To enjoy something, you must feel challenged to do so. I don’t know who said that, but I think those play very nicely to any game in general. Whenever you get ready for a round of football, you never expect it to be easy to make a touchdown. There are human barriers that’re in your way and the entire team has to get one person across the field with the ball in their hands to score a point. Sounds easy until you make those human walls move. It might sound frustrating to get past these meat shields with a single football in your hand, but the challenge to do so is really fun even if you get pushed down. It’s just the thrill and the challenge that makes the game so fun, which is why Difficulty matters in games, because no one will want to play it when it’s too easy to master or even beatable in a manner of minutes. Difficulty matters, as I said before, and that’s why games like Dark Souls is so world renowned… Too renowned in a matter of fact… The whole thing about difficulty in games, is that it varies games to game. You’ll never need the same kind of skill in every game because you need to master a new challenge instead of the same old run across the screen type of deal. There’s a reason why people aren’t liking games where you kill things in the first-person, because they all kind of have the same elements of challenge. When a game came across the seas of Japan and landed on our shores, we got a new thing to master than feels so much different and now we have something to become the new standard to hard. That games that created such a ripple in the mindsets of Gamers around the world was Dark Souls… The most annoying game to ever exist…
The game became a legend and scared anyone away from the game’s legendary of a legend difficulty. It made players rethink what made games hard, having people blame themselves instead of the game for once and actually having people look at their surroundings before going in places. People called it revolutionary while others called it just plain stupid because it’s scripted events in the game that give evidence to the player with claw marks on the floor and scorched doorway, but f**k those guys because they don’t know us. It was amazing. It created a new kind of genre for people to love… Souls-Like… Which was quickly changed to Soulsborne later on, but let’s forget about that for now. People used to exaggerate how hard the game was. It was a joke that was soon taken seriously. First a reviewer made a comment about a realistic mechanic on Battlefield, which you die quicker than most shooters, which he began to call it, “Like Dark Souls.” As to how that’s true or even remotely like Dark Souls is beyond anyone, but it was a small ripple in an ocean. Many people heard it and had no mind to it as very few commented about it.
Then within the years which people got hyped for each Dark Souls game passed by as well as the mixed conception for the clones, people have gotten games that were harder, more challenging to the player, something new. A motor cross game with realistic speed mechanics and a great working wind engine was released the public. Difficult, of course, but it was a fun challenge that was enjoyable to explore with new mechanics. People had fun and it was great, then reviewers stapled a phrase to the game… An ungodly phrase that no one wanted to hear or even believe. It’s the… Dark Souls of Racers… A disgusting phrase that spoiled our mouths’ as we read reviews and watched videos, but that was not the first or even that long ago.
Twas the year of 2017 it happened, where that phrase sparked a larger fire than before. Anything remotely difficult that people had their hands, they tainted it with the annoying phrase than became a meme. “This Indie game is the Dark Souls of the Indie Community!” “This game was so hard, I almost thought it was Dark Souls!” Words that made no sense which was overused in almost every review. It went as far as being stabbed in Cliff’s Ego during his earliest work. Even the greatest masterpiece of a game, Cuphead, was touched with such a sinned phrase, which speculated a theory, to a easter egg reference. To most it was laughed at and poked fun of, but Cuphead was no joke. Fan Theories, Speculations, the belief that the Souls games are connected to the same Cup-World. A cancer to say the least, but the only word to describe how much we wanted a new challenge. We were given such a great a game that challenged you and taught you how to do things you barely did before and now we can’t get it anymore… None to satiate our lust for a new challenge to endure and enjoy besides the clones that come after its inspiration. After the end of the Souls series, it felt as if we lost someone dear to our hearts and we coped with us comparing it to something we can’t exactly get anymore, desperately trying to find a reminder to what great challenges and accomplishments we faced with the great Dark Souls series. We didn’t take its death well nor its final words in the DLC, so we went to find something like it, a reminder (as I said before) to cope with our loss of such a rare game series to come by these days. What is my point you ask…? I don’t know. My sister wanted me to tell her why I hate the fact people keep comparing hard difficulty or a mechanic in a game to Dark Souls when it’s remotely nothing like the series nor is it like it in any way. It’s like comparing Mario to Sonic, very different and nothing alike.
I know this is a bit of a sh*t post, if you may consider it as such, but I thought it was funny to write. Very stupid to read and feels like a kid trying to hard to be artistic in his words, but enjoyable to me. I hope you like this stupid post and ‘til next time…
Play More Grains