I've made sure this one is a bit shorter than last week's so you can fuck off and get on Elden Ring ASAP but thank you for having a read. Streaming my first steps into it tonight around 9PM if you're reading this on Friday 25/2/22 - twitch.tv/worandihero

Hidetaka Miyazaki, Swamp King.

It is only fair, on this great day, with the release of Elden Ring, to pay tribute to the games of one of videogaming's elite dons - FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki. This guy was the director on...

• Armored Core 4

• Armored Core: For Answer

• Demon's Souls

• Dark Souls

• Bloodborne

• Dark Souls III

• Déraciné

• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

...and now, Elden Ring, which is currently sat waiting to be played by you as you read this and has spent the last week collecting scores and reviews that will no doubt put it in contention for game of the year, but could even trouble some '...of all time' lists too. The same can be said for several games in that immaculate CV. Even Miyamoto has pushed out a few stinkers.

The genius in his 'Soulsborne' games is in their dressing up of classic, old-school videogame mechanics and difficulty in an outfit comprised of some of the best world building and aesthetic cohesiveness in the entire videogame medium. Unfortunately, getting millions of gamers to play Mega Man 2 in the cold light of the 2020s is a pretty big ask but - don't tell them - they've basically been playing a game with the same fundamental rules in regards to the core challenge whenever they've picked up one of Miyazaki's titles. He's tricked the fucking lot of you into playing a bunch of really hard games that have more in common with NES classics than your average modern AAA game and, in doing so, kicked off a massive, seemingly endless debate about difficulty vs accessibility in videogames.

One of the main things I remember from the time period of the NES/SNES is that lack of internet and social media. There were no walkthroughs that were easily accessible. You had to figure stuff out, dedicate time to solving problems and improving your own skill and sharing this information with friends. Finding out how to progress a bit further into the Dark World in A Link To The Past was an incredible feeling, matched only by being able to tell your mate who was also stuck. Finding out the best route through Facility on 00 Agent difficulty to get the Invincibility mode unlock in Goldeneye 007 was such a big deal I phoned my mate Matt up to tell him about this at like, midnight as soon I had cracked it myself. This struggle, this challenge... it brings people together.

I have made actual, real life friends because of Dark Souls. Our shared experience, slowly chipping away at a game that at times seemed unsurmountable was something I'll remember for the rest of my days and it is why the difficulty is so important to these games. Yes, there will be plenty of people who simply tell you to "git gud" but I can guarantee you that there are a hell of lot more people out there who will actually help you get there. We now have social media. We now have content creators and walkthrough writers who will publish information on how to beat certain bosses and the like. All of us, together versus these at times utterly demonically difficult videogames is what makes them so special. The feeling of community is undoubtedly the best part of the Soulsborne games but it is the difficulty that forces us all together.

There's obvious examples of it, like the in-game ability to summon other players into your world to help you take on a boss but with Sekiro, where you can't summon, it becomes more about the IRL (or at least, in real internet) help that you can now get. Try it yourself with Elden Ring - if you're getting pumped by some horrendous, Eldritch beast of a boss, just chuck a tweet out into the great Twitter abyss and I guarantee you, someone will get back to you with help, advice or even just some fucking supportive words to get your head into the game. You're going to need to, especially if the servers aren't working at launch!

Yes, the lore and world-building are almost unmatched and of course, there are always going to be some people who want to explore that stuff without the crushing difficulty but the main reason I am so protective of the difficulty in these games is because of what I have seen, first hand, spring up around it. If they were a walk in the park, like most other games, I don't think I'd ever really ask complete strangers for help or be able to relate to them about a particular sticking point in the way I can with the games of Hidetaka Miyazaki.

So remember this, when we're all stuck in some inevitable horrendous swamp section of Elden Ring, feeling like we're lost in a world of shit, there's an entire community of people out there who have all been through it and all know how important that little bit of advice, or that offer to be summoned or even just that quick pep talk can be and - crucially - all know how rewarding and satisfying these games are when you finally get over the obstacle that was preventing your progress. It's what Miyazaki would want.

Of course it is, he would've stuck an easy mode in by now if he didn't.

Friendly reminder.

When the PR or publisher for a game tells you that you 'may' tweet something about the game you are reviewing, even if it is REALLY SMALL THING and seems innocuous - just don't do that tweet. You're doing their marketing for them, which is a terrible look for obvious reasons. It can also be looked at as humble bragging to your readers who will likely never have that level of access, which is also a pretty bad look. You're also undermining your own work by showing a willingness to bend the knee so easily, which in turn contributes to the continued deterioration of the position of power the critic should have in the business transaction that is 'a review'. Anyway, no worries, you all do you and continue to wonder why barely anyone ever gets to retire as a games journalist, while there's considerable difference in film and music and pretty much everything else.

Homogenization Zero Dawn.

Sometimes you see something in a game and it just makes you think "Yes, they've nailed that. There's no reason to do it differently from now on" and sometimes, that's a really good thing. Things like Halo: Combat Evolved mapping a grenade to a button, the over-the-shoulder 3rd-Person aiming from Resident Evil 4 or even stuff like WASD + mouse controls for PC FPS games, sometimes things come along that get adopted by all other games and ultimately, this makes everything better. One less thing for you to think about as you get immersed in whatever it is that game is trying to do because it has become natural to you. It's the standard. It is how things are done.

However, do you ever find yourself feeling that most games feel the same these days? Despite different settings or even genres, there's just an overwhelming sense of similarity between a lot of modern games, especially within the AAA space. After playing through Horizon Zero Dawn and seeing plenty of footage of Horizon Forbidden West over the past week, I can't remember seeing a single thing that surprised me or made me feel like I was doing something new and unique. This isn't an accident, either. This is completely by design. When was the last time you saw a trailer for a legitimate AAA game and thought "I have no idea how that works"? Probably Death Stranding, right?

