Tag Archives: difficult game

[Game: Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware, 2009]
Slayer of Reason:

A Thorough Epistemological Philosophical Analysis of FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls

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Introduction:

From the immersive maturity of its mechanical and narrative details, to the unparalleled sense of consideration for consequences that it fosters among players, to the sheer number of genuinely unique and refreshing design risks that it takes—Demon’s Souls is as much a captivating revelation today as it was upon release. Yet, as with each of the later Miyazaki-led FromSoft games that follow in its footsteps (in fact, perhaps moreso than any of its descendants), Demon’s Souls poses numerous difficulties for analysis.

It shares the cryptic approach to storytelling and the elements of nonlinearity that crop up in all of FromSoftware’s recent works, but that’s not all. In addition, it is a game which changes from player to player and session to session in a non-random fashion. Enemy placements, enemy statistics, NPC interactions, and even the availability of a few small regions of the levels all depend to some degree on the circumstances in which the player succeeds or fails.

You will not be surprised to hear me claim, however, that the odd structure and content of Demon’s Souls nevertheless do coalesce into a coherent reading. In the interest of pursuing that reading, our primary ally will be the field of epistemology. In a nutshell, epistemology is the study of knowledge—which includes such topics as belief, truth, justification, and skepticism. Armed with tools from that and related fields of philosophy, we will explore the following interpretation: Demon’s Souls offers a discussion of the limits of human knowledge, and how people believe and act given such limits. That might sound strange or overly vague—but in the sections ahead I intend to provide specificity and support for it, through careful attention to both the game itself and the relevant philosophy.

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[Game: Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware, 2009]
Slayer of Reason:

A Thorough Epistemological Philosophical Analysis of FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls

 was last modified: March 3rd, 2024 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll, 2016]
Center the Gungeon:

Achievements as a Desirable Compromise Solution for Completing Games like Enter the Gungeon

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Introduction:

In this article, I will explain a potentially unintuitive belief that I hold about a specific style of games: that the best possible experience of playing roguelikes and derivatives of roguelikes is usually attained by pursuing 100% achievement completion as the primary end goal of the game. My test case for this purpose will be Dodge Roll’s highly polished and mechanically satisfying top-down shooter Enter the Gungeon.

Like so many of its peers in the increasingly-loosely-defined genre it at least partially shares with notables like Rogue, Spelunky, and FTL—Gungeon is a game that is played by repeatedly attempting to win difficult randomization-heavy play sessions averaging less than an hour each, where dying means a total end to that playthrough; to continue playing, a newly-randomized session must begin from the very start.

And why do I think that pursuing achievements (or trophies, or badges, or whatever you want to call them) offers the best way of engaging with Enter the Gungeon and other games in this style? Simply, because doing so offers a balanced, varied, thorough, satisfying compromise between two inferior extremes.

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[Game: Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll, 2016]
Center the Gungeon:

Achievements as a Desirable Compromise Solution for Completing Games like Enter the Gungeon

 was last modified: February 27th, 2023 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Super Meat Boy Forever, Team Meat, 2020]
Bandage Man:

In Defense of Super Meat Boy Forever, the Unjustly Hated Sequel to an Indie Platforming Legend

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Introduction:

Super Meat Boy is one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time, and it is rightly renowned for having some of the best level design in the entire genre. Its follow-up is an auto-runner with randomized levels, sporting both a genre and a limited control scheme that seem targeted toward mobile gaming. The original creator of the title character, Edmund McMillen, who acted as artist and codesigner on SMB, was completely uninvolved in the development of the newer game. The musician Danny Baranowsky, who provided the iconic original soundtrack for Super Meat Boy, was also absent from the development of the new title due to parting ways with Team Meat after some kind of dispute in the intervening years. And for the first year that it was available, the new title was distributed on PC solely through a controversial platform: the exclusivity-favoring, light-on-features Epic Games Store.

These facts about Super Meat Boy Forever are by now well-established reasons that many players have bounced off of, negatively reviewed, or (more commonly) simply avoided the game. And seeing as I am a big fan of Super Meat Boy, and not in general a fan of most mobile games, you may suspect that I would agree with those unhappy and dismissive appraisals.

