The Cruelest Video Game

here is how an early run of fear and hunger may go for you you begin in the game's opening Courtyard and with the sound of barking ringing ominously in the distance you enter the dungeon of fear and hunger after a few moments of Yuri silence exploration you encounter and are pursued by a massive ogre who traps you in Battle Before immediately cutting off your left arm you're asked to predict a coin toss which you fail resulting in your character being unconsciousness but this is not game over no you awaken to the smell of Rotting Flesh now missing every limb except your right arm which you use to drag your destroyed body along with emerging in a corridor of decaying corpses you scramble in the darkness for something anything and unfortunately for you you find it you have a bad feeling about this you encounter a grotesque floating float head he laughs at you he mocks you he begins chanting and suddenly he is no longer what because out of the darkness behind him something is approaching some gigantic being is drawing closer and closer every turn you attack it does nothing you beg is does nothing finally the creature looms over you you are crushed with Grace pressure the first time this happened to me I thought wow [ __ ] this broken game I hate this I would rather play literally anything else I then watched as fear and hunger destroyed my entire life when I am playing newer releases I think about this game when I'm trying to select dinner at the supermarket I think about this game when my wife tries to tell me that the amount I think about this game is affecting our marriage I think about this game I hate this game and I love it fear and hunger is this bizarre mishmash of different genres blended with some geniusly counter-intuitive game design but that only becomes obvious if you can push through the game's grueling opening hours something a lot of people have not done fear and hunger releasing in 2018 were outside a small rabid fan base localized mainly in Russia and Eastern Europe the game went largely unnoticed for nearly half decade until last October when I and other content creators began to notice it but with barely a thousand reviews on Steam this still feels like a game of languishing and obscurity fear and hunger doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page Even book Bumble has its own Wikipedia page purpose of this video is clear We Must Destroy the book Bumble Wikipedia pay my goal here today is to show you what this game is and to do that properly I'm going to have to pull back some of its Mysteries but I promise it's worth it no matter what fear and hunger May resemble there is nothing like this a game so obtuse and Jagged and captivating but above all it's cruel and so to start I'd like to explain exactly what I mean by that difficulty in modern game design has been broken down into two major categories games that are challenging and games that are punishing games that are considered challenging are ones that require a high degree of skill in areas like decision making pattern recognition timing strategy Etc think games like ikaruga Celeste Devil May Cry or competitive fighting games any game where the act of surviving or succeeding is considered hard punishing games on the other hand don't generate their difficulty by being difficult but through the penalty that's inflicted on the player when they do fail so take a game like Hades if Hades let you indefinitely retry from where you died I'd argue most people would be the narrow to and probably not think about it again but by punishing death through forcing the player to start from the beginning this is how the game generates its difficulty as well as letting it build its story and gameplay around that idea challenges about your ability to overcome an obstacle punishment is the penalty for when you fail and a game can be hard by being either one of these things but I would argue only becomes cruel by being both and fear and hunger is the cruelest game I have ever played the reason this is important is not difficulty for difficulty's sake but the nightmarish and captivating experience fear and hunger shapes through that cruelty a cruelty you can feel as soon as the game begins hey uh I just want to say that because I have validation issues and seek approval through unreasonable means I play the game on the harder Terror and starvation difficulty and if you want the experience I'm about to spend the rest of this video describing I advise you do the same you start the game by picking one of four characters your only guidance being that there is a Infamous Knight named Lagarde who disappeared into the dungeon of fear and hunger your goal being to locate Lagarde and escape the something you can actually do in under an hour in theory from here the game drops you into its opening Courtyard no tutorial no Direction Just You And The Dungeons gaping Abyss what could possibly go wrong you are immediately mauled to death by a pack of ravenous dogs hear that knocking sound that is the sound that will greet you every time you die and are booted back to the game's opening menu it is the sound of a failed run of lost progress and of having to start again you will hear it a lot unless you're playing as anyone except Knight who is objectively the best character in the game the dogs are a nightmare that will shred your health in a couple of attacks and inflicts multiple Stardust effects even initiating their own coin flip attack which if you lose yep soon you will learn that fighting the dogs is not a reliable option so what if instead you just Escape into the castle and you know if you if you time it just right there's this corner that the dog's AI will