When you're making something that is the biggest of big games, the alpha of AAA, you are probably working with a significant development budget and sales expectation that verges on record breaking numbers. It makes sense to play it safe, to provide an experience that people KNOW that they understand and that they almost certainly will enjoy based on the earliest preview footage.

It's just a bit fucking boring at the minute, isn't it? Just me?

I don't have anything against a lot of standardisation of controls as such, just that it feels like they've started to really influence AAA game design. Look at basic stealth mechanics, for instance - from Splinter Cell to Horizon to Metal Gear Solid V to Hitman to bloody POKEMON, you hit a button to crouch a bit and then you can usually sneak up behind something and perform a takedown of sorts. Aiming, reloading, even the weight and feel of the movement of a crosshair, it's great that we've figured out how to make this stuff work effortlessly until everything starts to feel exactly the same.

Now, I caught a bit of heat when the Goldeneye 007 XBLA leak took place last year, because Goldeneye is a game that, when played on its native N64, with a controller that splits opinion and a framerate that dives into single digits, as well as the usual myriad of issues that come with trying to play an old game in the present day, has aged like milk. However, when playing it with these standardised dual analog controls designed for the Xbox 360 port that never got released, I found it to be brilliant. Surely this is a sign that standardisation of controls is a great thing?

You're right, it is!

Games from that era were designed with a lot of limitations upon them, be it from a hardware level (console, controller, storage medium for instance) or even because we hadn't quite figured out what the best way to tackle a particular genre just yet. Goldeneye 007 is an inventive shooter that is actually quite unlike a lot of other FPS games, so when you 1- add some standard FPS controls into the mix and 2- run it on hardware that can shift it at a sensible, consistent frame rate then it allows all those cool, unique ideas to rise to the surface, no longer submerged deep under the issues that can come from the years passing by.

Another great example is a demo of Burning Rangers, recreated on Unreal Engine by a fan, maintaining the art style but adding true dual analog support, so it plays like a modern 3D action game instead of trying to navigate your way around it using the bloody Saturn pad. Great remasters, like the stuff put out by NightDive Studios, also show how you can take a game with controls that were 'of their time', like Shadow Man or Powerslave, modernise them but instead of feeling the same as everything else, they end up feeling quite unique because they were never made with these standardisations having influence the game design in any degree. These games were already finished, done and released.

The issue is clear, having standard ways of doing things like controls and in-game menus, among others, is a great way of showing how years and years of improvements and refinement can make games better. It shouldn't, however, have such a large effect on the creativity, ideas and interactions within them.

Recommended: Cyberpunk 2077

Hear me out, right - the 1.50 patch (especially on consoles) has finally delivered the Cyberpunk experience that we all should've had at launch. A year of patches and bug fixes, as well as tweaks and additions of content and mechanics and now we have the solid 8/10 RPG that we all should've been playing during Christmas 2020.

That's the thing - Cyberpunk IS a good game! Now it doesn't feel like it could fall to pieces simply by looking at it funny you can really see it for the totally fine if utterly unspectacular game that it is. This all sounds like back-handed compliments (and it is, really) but let's not lose sight of the main thing here: despite everything you may have seen and heard and read, Cyberpunk 2077 is a good game and now it is one that hits some bare minimum requirements for an open world game and from a technical standpoint.

It follows the Elder Scrolls formula pretty much to the letter. Combat is a bit ropey, plot and writing ranges from "actually quite good" to "hilariously shit" on an almost mission to mission basis. Abilities start bland and become quite interesting when you near the higher levels and the world you exist in has a pretty damn good level of atmosphere. Way more than it did when there was like, five pedestrians in the street and the lighting didn't work properly. If you enjoyed Skyrim (and lets be fair here, a LOT of people enjoyed Skyrim) then Cyberpunk 2077 scratches a similar itch. That's right, it is very similar to a game from 2011.

Seriously though, I love The Elder Scrolls games and I ended up really enjoying Cyberpunk. I played it when it was a buggy disaster and, admittedly, got really lucky and only really had one major issue (the rest were largely hilarious, rather than annoying) so I had a good time with it. I'm replaying it and now I'm having a much better time. Elder Scrolls games are always more about the setting and the sense of place - a real world to immerse yourself in and Night City is a truly impressive place to exist in for a bit. It feels like a real place, warts and all, rather than a tightly crafted and frictionless game world. It's awkward to navigate at times and has a believable flow of culture and class throughout it.

Cyberpunk 2077 will probably never shake the demons of its atrocious launch, where it was half-finished mess of a game and ended up causing almost the entire videogame journalism industry to show their collective arse, clearly massively swung by the hype machine and the fact they quite like The Witcher 3. It'll carry that reputation forever. It was never a 10/10 in the state it was released and even now, where it feels much closer to the intended end product, it's still nowhere near a 10/10 game, but perhaps the goodwill surrounding this patch will encourage people to give it a go and find the solid, hype-free 8/10 that was always there, underneath all of the broken mess.

OTHER STUFF WORTH LOOKING AT THIS WEEK IN ONE SENTENCE.

Sol Cresta - It's a bit of a mess, so it might be worth waiting for a patch, but Hideki Kamiya's sequel to a classic arcade shooter is a thrilling time in a sadly underserved genre.

Halo Infinite - The best multiplayer shooter on the market, bar none.

Infernax - Another Castlevania meets Dark Souls with pixel art indie game but a very good example of the style and extremely violent!