Last month, I paid into Microsoft Game Pass because Starfield was coming out and I am a fan of Bethesda games. Similar to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, the Bethesda games are the same game with different coats of paint. It’s an entire genre of paint, but still guns for bows and arrows, space for wastelands.. I dig it.
Sadly, that game was made with top of the line hardware in mind and mine is not. It’s stupid, but it is what it is. Hell, it isn’t even what I want to talk about today.
Since Starfield was out, I stuck around with Game Pass to see what else they had, and saw that Lies of P was on its way. I downloaded it, played it for about 4 – 6 hours, and promptly uninstalled it because I can’t stand Souls Games. First, I need to clarify that this isn’t a situation of ‘getting good’ – I enjoy a lot of tough gaming genres… hell, I will play a Rogue-like until my eyes won’t dialate without seeing Dead Cells or Hades characters. Even ‘2-d Souls-Likes’ and I am a demon possessed. I am the kid who beat Mike Tyson on the Nintendo (I did, I swear).
But, put me in front of a Souls-like and I am a raging he-beast of gaming ineptitude which sucks because they almost all are in worlds I want to play in. Dark and grimy fantasy, please. The rooftops of feudal Japan, gods yes. A Steampunk dystopia filled with gearwork police, stick it in my veins. And yet, the idea of learning the location and timing of a dozen villains through try and die, learning the attack and block strats for a series of enemies, and doing the constant struggle to get to where you were before to figure out how you died to not die again and I have never ever come closer to taking my controller and hurling it through a window.
So, after those 5 hours, I uninstalled Lies of P, disappointed that there is yet another game that I won’t get to learn the secrets of because it is made with a type of gamer in mind that I, in fact, am not. It’s shocking how every part of those games seems to be painted with me in mind and yet, somehow, their unforgiving relentless need for near perfect leaves me going back to installing Opus Magnum and Human Resource Machine… you know, actually hard games. (I kid.. kinda)
Oh, and Lies of P was playing on Ultra, suck it Starfield.