catch on and hey you've done it you've found a reliable way to survive the dogs that you can now use in every playthrough moving forward oh God no what where's the but how am I supposed to no piece of [ __ ] yeah see while the structure of fear and hunger's larger map stays the same the subsections of that map switch between different handcrafted layouts meaning even the [ __ ] you can rely on you cannot rely the dogs Feel So Random and unfair and cruel and I really couldn't blame someone for walking away at this point but remember when I said there was no tutorial in fear and hunger there actually is and it's already started you just don't know it yet see well the main entrance will nearly always result in a conflict with the dogs there's actually this sneaky little side passage and while it's nowhere near as inviting as the main gay it leads down into a set of dark stairs that the dogs will not follow you down and this this is your reliable path forward that is a much bigger deal than it sounds but for now I want to concentrate on where this stairway leads down into a cramped basement crawling with Eerie tentacled monsters there's also this big door with a Crow on it I don't know what this is I it doesn't matter uh anyway the uh octopi whom the basement's tight corridors will force you into conflict with however these creatures are nowhere near as dangerous as the dogs and because of that this is where we can start to learn about fear and hunger's combat the central mechanic of which is its Lim dismemberment system rather than choosing to attack a single enemy in fear and hunger you instead attack their specific limbs this octopus Enemy being broken into its left right and Central tentacles as well as its head but the thing is an enemy doesn't just get one turn each of these limbs has its own attacks which it will use on its own individual turn meaning you're not fighting one enemy but several this applies to every enemy in the game your options being to attack each of the octopus's limbs one by one or go straight for the head and knock that [ __ ] out this is the correct option unless you're playing as the dark priest whose weak little arms can't even land a proper Kill Shot upon defeating your first tentacled Monster you will gain something that will change your entire perspective of fear and hunger nothing no items no experience no level up unlike practically every other game with RPG elements you cannot grind past a problem you could kill every octopus in the basement and the dogs will be exactly as dangerous and worse the very next enemy you encounter will body you even harder than the dogs it's frustrating it's easy to feel like you're not making any progress that this game doesn't make sense but the thing is you are and it does while you may not have gained any stat increases or material advantage think about what you've actually learned one there are enemies that you will not be able to overcome two the most obvious path isn't always the way forward three headshots are the only reliable way to take down enemies and four there is no inherent advantage in winning most battles it might not sound like a lot but these four lessons are how the game tutorializes you they are the building blocks that will prepare you for the entire rest of the game and now that you have them you're ready to take on The Games first real challenge the ogre problem the guard or ogre as I like to call them because calling them guards feels like referring to Godzilla as a scaly little fella are the most common enemy in fear and hunger and your ability to meaning fully progress in this game is going to depend on whether or not you can over and that might sound easier than it is see like the octopi one good non-dark priest float to the Head will result in a kill shot but unlike the octopi you have a very low chance of actually hitting an ogre's head a chance you can increase by taking out both its legs and causing it to fall over but it takes three whole turns to do this during which time the ogre will be free to use his Cleaver to cut off your arms which means no weapons or shields for you for the rest of the game and if that sounds like a major disadvantage it is but don't worry it's nothing a little child sacrifice can't fix the ogre's right arm can initiate a coin flip attack which if you well we've seen where that leads [Laughter] this is the ogre problem how do you prioritize which parts of him to attack without losing the majority of your health or limbs in the process it's questions like that that the challenge of fear and hunger's combat comes from and if you think that sounds difficult oh buddy oh my sweet little friend so how do you deal with ogres well I like to do it like this [Music] [Music] let me tell you a little story throughout fear and hunger there's these bear traps placed around the dungeon and stepping into one means losing both legs which effectively ends your run unless you're willing to crawl through the game on Bloody stumps slowly starving to death as you go insane which I wouldn't recommend you could start a YouTube channel to experience basically the same thing this [ __ ] so many of my early runs in fear and hunger so I genuinely cannot undersell the dopamine explosion I experienced when I was caught by a guard and knowing that fighting him would likely lead to the end of my run I scrambled through my inventory found a bear trap and thought [ __ ] it let's see if this works and then it did the guard now starting the battle with two damaged legs meaning his head was vulnerable from the first turn for this single moment I felt like the smartest man on the planet and it was amazing not only because the game's difficulty had forced