What have I done again you ask? Well it is something that frequently happens to me in games that I am enjoying. Two particular moments stick out in my mind in my adult gaming history. One was in this game called Tunic and the other was in one of the Darksiders games.
It goes like this: I am enjoying the hell out of the game, I am exploring, I am getting reasonably good at attacking and defending and what not, then I get to an area that you cannot back out of (a terrible fault in any game if you ask me) and then I am stuck at a tough boss fight, one where I get beaten badly no matter how I adjust me strategy.
This isn't to say that this boss is overpowered or unfair, he is just really seriously tough. I get the feeling, although I haven't looked, that he could be one of the final bosses in the game. He blocks a ton, rarely has a vulnerable window and he has strong melee attacks as well as a shotgun attack that is pretty tough to dodge.
The thing that frustrates me the most about this boss is that the area immediately outside of where he is, is an area that you cannot escape from if you tire of getting your butt kicked and would rather go back outside and explore to potentially find more powerups and return when you are a bit stronger. I really dislike it when games do this because since I am not a hardcore gamer, I would really at least like the option of returning at a later time. I am pretty strong as far as my upgrades are concerned as well, much more so than the picture above, but the guys who regularly post guides on how to defeat this guy, are much much much better players than I am.
So here I sit, and it has been many days since I have posted about anything that I am playing recently because of the fact that I am not playing anything. This happens to me quite often that I give up on games but it is quite rare that I do it in a game that I actually really love.
In Darksiders 2 it was a boss named Samael that ended my play. Once you initiate this fight you are stuck with it unless you had the presence of mind to make a manual save right outside the door. This is something that I will do in open-world games these days if there is no escape option but at the time when I was playing that one I didn't do it. Samael was really tough and wiped the floor with me many times in a row. In my frustration, I took several days off from playing and then later on found that I had forgotten the moves on the buttons, which made defeating him even more unlikely. I never did end up getting past him and never completed that game.
I fear that this is what is going to happen with me and Tunic as well. The alternative I suppose would be for me to get in there and really try to figure out Boss Scavenger's moveset, without even trying to do any damage to him. Perhaps this is something that you more serious gamers do by default anyway, but I'm afraid that my patience levels are not as good as most people's. I guess taking an evasive approach and simply waiting for the right moment to throw a bomb would be a good idea, or perhaps mastering my dodge. The shield would probably come in handy for the shotgun bursts but the action is so fast that I know my button reaction skills are not keen enough to pull this off.
I am going to make it an objective to just get in there and TRY today, because Tunic has been one of my most favorite games that I have played since Hollow Knight and I would hate to just pass it to the wayside. While this game is wonderfully programmed, I would have liked to have seen a way to bail out with a waypoint or something like that in this area that once you are in, you are stuck there until you defeat the boss.
Some of you out there are much better gamers than I am. I'm a filthy casual, i know this. Today I will make a real effort to figure this guy out instead of just walking away from a game that I have seriously enjoyed.