The Language of Videogames

Artura says the right words

- Artura Dawn

This year, I replayed Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Sekiro henceforth) and beat the game, then did NG+7 with the bell demon and without Kuro's charm.

Now, I'm not saying all of this to toot my own horn - although I'm happy to do that too — but to mention that on Sekiro's original release I was incapable of beating the game after several dozen hours of trying and failing at the final boss; I could not reach his second stage, let alone beat his fourth. I was enraged when the game won GOTY because I felt it wasn't a good thing for Sekiro to win the award despite so many controversies surrounding it, with so few people being able to beat the game. At the end of my original journey, some could say I disliked the game because of the torture I'd endured trying to fight every boss.

Later, my review of the game was changed into positive, and I formally apologised for my inability to understand how to play the game and persevere through it. Nowadays Sekiro is one of my favourite games of all time, and having spent 100 hours in it isn't enough, because every time I mention it I get the urge to play it again.

So why could I beat Sekiro my second time around with ease, whilst on my first I had to surrender? Because of the unique language of videogames.

When I first played Sekiro I was quite new to gaming. That's not to say that I haven't been gaming all of my life, but up until around 2015 I wasn't capable monetarily to play anything aside from really old games or free ones; the first big game I ever bought was Fallout 4, and that's right around when my gaming craze began. However, that's not to say that I continued being able to afford games, so I was only capable of slowly building my library.