The Order 1886

I think it was Ghandi or George Washington that once said it's important to build your game around fun mechanics first before applying your aesthetic touches and finishes. Not sure how sourced that quote is, but I read it on the internet once and I'm just gullible enough to believe anything I read online.  

Regardless, the statement does hold truth to it since pretty things do not a good game make, and if that were the case then  Beyond Two Souls wouldn't have been such a steaming dollop of shit. But hey, at least it was a pretty steaming dollop of shit. 

So, here's The Order 1886 and it's a game I've looked forward to since I saw gameplay trailers so far back that I can't even recall when. Picked it up over the weekend and sunk over 10 hours into it, taking my time and trying to get to grips with this Steampunk world I'm pitted in to. 

I was planning on posting my impressions of the game once I completed it, but I think these 10+ hours I've put into it have been plenty enough to give me a clear indication of what I'm in store for, and it's not impressive. It's actually quite confusing. 

Not the game itself which is a pretty straightforward 3rd person cover shooter, but the confusing part comes in when you try to wrap your mind around the thought processes behind the development of this game. It's beautifully crafted in intricate detail. The character and model designs are spectacular. Architecture and lighting that was gorgeous enough for me to stop what I was doing and screenshot that shit. It's a really pretty game, no doubt. 

But looking beyond that...beyond all the plastic surgery, makeup and designer clothing is something very average. Not only average, but I would go far as to say it's subpar in today's cover shooter market, and that's what confuses me. You, the developer, spend all this effort meticulously crafting an admittedly gorgeous world and you build that upon the framework of these crappy mechanics that lack any real fun or engagement. 

And hell, maybe Ready at Dawn were keeping with the theme of it being in the past, because the game oozes shitty old mechanics that were okay even by 2003 standards. Shitty half-crouch cover systems straight out of Gears of War, a Bullet Time system much like the one used in Shadow of Mordor and a weapon system that looks like a cut and paste from the Uncharted series. 

Granted, the weapons are pretty innovative, but c'mon, you can't base your whole game on the premise of pretty graphics and cool weapons any more. This isn't 1999, bra. It's like you're running an autoshop, spend all your budget buying the Lamborghini body and decide "Fuck it boys, stick a Golf engine in there." and call it a day. 

  

Stoner Theory Wednesday: The Voice of Word.

Purpose.

It's something that we Humans have been trying to attribute to our species since we gained critical thought. This is question bred of fear and lack of understanding. Fear of our very existence being nothing more than a statistical probability and we're all fundamentally just a collection of gases that cooled long enough to gain consciousness. 

Something about this frightens a lot of people and rightfully so. Our very society functions on the concept of personal purpose. You, the individual, are important enough to have a purpose on this planet. To contribute, experience, breed and ultimately do enough that leaves some sort of impression on the planet or society when we die. It's an oversimplification, but that's pretty much the tl;dr of our existence on this planet and I can fully understand why the concept of having no guiding purpose in the grand scale of the universe would scare a lot of people. 

That's a theory that I subscribed to my whole life; we're all just a happy accident and we shouldn't be vain or egotistical enough to think that we deserve a purpose. Just existing should be rewarding enough. We drew the right numbers in the cosmic lottery and here we are. 

Lately, though, my views have changed and it happened when I was browsing the internet, down a rabbit hole on Wikipedia, reading about Sumerian Tablets. More specifically, the words on the tablet.

No, this is not some kind of "I found the answer to life on a ten thousand year old tablet" kind of post, because that's absurd. The tablet I read about held a trivial message about scholars and their teachers, so it did not have some cryptic life-changing revelation. It was the concept of written word through time that opened my eyes and filled me with wonder.

Since man discovered written word, it's been our goal to document and preserve it over time. From the most ancient of civilizations to now, the recollection of history, function and religion has held a great importance to us as a species. We try to preserve our words in time as best we can. Immortalize them so they can immortalize us in the process. 

We've become incredibly efficient at it as well. Ancient Egyptians used to engrave word straight into stone, preserving thoughts that range from religion to mathematics. This is at a time when papyrus was commonly used in writing, but did not have the preservation qualities of stone or marble. Here we are in 2015 with the digitization of word and thought, making it far more accessible and easily preserved. 

