I have been playing video games for quite some time now, and over the years I have noticed keen switches in gameplay experiences and different levels of immersion in video games. There have been many games that have sunk their teeth into me and kept me playing because they are just so dang good, but on the flip side there are games that I flat out couldn’t play for the life of me. In this blog post you can laugh at my failure of video games. Because I really am not the best gamer at all, even though I love everything about video games–the look of them, the immersion in a new world, talking about them with my friends, learning hacks, everything. But if only I was really skilled!!

When I first decided I wanted a challenging video game, I went to the clear first choice: Dark Souls. Dark souls is notorious for being an impossibly challenging game. The premise of Dark Souls is that when you die you lose everything, but when you die you also learn the patterns of the enemies so you come back more knowledgeable the next time. Well at least that’s how it works for other people! I don’t think I ever learned anything that I was able to use the next time around and I found the game way too challenging to be fun.  

 It’s tough to play a game where you are just plain bad at all the mechanics. I played Dark Souls for about 3 days before getting nowhere and giving up, as I feel many people like me do. I usually feel that if I play for 40 hours, I have given a game a full chance and I have kind of gotten my money’s worth out of the game. Some games just grab you well before that amount of time and you can’t stop playing for weeks. Other games just torture you and it’s a chore to get those 40 hours in. For me, Dark Souls was one of those for sure. 

The next game I would like to discuss is The Witcher 3, which has won game of the decade in recent months. I loved The Witcher 3’s story and scenery, but when it came to fighting bad guys I was totally lost. I would usually just spam buttons but you know that never really gets you anywhere. There is a process to getting good at these games, which because my hand-eye coordination is so bad I never mastered. Overall, the story of The Witcher 3 kept me going until the very end, even though death was never far behind me. I wonder if it was a movie instead of a video game if I would have been just as happy.