Lamentations of getting stuck in a video game

destructoid.com:

I’ll be the first to admit that I get stuck in video games a lot, whether it’s a shooter, simulator, or open-world adventure. I am very much cool with the idea of using wikis (you paid for the game — enjoy it how you want), but recently, I’ve been trying to challenge myself more and not get so frustrated when I can’t immediately figure out what to do.

You see, there is more than one way to get stuck in a video game.

The first is when you come up against a challenge you don’t know how to beat. You know exactly what you need to be doing, you just can’t overcome the challenge the game is presenting. Usually this comes in the form of a boss fight or a difficult platforming section — any gameplay section that requires precise inputs and timing will do.

As someone who got into games for their narrative content, this has always been a problem for me. It’s taken literal years of practice to get to the point where I’m somewhat competent at shooting and traversal. My somewhat recent Call of Duty obsession has been a big help, but what really did it for me was getting into Hades at the start of the pandemic.

That game completely changed the way I approach games now. Because of Supergiant’s ingenious modular difficulty settings, I was able to wade into difficult gameplay rather than jumping into the deep end. I loved the gameplay, characters, and aesthetic of Hades enough that I stuck with it for hundreds of hours, all the while working my way up to the coveted 32 heat run. If you haven’t played Hades, that means I completed a run with really, really difficult settings.

Anyway, even with all that practice, I still get stuck on game difficulty constantly. While I’m getting better at keeping my cool, my biggest problem is that I panic