I picked up Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition in the autumn steam sale. I tried to play it with keyboard and mouse, and found the controls to be decidedly lacking.
I resolved to wait, until I could get a gamepad to play with instead. I’ve been wanting to get a gamepad for a while, preferably a wireless one, so I can play the more arcade type games I own from my sofa.
Having finally got a controller, I started Dark Souls again.
And I’m terrible at it.
In the tutorial level, the first weapon I picked up was a broken sword hilt. This was fine for taking care of the non-violent zombies that are scattered through the first level, and you’re supposed to pick up your real weapon the first time you meet an archer, just after you get your shield (I think).
I managed to miss this.
And forged ahead anyway.
I died.
A lot.
After meeting a dying knight, who gave me his Easter (Estus) flask, I had my first “real” fight with a zombie wielding a sword. I was only doing about 2 damage per hit, 3 if I did a heavy attack. It took a very long time to kill it.
Just after him, was a small courtyard where I had to deal with 2 at the same time. They trounced me over and over again, and then around the corner was an archer, and the entrance to the boss fight.
I played this section repeatedly for about 2 hours. I lost track of how many times I died.
When my sword hilt broke, I realised that no matter how hard this game was supposed to be, the tutorial probably shouldn’t be THIS hard. I backtracked a lot, and found my real sword. Which did 20x the damage of the hilt.
I AM SOMETIMES A MORON.
I managed to kill the Asylum Demon without too much trouble (in fact I think I got it on the first go).
I savored my victory for a short while, walked out of the room and was then startled when I walked into an airport (the giant crow picked me up).
Now that I’m in the next area, I’m trying to deal with these two skeleton chaps. I’ve been trying for about two hours now. I’m starting to wonder If I’ve done the same thing – did I miss something really obvious? Maybe. Anyway, here’s a video of me failing a lot. I recorded this using Nvidia shadowplay, which is a very neat tool. Much nicer than having to pay for fraps, and it doesn’t impact my framerate much.
I fail at parrying, I role the wrong way, I lock the wrong target, I get stuck on things.
I’m not very good at this game.