As someone who has played video games for most of my life, I have heard a lot of things revolving around the subject of how games take no level of skill. Which spiked ever higher once ESPN began their e-Sports channel. The most memorable of these moments were as I stood behind the bar and one of the only two customers at the time did not take my opinion of ‘some of my favourite stories are from video games.’ It began a hour of him telling me over and over that games take no level of skill or learning but is in fact ‘just pressing buttons.’
As my fellow intellectuals will already be aware, these are clearly the words of someone who has never played a video game in their life. Which in this case is 100% accurate as within the hour of talking to him whether he had played a game or not came up. Now, there are other phrases that got thrown in during this conversation, for example, ‘It’s just *pew* *pew*,’ as well as the frantic slamming down on top of the bar to imitate a case of keyboard abuse.
However, the best argument I can give in this situation lie in the world of games that punish you for wanting to playing them, but reward you for precise exact movements and inputs. These being the likes of Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima, and everything FromSoftware has ever released. This list can be extending exponentially when things are played online; competitive CS:GO, CoD, and even Mariokart online can lead to infuriating raging yells at the screen.
There have been countless posts about the difficulty brought to the player when they sit down in front of a FromSoftware game, the masterpiece that is Ghost of Tsushima. So, I will focus on the adorable, aggravating and emotional world that is Hollow Knight. Team Cherry’s first outing into the gaming world was a home run, dubbed by people (meaning my group of friends) as ‘2D Dark Souls’ it is as peaceful to look at as it is infuriating to play. The beautifully animated world of tunnels underneath the surface town of Dirtmouth, all the way down to the deep dark caves of Ancient Basin.
To travel around the world is to sit on benches as checkpoints, restoring your health and giving you a place to respawn when the enemies get the best of you. Between these benches are leagues of enemies that are as deadly as they are cute, at least with the likes of Bloodborne the enemies are grotesque. But here in Hollow Knight every enemy will make you want to reach into the screen and pull the enemy out as a plushy to give as a gift to the other half, probably as an apology for playing the game for so long.
Not only visually is the game astonishing to look at, but the soundtrack is something that can soothe you into a slumber so deep Sleeping Beauty would ask for tips. This is until a boss fight starts and then the music ramps up to get you ready to commit to the following minutes of precise moves and to witness respawning on the benches over and over again. While being incredibly infuriating, it’s the challenge that keeps dragging you back into the cartoon world.
A story that unfolds as you go, finding bits of information here and there to fill the world with lore and pain. Enemy types that alter as you go, each new enemy require their own strategy to be able to defeat them. Whether it is a large brute of an enemy that needs to be lured into attacking so they’re open for the counter, or it’s a small fly that follows you around shooting you with an endless stream of sting. With the coding to take a life from you any time an enemy happened to make contact with you, with healing requiring you to do a charged hold until the life restores. Causing to some infuriating times you want to heal against a boss but they just don’t stop attacking.
Team Cherry, have made an adorable and infuriating world in which you can be lost in for hours, listen to on nights sleeping is difficult and about to fill you with enough hate to make Darth Vader jealous. I for one can’t wait for the long awaited sequel Silksong to be released, but until then there is a whole world to discover area by area, enemy by enemy, and adorable boss by adorable boss. If the team at Team Cherry happens to read this far, please do get in contact. The world of gaming needs more game companies like you.
The Nerdy Bartender 