It's our collective consciousness - this is our purpose. Like a voice that you cannot hear, but has been spoken since Humans could write and is continually speaking as long as we keep contributing to it and preserving it. It transcends time more than our physical selves ever could, and my voice today may be heard in 2000 years time as the 4000 year old voice of the Sumerian scholar was heard by me now. 

The advent of technology and digitization has evolved the voice. It's given it the opportunity to leave us and expand outwards into space. Right now we can take all of recorded history, all of our discoveries and ideas and send them into the unknown, so that in the event should something happen to us or our planet, our existence from when we learned to write, right until the moment we perished would have been saved. A backup of our consciousness, if you will, and I think that's pretty fucking cool.

Why are we here? I can't answer the certainly, but I made a connection that resonated well enough with me to make this post. We're here to learn and experience so we can record what we've learned, transcend ourselves as individuals and immortalize our words as a collective. Just like we've lost ancient civilizations to time, so will we be lost to time, but our words and thoughts may live on forever. 

I think that's purpose enough for me to feel validated. 

Warcraft's Changed, Man.

I've played World of Warcraft since vanilla. Contrary to the stereotypes, I have a life, friends and a wonderful woman in my life that's not waifu pillow. It's been quite the journey in this world and the digital experiences I've gained are some of the most wonderful moments I've had in gaming.

That said, I was a bit late to the party this expansion and picked up Warlords of Draenor quite some while after it was released. It took me 4 days of casual playing to get to level 100, geared up and raid-ready. I completed the first raid available (Highmaul) and got some neat gear out of it. I upgraded my Garrison as far as I could and even went as far as starting to collect treasures hidden around the game world. 

I'm not entirely sure if I've burned through the expansion this quick due to the design, or my leveling tactics. However, one thing that is for sure is that the game is a heck of a lot easier than it's ever been and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that yet. 

All classes have had their spells redesigned and removed in order to have less buttons to push in battle. Questing, much like in Mists of Pandaria has been streamlined to the point of being linear and seem to funnel the player exactly where they are meant to go. Quests even have a chance to reward epic gear while leveling, to get you geared that much faster. Where the fuck is crowd control? I have not seen a single crowd-control spell yet and every dungeon consists of running through and bashing everything with the biggest stick you can find. 

The biggest notable difference is the sense of community. There just...isn't anymore. You join a guild, not because you want to network, but because it's been incentivized and makes you feel you must in order to reap the benefits. Heck, you jump in a dungeon with random people and nobody utters a word until someone fucks up or they need to take a break. Warcraft is starting to feel like a single-player game again.

Maybe I'm seeing it through rose-tinted glasses, but I remember when my server was a bustling place filled with all sorts of interesting and wonderful characters. There were prestigious guilds with notable players that you'd inspect in town and longed for their gear. You knew players because they had reputations and accomplishments. Guilds had rivalries and they were common knowledge to the rest of the server, especially when some sort of "We're the best" debacle came about. We'd host huge raids on the enemy faction for fun, since back then there were no rewards from it. There was a great sense of camaraderie and that seems to have all but died in the Warcraft of today.

The absence of community is attributed to two things: cross server play and looking for group functions. Cross server play removed the border restrictions of playing within your own server's playerbase and you'll often see players from other servers questing in the same zone as you. I get Blizzard's reasoning for this - it's not fun to play on a low population server and hardly ever see players in the game world. However, one of the consequences is that it limits your ability to make friends on your own server while questing. Long gone are the days of grouping up with randoms while questing and getting to know each other to become friends that you can actively play with often.

Looking for group is a similar double-edged sword. On the one hand, you don't have to spend hours forming a group, travelling to the dungeon and praying to the The Light that nobody leaves and you're able to complete it. On the other hand, you're not getting to know anybody that you group up with in a dungeon. Very seldom do you get paired with someone from your server, and even in that rare occurrence, chances are that nobody will really chat enough to get acquainted. You go through the motions, get your loot and be on your way, oftentimes with not so much as saying hello or goodbye.

It's not just the social aspects which have changed in nature, but also gear acquisition. Epics in vanilla WoW were exactly as the name implies - epic. There was something about inspecting someone in town and seeing them draped from head to toe in purples that made you awe in astonishment. It meant that the player was a successful raider, that they put the time and effort into getting 40 people together and tackling some rather formidable monsters to earn their rewards. Epic gear was not something that you got from a random quest reward, as it is today. You worked hard for your epic gear and got the due recognition because of it.