me to think creatively Under Pressure but because it led to a broader realization about fear and hunger this game is not an RPG it's an immersive Sim if you're unfamiliar an immersive Sim is a game where rather than asking you to engage with its world through one Central system think shooting in Doom fighting in Street Fighter or platforming in Mario immersive Sims present you with a variety of systems or options in how to approach a problem and what I mean when I say fear and hunger is an immersive Sim is that if you try to play this game like an RPG you will get your face punched out through your ass but when you start to look at it like an immersive Sim this is where the entire game breaks open take for example the ogre problem the bear trap is just one solution but say you don't have a bear trap another option might be to fling a red vial in its face blinding it making it way less likely to land those devastating attacks we then have the two options we already mentioned systematically cutting off the ogre's limbs which can work if you have these enough armor to soak up the ogre's Lesser attacks or just proving what a mod bastard you are to everyone and going straight for the head which is risky but it will have the accuracy raising eyeglasses equipped it actually becomes a viable tactic or maybe you don't do any of these things maybe you find an Assassin's handbook learn how to make guard skins meaning that you can disguise yourself from the ogres letting you just slip by trivializing an entire part of the game we've just spent three paragraphs talking about and it's that last approach particularly that raises a really interesting question in fear and hunger is the real challenge of this game it's bottles or our bottles just one small part of something much greater because of how we're conditioned to interact with RPGs it's easy to go into fear and hunger assuming that battles are the most important part of it but as you have the kind of experiences we just talked about you'll start to understand that way more important than bottles is your knowledge and creativity in how to navigate this world and for me that Revelation started with the bear trap but it could have just as easily been when I realized that if you have a stick in your inventory when fighting those talking dogs you can actually throw it for them and these lovable little poppers will get distracted so you can just stab them to death but the kicker is that you could have also used that stick to craft an ultra valuable torch item which many areas are completely unnavigable that is a word I looked it up without so do you really want to spend a stick on this one encounter or do you want to save it for later in the game as the encroaching Darkness begins driving your party insane do you really want to burn that red vial in the eyes of an ogre or should you have avoided that fight altogether saving the vial to burn through a locked door these are the dilemmas that fear and hunger will constantly hit you with even when saving your game as to do so you'll need to correctly guess a coin flip a failure resulting in well some bad things however by holding shift which the game does not tell you you can actually spend a lucky coin to flip two coins instead of one but do you want to waste that coin on a game save or hold on to it to use in a treasure chest for better loot or to up your chances of surviving one of those agonizing instant kill attacks the more you learn how valuable items actually are moments like raiding the barrels in the opening Courtyard become [ __ ] enthralling as you calibrate and recalibrate your route through the dungeon with each new item and the more you learn about these systems the wider and more far-reaching those Revelations become for example one of the game's major choke points are the Mayans filled with dangerous boss monsters and particularly the ghosts which lie at the very end which normal Weaponry will not work on and for me learning to navigate the minds and the fact that the ghosts are vulnerable to Cursed weapons felt huge but then 40 hours later learning that there was actually a secret passage within a secret passage within a secret passage that just bypasses the minds completely it is the closest I've ever felt to one of those Galaxy brain expansion memes and moments like this are what led to my realest that the real currency of fear and hunger is not stats or items or money but knowledge your understanding of what this world is and how to move through it this renders an earlier statement of this video that of a foolish child if you're playing as anyone except Knight who is objectively the best class in the game night is good the combination of her armor granting her the highest starting defense as well as her speckable ability fast attack which once activated lets her make two actions per turn means she can both soak up the damaging mistakes beginner players will make as well as giving those players an extra turn to experiment and learn which makes her a really solid starting option and objectively the best character in the game in combat however think of everything we've just talked about and how every advantage of Knight is linked exclusively to battles in terms of navigating fear in hunger's world and interacting with it as an immersive Sim Knight has no advantages at all now compare that to mercenary a character who stats wise is far weaker than Knight however not only can his lock picking ability allow him to bypass any lock in the game saving those red vials for flinging in the eyes of people who disagree with you about anime but he can also be specked with the ability escape plan giving him a much higher likelihood of successfully