Category: 2023

You’ll know that I’m a proponent of games being as hard as their creators desire them to be but that doesn’t mean that I don’t find frustration with game difficulty from time to time. However, there is a special type of frustration that I occasionally come across. If I consider a game to be poorly made or unfairly difficult, I’ll just stop playing it but, if I truly love a game, then facing a difficulty roadblock can be distressing. In these cases, I’ll buckle down and keep persevering until I become good enough to overcome the obstacle. Even then, there were times when I thought to myself “What if I’m never able to beat this?” and so I thought it might be interesting to share some moments in video games when I almost gave up.

One of the most vivid moments when I experienced this was when I was playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for the first time. As someone who loves the games of FromSoftware, I was excited to play, at that point, Hidetaka Miyazaki’s newest game. While the combat system took some getting used to, I found myself quickly enchanted by the rich world, incredible bosses, wonderful exploration etc. However, I had heard tales that the final boss of Sekiro was perhaps the hardest FromSoftware boss ever but I was sure, with my prior Dark Souls experience, that I was up to the challenge. I will refrain from saying who the final boss is, since it’s an amazing moment when you realise who it is, but I quickly found myself being destroyed by them. As I fought against them again and again, I slowly began to lose faith in myself and considered the distressing possibility that I might never finish Sekiro. However, the boss’ design is truly impeccable as it’s a test of almost every aspect of combat that you’ve been learning throughout the game and I managed to eventually overcome them. Last time I played Sekiro, I managed to defeat them in one try, showing how fair they become once you’ve mastered the combat and I consider the game as a whole to be a masterpiece.

I’ve recently been playing a game called Celeste. I had heard many talking about how difficult Celeste is and, as I played through the game, I remember thinking how, while the game is certainly challenging, that it wasn’t as difficult as people had made it out to be. Then I came across a cassette tape that unlocked the B-side of a level. Playing through the B-sides of these levels truly shows how tough Celeste can be with many demanding near perfect timing and knowledge of some of the more advanced mechanics in the game. I’m now working my way through the C-sides but something I realised was, as much fun as these levels can be, a strong motivating factor is my pursuit of the achievements. Therefore, I thought I’d share my thoughts on achievements in video games, why I like them and my personal policy when pursuing them.

I first heard about achievements some time after the announcement of Gamerscore which would be implemented in the Xbox 360. Not owning an Xbox 360, I didn’t think too much of it. However, Valve, within a couple of years, began incorporating achievements into Steam which, given that I’m a PC gamer, drew my attention. I also owned a PS3 which later developed Trophies, a variant of achievements, but I never committed myself to earning Trophies. I can’t remember when it was that I actually took an interest in earning achievements but I do recall that my rarest achievement showcase, on my Steam profile, once showed that I had somewhere around a 25% game completion stat, that being 25% of achievements earned across all games that I had at least one achievement in, and I now have a 66% game completion stat.