One change that I have to give Blizzard credit for is the questing system. From having hundreds of unrelated quests littered around a zone with no sense of direction, to the current streamlined system is a welcomed change. The story delivery since Wrath of the Lich King has greatly improved, with animated cutscenes and integrated scenarios, the way the story unravels to the player is in a better state than it's ever been. Beautifully scripted stories and animations brings you closer to the story and characters than ever before and I'm glad that Blizzard took this approach and hope to see more of it in future expansions.

I don't think that WoW will ever return to its social roots. There's too much information out there with sites like Wowhead and MMOChampion giving us insight into new content before it even releases, so it's not like we have to interact to know what is where and how things work. There's no need to spend an hour in trade chat looking for a group any more because doing all the stuff that took time is literally one click away now. Everything is built around you, the player, and trying to accommodate you into making bite-sized chunks of play feel rewarding and fulfilling at the detriment of the one thing that made WoW what it is today - a community.

Warcraft History: The Beginning

(Disclaimer: Warcraft lore is deep and branches off into many story arcs. I try to describe it as best I can in a simple fashion, but don't consider myself knowledgeable by any means. If I have any information wrong, please let me know so I can rectify it.)

Like all origin stories, the one of Warcraft is a bit muddled the further back we go. However, bearing a likeness with our very own universe's beginnings, it is unsure what created the Warcraft universe. Some believe it was formed by a single, powerful being and others believe it was formed after a great explosion that sent infinite planets into the abyss known as the Great Dark. Sounds familiar? Damn right skippy it does.

What is known for sure, is that from this chaos emerged the Titans, a race of incredibly powerful beings intent on balancing out the universe. These motherfuckers were like a kid playing Minecraft in sandbox mode with the universe and they went from planet to planet shaping them as they saw fit. They raised oceans and mountains, created the winds and the clouds and even went as far as empowering the primitive life on the planets in order to maintain the planet and ensure that their ideology was fulfilled. The Titans were ruled by a group called The Pantheon, which is Warcraft's equivalent of the United Nations, but for the whole universe.

As it is with all things in life, where there is a Ying, there must be a Yang and the Titans weren't the only beings of power in the universe with motives. The Twisting Nether, an ethereal dimension of magic that connected the worlds held its own powerful beings and they weren't as nice as the Titans. For lack of a better description, The Twisting Nether is Hell, if Hell is a different dimension. A place outside, but connected to the Warcraft universe that was as equally infinite, but much more sinister than the realm of the Titans. This place was inhabited by many beings with the opposite virtues of the Pantheon and only sought to bring out chaos and destruction to the universe, as it was in the Twisting Nether. Sounds like a swell place.

Eventually, the forces of the Twisting Nether began to encroach into the Titan's realm and brought chaos to the developing universe. To combat them, the Pantheon elected one of their most powerful beings, Sargeras to be the first line of defense against the demonic forces of the Nether realm, and he kicked their asses...for a while. Sargeras fought the forces of evil for many millennia before encountering an evil race of sorcerers which used their warlock magic to enslave civilizations and ultimately transform them into demons. These fuckers were the definition of pure evil and thrived on agony, destruction and the disorder of the universe through suffering.

Sargeras, being a God by all definitions made quick work of them before banishing them to the Twisting Nether. However, during the process, something changed in Sargeras. Bearing witness to the unmeasurable evil and maliciousness of the warlocks, he could not grasp how anybody could have such an insatiable lust for suffering and he slipped into a depression which became a turning point in the evolution of the Warcraft balance of good vs. evil.

Not only was Sargeras in a slump of depression and internal self-conflict about the purpose of the universe, but he was also forced to suck it up and go deal with yet another evil race of beings intent of destroying the balance that the Titans sought to bring. This race was called the Nathrezim (or Dreadlords), demons of great intellect and power that brought havoc into the universe by not destroying civilizations themselves, but by corrupting them and forcing them to destroy each other. The Dreadlords are the goddamn Illuminati of the Warcraft universe, playing puppeteer behind the scenes and carrying out their evil agenda vicariously.