escaping battles as well as the ability Dash which lets him move at Double speed in any other RPG the combination of these two abilities would be a convenience but in fear and hunger they are game changing as you will now be able to outrun most enemy and Escape easily even in the off chance they catch you trivializing both the opening dogs as well as the 30 minute time limit you have if you want to reach legard alive meaning if you know what you're doing you can hit credits on this game without engaging in a single battle so then Knight is the best character Asterix in combat second Asterix as the beginning of the game because you see the Outlander who can also be specked with Dash has the highest base attack letting him hit like a goddamn meteorite as well as occasionally breaking locked doors saving on those Ultra valuable all keys but can also be specked with the skill Devourer which lets him ease defeated foes practically eliminating his hunger mechanic from fear and hunger and while his starting defense is low equipping him with the superior armor you're likely to find over the course of the game will eventually make him just as durable as nice as well as a late game item that will let him move twice per turn meaning if you can struggle through a particularly brutal early game you'll be left with a character with all the advantages of nice but who can move a double speed hit harder and with much easier hunger management and if you think that's crazy well let's talk about the dark priest who still sucks lowest attack lowest defense his little body too frail to hold any decent weapons or armor his necromancy spell doesn't even do anything I genuinely do not understand what kind of loser picks the dark priest like what is so empty about your life that this is the character you go what all this means is that making a successful run in fear and hunger means synthesizing together your knowledge of its monsters and how to overcome them its map and how to navigate it the strengths and weaknesses of your character as well as your understanding of the game's items and creativity in how to use them but the moderning twist with that last one is that 99 of items in fear and hunger are randomized you don't even know what items you're going to pull from a specific Barrel or craze meaning you don't even know what tool set you're going to be approaching these obstacles with or what resources you're going to be able to fall back on and that's a problem because the longer I run in fear and hunger lasts the more difficult the mirror Act of just keeping your party alive and sane becomes each character has both a hunger and mind God that will constantly drain over time and letting either drop below 50 can have disastrous effects on your run as characters suffer mental breakdowns and usually winnable battles become party wiping massacres a full party meaning you have Ace different Gorges that will be constantly draining your supply of food and sedatives and that's alongside the healing items you'll need to recover from the inevitable damage you will take as well as the constant supply of torch touches you'll need to maintain failure to do so in the wrong area meaning you'll be left scrambling in the pitch black darkness no idea where to go or what to do as you leak sanity and again you could just start a YouTube channel to experience the exact same thing this is all on top of the 30 minute time limit you have to reach the guard as well as the multitude of different status effects that you'll need specific items to cure and what this all means is that each new step down into the dungeon of fear and hunger becomes this anxiety-inducing nightmare that made me realize something fear and hunger is not just an immersive Sim it's also a survival horror the way survival horror games uh horror you is through two steps the first is the steady Chokehold they place on your resources creating this ever looming threat that you will encounter something that you do not have the health bullets or sanity to overcome that anxiety leaving the player in an emotionally vulnerable state that the Second Step can happen the actual scares which are now able to tap into something more Primal real and frightening fear and hunger achieves that first part through its nerve-shredding resource management but what I was not expecting is how disturbingly it handles the second when you start fear and hunger most of what you'll encounter are dark takes on fantasy tropes ogres imps Lizard Man Etc and while it is stressful it isn't really frightening but there's a moment for me where that starts to change the further down the dungeon you go the more the nature and reality of this place begin to invert in on themselves as the creatures you encounter begin to distort and separate from any established fantasy idea or conventional Norm like a later enemy that looks like a pregnant mannequin only for the baby to fall out of it onto the floor in front of you and turn by turn slowly crawl to its feet and raise its knife and I don't even know what to [ __ ] say about the harvestmen which don't even attack they just stand there reaching their long limbs out and caressing you uh Hey late Video Edit here that's not all they do do not Feist the harvest men I repeat do not fight the harvestmen also I'm not even gonna talk about what's in this horse but uh it's bad so enjoy that survival horror combination the anxiety-inducing resource scarcity followed by the genuinely horrifying things you encounter it creates a kind of emotional pressure that pushes on you more and more with each new step you take and where the game elevates that pressure into straight up dread is with some [ __ ] amazing atmosphere through