoying when I can get through most everything without dying.
Currently, I have the Drake Sword and I just killed the Titanite Demon next to Andre. Also killed Havel, though I did die to him once because I foolishly tried to do magicks on him. That’s worth it on NG+ and further because my high-powered pyromancies can take care of him rather easily. On NG, however, it’s piddling. The best way to deal with Havel, even for a big baby like me, is to get naked and backstab Havel into oblivion. Why naked? Because rolling is key and in this game, there are three different rolling levels. Fast roll (under 25% equip burden), medium roll (26% – 75%, I believe), and fat roll (76% – 100%). Over 100% is overburdened, and you cannot roll at all–you can barely even walk. Since at this point in the game, Havel can one-shot me, armor doesn’t matter.
I killed the Black Knight in Undead Burg, but not until after I killed the Taurus Demon. That’s how I do and it’s served me well so far. It’s amusing that I have a routine in how I play the game, but not a surprise given that I have OCD traits. One fun thing during my not-plat run was that since I was just trying to clean things up by NG+ and beyond, I didn’t feel compelled to do things the way I always do them. Even now, I tend to go for the completionist route because that’s just the way I play the game. By the time I reached NG++, I was running straight for Anor Londo with abandon.
In addition, I started finding new and amusing ways to fight the bosses. Or rather, I Googled for the cheese. One thing I realized was that poison arrows are fucking amazing! I used them to fight Dark Sun Gwyndolin which negated the whole frustrating run down the ‘endless’ corridor bullshit. It took twice as long to beat him, but it was a giggle for me. Same with trying the bomb cheese for the Bed of Chaos. Combined with the arrow cheese. It took me longer than it would have to do it the normal way, but it was a hearty laugh. And, the arrow cheese is something that I can do easily again.
I had problems with the controller again the second time I fired up the game and I had input issues as well with RB. Given that RB is the light attack button in the Souls games and the interaction button in Hades, it’s no wonder it’s wearing down. I have another Xbox One controller, but this is the one that is comfortable in my hands.
I hope my thumb is better before Elden Ring comes out, but that is definitely not a sure thing.
*Trying too hard to be one of the guys and not like other girls, really, I’m not! I used to be like that in college until I realized what a thin razor’s edge that line between cool and not cool was. Also, how to be one of the gang meant demeaning myself or seeing myself as lesser.