Again, Sargeras steps up to the plate and knocks the Dreadlords down a notch, but he has seen too much at this point. His virtues and ideology now corrupted by the inherent evil in the universe has manifested into an ever-gnawing doubt, eating Sargeras from within and loosening his grasp on faith. Sargeras began to believe that due to chaos and evil being so rife in the universe, it was the only constant to uphold, and instead of fighting it, chaos should be embraced and adopted as the virtue of the developing universe.

His fellow Titans tried to convince him otherwise, but Sargeras, already wallowing in a pessimistic pit of depression and disillusion would not hear it. He denounced himself from the Titans and sought to find his own meaning in the universe. The Pantheon reluctantly let Sargeras go and appointed Aggramar, Sargeras' lieutenant and right-hand man as his successor. Should the Pantheon have known what would become of Sargeras, they would have never let him go.

Sargeras traveled the universe to try and carve out his own notch in history. However, an unrelenting-rage was consuming him and the fires of despair and disbelief burned out what little bastion of morality he had left. Maddened by rage and lack of reason, Sargeras began to believe that not only were the Titans wrong in their efforts to balance the universe, but they were also responsible for the failure of creation. Not only did his mentality change, but also his very existence. The fires of rage and hatred burnt so much within him that they manifested themselves on to him. His eyes, hair and beard erupted in flame and his once metallic skin now burst apart by flaming embers of burning hatred. At this point, Sargeras is basically Lucifer.

In order to change the worlds, you need an army and Sargeras realized this. He went forth to the Twisting Nether and broke the Dreadlords and other demonic races free from their captivity, to which they submitted and pledged their eternal loyalty to him. Sargeras now had an army and he needed generals to lead it. As luck would have it, he found an incredibly powerful and magical race called the Eredar from the planet Argus which he deemed suitable for the job.

The Eredar were a race of highly intelligent beings with an affinity for magic. They had a vast civilization of many magical cities and were lead by three leaders called Archimonde, Kil'jaeden and Velen. Sargeras promised them great power and immortality in exchange for their services and fealty. Archimonde and Kil'jaeden agreed with Sargeras' proposal, much to the dismay of Velen, which refused to join due to a vision of demonic evil he had about Sargeras and the army he was forming.

                                        Archimonde                                        Kil'jaeden
                                 

Velen, with the help of the Naaru, a race of beings comprised of energy, left his people and took along with him the remaining group of Eredar that would not side with Sargeras, to form his own faction called The Draenai (The Exiled Ones).

Sargeras, now with two incredibly powerful generals, an army of demons and sentient sympathizers to his cause had everything he needed to set the stage for the beginning of Warcraft universe as we know today. The Burning Legion was born and it would be the catalyst that shapes Azeroth into what it is today.

Things I brought Back From Mozambique.

I've worked in Mozambique on and off since 2006. The longest stint I've pulled in that country was a two and a half year contract where I would go home every two months for 5 days leave. These contracts are literally in the middle of nowhere and three hours from the nearest "Town" to use the word loosely.

There's not much to do in the bush once you've finished work. You go through a lot of movies, games and series, but besides that, there's not much else to do other than taking a walk around. Even walking around is limited, because of the dangerous snakes that inhabit the region and, y'know...the whole thing about landmines being everywhere off the beaten path. 

Having grown up catching snakes, legavaans and all other manner of creatures, I wasn't too deterred by the wildlife and would take regular walks in the afternoons. You get to see the place in a different light when you're out there alone, and I've seen some things that put such a huge contrast on my life and left me with a slightly different outlook. 

You honestly don't know how good you have it until you witness true hardship for yourself. This is a country, ravaged by war and corruption, with very little infrastructure to 60% of the population. The result is a populace of impoverished, uneducated masses with absolutely zero job prospects or any kind of future with room for growth. Yet the small villages you see out here, 3 hours from anywhere, have more sense of community than I have ever seen. 

We laid down 46km of 32" carbon steel piping, going from a manifold that receives gas from well-heads around the region to a CPF. It's not as simple to do with large-bore piping as it is with small-bore, so the trick is to plan ahead. Trenching team is a week ahead of the mechanical crew, digging a huge trench for the piping to snaked into once welded. Snaking is a process where the 6m sections of pipe are welded above ground in 32m lengths (2 x double-ended) and is gradually dragged into the trench by the weight of the pipe welded itself. Think of it as zipping up a giant zipper. Sort of. Okay, not really. 