sound design there's one track later on called the tomb of gods where you have this chasm-like soundscape but then out of it rises this serial voice that sounds just a little too high to be human accented by these Sinister clinging Bells mixed in a way that makes it sound like around the next Corner might just be waiting some ancient Terror ritual just beyond what you can see maybe my favorite way the game creates dread through its sound however is the track city of ancients in it you can hear a familiar noise it's that knocking sound we've come to associate with the beginning of the game but whereas before it sounded close as if we're standing next to it [Music] foreign [Music] far away and smothered by some gigantic black abyss and it's such a subtle but incredible way for the game to whisper to you that the place you started is is very far away and the place you are is in fathomably deeper and darker and what awaits below is only further horror this all combines to make fear and hunger a goddamn masterclass in anxiety and Dread but there is one part of this game where the dread spirals into flat out Terror it is 2 am I am sitting alone on me and my wife's queen-sized bed playing fear and hunger on my steam deck I'm exploring an area I've been through half a dozen times when suddenly [Music] I'd seen this message before and by now assumed it was just the game trying to [ __ ] with me I ignore it and go about my business when hey wait I've never seen that enemy before what what is the oh okay oh oh Jesus oh sweet Jesus oh God what is happening oh my God [Music] this run devouring monstrosity is the crow Mauler a creature who takes inspiration very directly from Silent Hill 2's Pyramid Head in fact there's a lot of references in fear and hunger which I don't really get anything out of but depending on how much you enjoyed the Super Mario movie you might Pyramid Head was the end concept at least a stalker enemy a dangerous near indestructible creature that pursues the player through the game and I love stalker enemies the concept of something that barely obeys the rules of this world while hunting you through it is so captivating and terrifying however that Terror can quickly turn to goofy irritation if a stalker isn't sufficiently challenging or punishing this is not a concern you will have with the crow Mauler at any point during a battle he can launch one of several game derailing attacks he can use his Maul to smash the bones of your party leaving them permanently debuffed he can rip out their eyes causing them to go blind pray this does not happen your main character and most frighteningly of all his Peck attack will without a coin toss kill one of your party members encounters with the crow Mauler are nightmares massacres in which you and your party hobble away from Beason broken and drained of resources and while you can avoid him he has a tendency to burst through a wall and attack you at the worst possible time and it's in those moments you can feel your meticulously planned hard-fought run teetering on the edge of Oblivion the chromoler works because he is maybe the purest distillation of fear and hunger's cruelty and it is that cruelty that makes this game what it is there's even multiple points where the game will just kill you outright fight for selecting the wrong option like asking you do you want to climb down a toilet and if you do you don't even get a game over you're just trapped there forever the lesson being don't do that stupid and in any other game this would just feel cheap but in fear and hunger it's just part of the cruel core that is this game death is always a lesson and when I started this all felt so random and pointless and unfair but the more I played the game the more I'd hit these points and find myself going back over the choices that had led me there picking apart what I could have done different learning from it and then excited to reapply that knowledge in my next run that Loop is modernly addictive learning how to engage with fear and hunger's world in the way that it's asking you to that is the true challenge of this game and it is [ __ ] enthralling Rhys recently I started to learn piano and as I've mentioned before I get up several mornings a week and cycle through the freezing Dublin air where I learn to pretend murder people in Jiu Jitsu and those are both very technical activities that you slowly get better at by making mistakes and fear and hunger it fires my brain in that same way combined with the game's atmosphere it's Mystique its feeling of discovering just a little piece more of this nightmare with each run it makes for a horrifying and captivating experience that I think you should play but unfortunately that is a recommendation I'm going to have to temper with some criticisms technically fear and hunger is kind of a mess there's several areas that drag my frame rate into single digits and one or two points for my game would consistently freeze killing my run if you don't understand what fear and hunger is it's easy to believe that the game is unfair and random but these crashes show what actual random unfairness looks like and it [ __ ] sucks the caveat here being I was playing mostly on Steam deck and ran into these issues far less frequently on PC but it's still a shame fear and hunger is the kind of game that devours plane rides and while it has these steam deck compatibility take it probably shouldn't I can let this go because fear and hunger is made by mostly one person which is a [ __ ] achievement but my two other issues are less excusable fortunately during the creation of this video someone actually released a mod that cuts out all the more sensitive content which oh boy would