My son has been patiently working away at the Path of Pain since I got home from work, four hours ago. The person who put the video above together is some sort of divine creature; I never even attempted this feat when I was playing Hollow Knight, and if I had I would have invented twelve new swear words and killed one of the cats by about the halfway mark.
This kid hasn’t let a single swear word or even really a single sound of frustration pass his lips the whole time. No controller tossing. No muttering under his breath. Just persistence and patience.
I don’t know where the hell he got it from. Sure as hell not me.
I dunno what the headline means either, but a new Atmosphere album just came out and I’m listening to it and that lyric from “Neptune” stood out for some reason(*). I have been playing Silksong for several hours, hating most of it, and I still stand by my thorough review from the other day. The game’s fucking masochistic; it’s not fun-hard, it’s bang your head against the wall until the pain stops hard, and I can’t explain why I’m still playing the fucking thing. I’m not relaxed when I’m playing, I’m stressed out and angry, and that’s … not only kind of shockingly immature for a motherfucker who is going to be fifty in less than a year, it’s also not really a good use for leisure time? Like, there are other things I could be doing. There are even any number of other unpleasant things I could be doing that would at least result in, say, the house being cleaner or some sort of shit like that.
It is possible that I spend too much of my leisure time doing things that actively make me unhappy. I should find a therapist and have a conversation about that.
(*) Also don’t know why the album is called “Jestures,” but I’m on my first listen so it might become apparent eventually. There’s no title track.
I go back to work tomorrow, and I’m surprisingly unstressed by it, although I do have a little bit of work I need to do tonight. No, it’s every other thing in my damn life that’s causing all my stress right now; work this week is going to be a Goddamn refuge.
(Yes, I plan to pivot from that into complaining about a video game; brace yourself accordingly. Talking about anything Real is beyond me at the moment.)
So, yeah. Hollow Knight. You might remember my review of Salt and Sanctuary from a couple of months ago; this is a similar game both in style and structure and in that I downloaded it forever ago, took a shot at it, then walked away, and now I’m back and playing it again. I’ve put about 35 hours into it over Winter Break and right now my main feeling about it is Jesus how is this game so big how can I possibly not be done with this by now, combined with a weird sort of completionist impulse that is keeping me from simply beating the damn thing and being done with it. No, I want to be finished, but I want to 100% the sumnamabitch before I do that, and oh Christ there is so much to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun, but I’m having the kind of fun that is at least 25% I need to be doing twenty other things right now while I’m having it.
Guilt-laced fun is the best kind, of course.
You may get a book review later, since I haven’t posted much in the last few days. I finished this yesterday and am still sorting out my feelings about it. Pay no attention to the fact that Amazon inexplicably thinks the release date is next summer; I assure you, the book is available.
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