The pipes (which come in 6m lenghts) had to be brought in ahead of the mechanical (welding) crew, so there would be no delay in welding while waiting for piping. These guys worked alongside the trenching crew, laying down batches of pipes as they dug the trench. These lengths of pipe come with giant end-caps on them to prevent foreign objects from entering the piping and ultimately being welded inside. The end caps are basically giant plastic lids that go on the ends of this piping, sort of like the plastic lid you would find on the lid of an instant coffee can. 

A peculiar thing happened during this process. We noticed that by the time the mechanical crew reached new batches of piping, there would be no end-caps on the pipes any more. Every single cap was missing and we were perplexed as to where they went. 

It was only on a late afternoon walk some time later that I discovered where the end-caps went, and only by coincidence. I would some times take my guitar on a walk and find a nice place to sit, smoke a joint and play guitar without worrying about bothering my neighbors in the congested camp. I sat on a section of pipe and began playing. It must have been about 20mins of playing before I noticed two kids come out of the bush. Like, literally appeared out of the bushes like children of the corn. They came and sat by me while I played and seemed to enjoy the music. After a song or two, the eldest of the boys grabbed my arm and told me to follow him,

We went through the section of the bush where they came from and after some walking, ended up by their homestead, which consisted of 4 or 5 huts in a circular "kraal" fashion. They had a few goats and chickens, but what drew my eyes the most was the plate full of fish that was left out in the sun to dry. Only, it wasn't a dish, but one of our end-caps. The kids rushed excitedly into the huts and called their siblings and parents and I sat there for about an hour playing guitar for the family. They gave me a type of  local beer made from baobab that was extremely bitter and chunky and offered me what little they had before I made my way back. 

The following day, I told one of our local laborers about the end-cap and he started laughing at my story. Turns out that the kids go out in the late evenings and collect all the end-caps from the piping and distribute them to every rural "village" in the area. They use the end-caps for a number of different things, from carrying water, to using them as plates and trays. They would put the end-caps over steel drums and make rudimentary drums for music, or children would fashion a wheel-like-toy out of them and have races. It was like a scene from The Gods Must Be Crazy, because something so trivial for us wound up being such a versatile and useful item to them. 

What stuck out to me the most was not their ingenious use of the caps, but rather of their hospitality towards me. By our standards, these people had nothing. Their clothes were worn and tattered and must have been handed down often. Out of the family of 6 or 7, I'd be pressed to find two pairs of shoes between them, if that. Some goats and chickens consisted of their livestock and besides that, they lived off the land. However, they showed no hesitation in offering me what little they had and making me, a total stranger by all definitions, feel welcomed into their home. 

Thinking about it made me realize that it's very unlikely that something like that will happen at home. How often will you invite a stranger to your home? To eat your food and be around your family and young children? We live in a society where it's encouraged to be wary of strangers out of fear. Fear that they may take what or who you love away from you. 

It's sad that we have so much and give so little, yet these people with little-to-nothing can give so much. 

Inexception.

I think I'm a broken person...or even worse, possibly turning into a movie hipster. I realized this the other night when watching Inception for what must be the millionth time. This movie was critically-acclaimed and highly praised by both the public and critics for its cinematography and execution of new concepts...and I have grown to hate it.

This usually happens to me when I watch something after the hype-train has come and gone at the station. I never caught Inception when it was doing its cinema run, and only managed to view it about a month after it came out on DVD. By that point, message boards everywhere were already on 100% circlejerk mode over the movie and the internet was rife with memes and references that I didn't understand. 

That said, I went into the movie with a pocket-full of expectations based on what others were saying. Posts describing  the movie as being "So deep" and "Really game-changing" set the bar pretty high for me and my initial viewing of the film left me with a gaping hole in my heart that was supposed to be filled with intrigue and wonder, but instead remained a disappointing abyss of dashed-hopes. 

However, it's one of those movies best enjoyed on the second or third viewing and I watched it a few times more some time later in the hopes of seeing what others did in the film. I found that in order to enjoy the movie, I had to detract myself from any "deep meaning" premise and see it as a normal heist movie instead, which it does an okay job of being.