But get this: I don’t.

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[Game: Super Meat Boy Forever, Team Meat, 2020]
Bandage Man:

In Defense of Super Meat Boy Forever, the Unjustly Hated Sequel to an Indie Platforming Legend

 was last modified: February 1st, 2024 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Elden Ring, FromSoftware, 2022]
Tarnishing:

A Thorough Critique Detailing the Few Mechanical Flaws of FromSoft’s Elden Ring

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Introduction:

Imagine sitting next to a friend and looking out over a majestic seaside vista. The sky is clear and there are birds in the sky. The sun warms your skin and occasionally a soft breeze sweeps through. Now, over the gentle sound of the waves, your friend turns to you and says, “Look, someone left some litter on the beach.” In this context, I am that friend. That remark is the equivalent of what I am about to do. Welcome to my article on Elden Ring!

Elden Ring overflows generously with quality, beauty, and entertainment.

Despite its incredible boss and enemy variety, it includes several of the best boss fights that are present in any game, FromSoft or otherwise. Despite the staggering number of weapons, weapon arts, shields, and magical abilities in the game, genuinely novel methods of attack and defense are found from the start of the game to the end. And despite the immense size of its map, it contains multiple individual areas, such as the Volcano Manor and Elphael, which stand alongside earlier creations like the Painted World of Ariamis and the Boletarian Palace as some of the best level design FromSoftware has ever done. But you don’t really need me to tell you that. If you’ve encountered any review or other type of media about Elden Ring since its release, then you already know all of that.

In setting out to write an article about the game, I wanted to approach it from an angle that would be different from the thousand others in existence, while also providing something valuable. There’s really no sense in me just throwing my praise on the praise pile. So, instead of talking about Elden Ring’s overwhelmingly large number of mechanical (and other) strengths, I’m going to dig into its vanishingly small number of mechanical weaknesses. For reference, prior to writing this article, I played through the game three times with drastically different builds, racked up well over a hundred hours of playtime, gathered 100% of the game’s achievements on Steam, and (as far as I know) beat every single unique and repeated boss that is present in the game.

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[Game: Elden Ring, FromSoftware, 2022]
Tarnishing:

A Thorough Critique Detailing the Few Mechanical Flaws of FromSoft’s Elden Ring

 was last modified: January 7th, 2024 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, FromSoftware, 2019]
Immortal Severance:

The Pros and Cons of FromSoft’s Action-stealth Hybrid Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Introduction:

By almost any metric, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a terrific game. FromSoft risked a big departure from the settings, systems, and nearly stealthless, nearly jumpless, stamina-defined gameplay that had made their name across the preceding decade. And the risk paid off! They turned out an exceptional game that really doesn’t slack in any of the conventional categories by which games are judged: it plays well; it looks good; it sounds good; it tells an engaging story. It’s fun! So . . . if that’s all that needs to be said about From’s action-stealth hybrid, then why don’t I love it? I do like it a great deal. But why do I have this nagging feeling that Sekiro, despite its incredibly high quality, will never be listed among my absolute favorite games?

For starters, you can rest assured that the answer to those questions has nothing to do with the game’s difficulty. If you’re here for the next chapter in the ongoing saga of people opining about challenging games, you’ve come to the wrong article. But if not that, then what? Well, perhaps a promising way to go about this is to do what I’ve done in the past when there is an arguable flaw or set of flaws that I think is worth discussing within an otherwise excellent game: draw a clear line between what I like about the game and what I don’t like, in the simple layout of a pro and con list.

Now, when this discussion gets to the cons—to what I consider to be the flaws of Sekiro—they will not be flaws that most people care about. Even calling them flaws will be contentious. But you have to remember that, not very long ago, there was a stretch lasting over half a decade (beginning with the release of Demon’s Souls) during which the majority of the games FromSoftware released were among the greatest games of all time. This article is about gauging how well Sekiro measures up to that very high bar FromSoft set for themselves.

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[Game: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, FromSoftware, 2019]
Immortal Severance:

The Pros and Cons of FromSoft’s Action-stealth Hybrid Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

 was last modified: February 16th, 2022 by Daniel Podgorski