Dark Souls and me part 1

A woman who is very disappointed in me, yesterday.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, what you could call a dedicated gamer. I am just about capable of beating a Pokemon game given a minimum of three months, a good quality print out of the type chart in front of me and my phone open on Google at all times. There are games I have been trying to beat on and off for more than two decades, one of them is Sonic The Hedgehog 3.

It might not be immediately obvious why I decided I really wanted to play Dark Souls II. It certainly isn't obvious to me but it was only a fiver at Entertainment Exchange so here we are.

I'm a little more than an hour in and so far nothing in Drangleic has proven quite so fatal to me as my own ineptitude. I've already wasted at least half a dozen lifegems because I keep forgetting the shoulder buttons do the killy things, not the proper buttons.

I'm also having real trouble with jumping. I either click the left stick too late and run off the edge of the world or click it in the wrong direction and leap blithely into space and those are the deaths where I feel I at least have some excuse. I've more than once simply wandered off the edge of Majula and Things Betwixt. I actually died rather a lot in Things Betwixt to the extent that I think I may technically have “skipped” the tutorial.

I also died to the little baby pigs in Majula whilst trying to find the Emerald Herald. Twice. I finally found her, got my estus flask and by the time I'd died twice more on my way to the Forest Of Fallen Giants I'd even managed to equip it.

I don't think I'm quite the hero the Emerald Herald was expecting to save Drangleic, to be perfectly honest with you.