You see, the movie is about as deep as a copy of Playboy and anybody that tries to convince you otherwise is just basking in their own pretentious glory of understanding the basic concept that is constantly being explained to you in the movie via hand-holding narrative. Leaving a cliffhanger ending does not a "deep" movie make, and that's exactly what Inception did. "Did the top stop spinning? Is he still in the dream? The top was not even his totem, it was his wife's!" I can't believe that I got so much shit from people saying that I read too far into Prometheus, when Inception is perfectly acceptable with its ambiguity and lack of closure. 

The characters themselves have very little growth in the film as well, other than Cobb. His internal struggle of guilt and mourning is the only character development that you see in the movie and even that was loosely done before in What Dreams May Come. Strip all the heist-related content from the movie and you're left with an average-at-best love story that wouldn't even get the light of day in normal circumstances. 

I realized that what seems to have captured the audience was not the content, but the delivery. Its presentation and score was so on point, that you can't help feel drawn into the film, regardless of the content. The visual effects and character representation were what I can only describe as elegant. It was so elegantly presented that it formed a connection in the viewer of quality, like a penguin with a tuxedo on. It was pure cinematic inception, to throw the pun around.

Perhaps I'm missing something and I'm wrong. I'm not any kind of authority on films and cinema, so obviously take my words with a pinch of salt. However, from my experience, it's one of those movies that just deteriorates my expectations of it with every subsequent viewing. I respect the film and Nolan for it, because in terms of cinematography and soundwork, it's incredible. Even dialogue delivery is suspenseful and it really shines as an example of talented film-making. 

But as a story? It doesn't really speak to me, which is sad, because I was listening before I even watched the movie. 

Souls 101: Lords of the Fallen

I never really got into the "Souls" games, which is weird because I'm a sucker for challenging RPGs. The game felt purposefully gimped in an effort to equate difficulty to enjoyment and I struggled to force myself to like it. In retrospect, it's sad to have to force yourself to like any game, but I figured that the problem lies with my expectations as the games are incredibly popular among those who committed their time to them. 

Heck, I don't even know what the fuck Dark Souls is about and I've played it for a solid 9 hours as it is. I think part of the allure to these games is that they're not so much about a progressive story, but instead try to focus more on intricate gameplay to capture the player. The only thing I can recall about Dark Soul's story is something about "Praise the Sun", and I only know this because of the abundance of messages that other players have left saying so. 

That said, I did give the games a fair chance and they didn't gel well with me. God forbid you tell this to other Souls fans, because implying that you don't enjoy the game is like outright insulting them. 

Don't get me wrong, I have an immense amount of respect and appreciation of the games (Genre? Are they their own genre?), but in the end I feel like I have to submit to the good ol' "It's not you; it's me." breakup argument to distance myself. It is me, and perhaps I'm just too casual for the games. Maybe I need to start somewhere easier and work my way up, so I can truly appreciate the Souls games. 

Enter Lords of the Fallen. 

Word on the street is that Lords of the Fallen is like Dark Souls Lite, so it seemed perfect as an introductory course into this genre. Figured I'd knock this sucker out in a weekend and have the opportunity to dig into Dark Souls before Bloodborne released, but the word on the street was wrong and I underestimated the extent of my ability to suck at these games. 

After a very aesthetically pleasing cinematic, the game thrusts you into this dark, merciless world. A short tutorial fight gets you to grips with the controls and fight mechanics, and that's it. You're on your own now, son! Time to go exploring this...what are we in, a church? Let us go explore this church and kill some...things! 

So, off we go, into corridors and passageways filled all manner of dangerous beasties and monsters that wish to dine on my bones. Dimly lit settings and ambient sounds straight out of the Grapefruit Lady video sets the stage for my first foray into this unforgiving environment. 

And it wasn't so bad...at first. The first few mobs, while packing a vicious punch, seemed to go down pretty easily. Block here, swing my sword on the parry, it all seemed to be going surprisingly well and confidence in my abilities grew exponentially by the sword-stroke. I still felt rather weak, but I figured that once the stats started rolling in, I would mature into a formidable demon-slaying force.  

The first boss fight (Fittingly named The First Warden) was a walk in the park. Well, not really a walk in the park since I died three times to him, but once I learned his mechanics the fight became rather trivial. The First Warden was a knight, twice the size of me, wielding a massive, flaming sword and shield, as well as being covered head-to-toe in armor. I originally just Leroy Jenkin'd my way into the fight and attempted to defeat him in an old fashion bout of fisticuffs, but soon learned that this tactic was futile. The trick was to just...roll. Just fucking roll out of range of his attacks and then counter with light attacks. At 50% HP he does a spinning attack, which does a ton of damage if you get caught in it, so the trick here is...roll. Just roll the fuck away and hit him when he stops. After figuring this out, I rolled my way to victory and came out on top with a shiny new sword for additional monster-slaying potency.

It's after the first boss when things started to get...errr...rough. I was introduced to a new type of mob, which was basically a smaller version of the last boss. These guys hit hard and blocked harder than a nun chaperoning a high school dance. My new sword had seemingly no effect on their attacks and I had to change my playstyle to accommodate this new adversary. I learned that the best tactic for these guys was to block and parry their attacks. This method of blocking and soaking up some damage seemed to become the most recurring tactic in the game, but it's not universal. 

About three hours in and I've died more times than I'd like to admit at this point. I just felt so...weak. I mean, with all this experience I'm getting, I should be scaling equally with the mobs, but instead I feel like skinny kid trying to beat up the rugby jocks. Checking my character development screen, I see that I have 8000 experience points on me...but have not gained a single stat. I should have leveled up by now, why haven't I gotten any points yet? 

Turns out that I need to "Bank" my experience points at checkpoint altars and that is how you level up your character. I've been running around this game for hours as a level 1 character, trying to beat shit on the next level. My Mrs. is laying on the couch next to me. I put the controller down and say "You know what, babe? I'm a fucking dumbass." She replies "I know baby." without knowing the context. My stupidity felt validated at this moment. 

With this new knowledge acquired, this horrendous world was at my fingertips. I sank my attributes into Strength, Vitality and Endurance and head off into the cold night. The once unsurpassable mobs became mere experience pinatas at the hand of my sword and shield. This shit was getting easier by the level. 

Or so I thought, because the next boss would rapidly bring this euphoric slaughter-fest to a halt.

Commander. Not "The Commander", but just "Commander" was the second boss I encountered, and it made me wish I had invested just a tad bit more attribute points into Vitality. Commander, like, The First Warden is a behemoth knight, wielding the standard-issue knight set of gigantic fucking sword and shield. He's got a wide array of abilities, such as shooting a shield-blast and stomping the ground, rendering you stunned for a short duration. However, the most challenging aspect of this boss for me was the adds. At quarterly health intervals, Commander would just hermit up in his shield and gain an invulnerability buff while simultaneously calling adds. I really struggled with the adds, but through trial and error, eventually beat Commander and his minions. Rolling helps in this fight, as with most other fights.

It was after beating Commander that I learned the appeal of these type of games. Being a recovering World of Warcraft player that was actively involved in competitive raiding, I got the same gratifying feeling in downing a troublesome boss that I did when I was raiding in WoW. It's the sense of achievement earned through perseverance and frustration. I even started approaching boss encounters like WoW, where if you started off on the wrong foot, it's better to wipe and try the fight again. 

With this new mentality, the game's dynamics changed for me. It became all about the end-game and all these corridors and passageways filled with monsters just became a means to gain experience which I would use to maximize my stats for the next boss fight. I had entered the WoW meta-game and from here, it's a slippery slope between casually playing this game and it becoming a full blown obsession. 

I started dying purposefully during fights just so I could run the area again for experience. Once I figured out the mechanics to each different mob type, it was just a matter of speed-running the area so I can bank all that XP. It's like Groundhog Day, but for mobs and experience. 

All that said, this newly-developed, repetitive mindset didn't dull the game's enjoyment in the least. Boss fights are still challenging and there's a certain magic in figuring out the mechanics of a fight in increments, until you're confident to the point where you tell yourself "I got this fucker next fight".

I'm now 7 bosses in or so and I can't wait to see what the next fight will be. I've accepted that these type of games take out the "Role Playing" out of RPG, because it's not so much a test of your character's abilities in these fights, but more a test on your abilities as a player to endure through them. 

I can get used to this. I should play Dark Souls again.