have been handy to have a month ago but what it means is that anyone can now play it as well as the game being fully streamable and stream it I shall over on twitch.tv forward slash super eyepatch will this Friday at 1pm EST and that excites me greatly because when fear and hunger spins together in just the right way the emergent narratives it creates are the stuff of pure streaming gold and it is one of those narratives that I want to end this video on but before I do I just want to acknowledge that if you feel like this video has maybe pulled back a few too many of fear and hunger's Mysteries it's sequel fear and hunger termina actually released at the end of last year so Kier is an entire other bigger game built with the same design ethos for you to just discover for yourself now here is my journey through fear and hunger against my better judgments and because I've never really gotten over kaska I started with the Knight taking advantage of a strong early game rolling good enough items that let me save the mercenary from the prison as well as the weird dog from the cave recruiting both and battling my way through the game's lower floors and as I did something started to dawn on me I knew which fights to take I knew which to avoid every death every lesson from previous runs was now materializing in this meticulously laid out plan that was now spinning together into a combination of Good Fortune execution that honestly was mildly euphoric as I started to feel like oh my God I'm actually doing it I'm actually going to make it but there was also something else dread knowing that one wrong decision or mistimed button press could drag it all crumbling down my hands were beginning to cramp I could feel the sweat on my controller as I approached the guard cell with mere moments left on the clock I was going to do it the end was finally oh god oh Jesus no and still I managed to rescue the guard adrenaline pounding through me as I shot back up through the dungeons floors trying to remember what enemies I'd Left Alive and where scrambling through its corridors tense and terrified as the crow Mauler never felt more than a few steps away until finally we reached the game's opening Courtyard my party beaten and broken and missing limbs but a lie we had made it and I felt genuine happiness for them both they and I had escaped the dungeon of fear and hunger I had beaten the game only why did legard go back what what was that weird moment after you rescue him where he glances up a hallway that we we don't we don't need to go down well it didn't matter what matters is I was now free my life was mine again to enjoy the sun and the grass and the Super Market maybe if I cook a delicious enough meal my wife will come back no no no I don't want to go back no no no I began new playthrough of fear and hunger and the class I picked was the dark priests oh God damn it okay the dark priest is the worst character in the game until you realize that you can use necromancy to resurrect Ghouls and skeletons who join your party fitting them out with all the armor and weapons you are too weak to carry but the real brain explosion moment came when I entered an altar and was given the unusual option to show love to my zombie servant they started to liquefy merging ceasing to be two separate beings but becoming one marriage the brand new character class who could use the Spells Of The Necromancer wield the armor and weapons of the night with an even greater offense than the Outlander able to break down doors in a single swing I started to feel Unstoppable using everything I'd learned to lay waste to this dungeon that same Euphoria roaring back but stronger now again I rescued Lagarde but this time I went North at the place he hesitated only to be messed with a giant locked door but how how do I get it wait a minute I had never figured out what that strange artifact was in the weird racist Village from a previous run and maybe yes yes unload your secrets upon me game and here I would come to learn something terrifying this was fear and hungers half way points once again I watched as the game destroyed my expectations of it because you see somehow beneath everything else I had overcome was now a giant ancient city filled with the carcasses of gods and enemies so in fathomable and terrifying I died over and over to over yet I could not stop over and over I hurled myself against this place but it was never enough my party was not strong enough I became obsessed crawling through my memories of this game desperate for something anything and that's when I remembered that door in the basement at the beginning of the game what had it said what type of key did I need oh Jesus oh God no not that anything but that anything but him after many hours of experimenting I defeated the crow Mauler I claimed my prize of the miasma sword a blade so powerful that it threatened to drive my party insane and still its power was not enough still the game rejected me and that's when it happened see remember that floating head encounter at the beginning of the game this is nashra and I developed quite a Fascination for him whenever I'd get the gore Corridor cut scene I'd return to him trying to glean what little information I could before being crushed to death but that's when I discovered that by carrying the cube of the depths as well as the eclipse Talisman obtained by talking to the Eastern priests nashra can join your party and so with him combined with the strength of the miasma sword combined with the strength of marriage I smashed my way through to the end game I lay Siege to the ancient city decapitating its Gods emptying it of its Secrets until I stood before the Throne of Ascension facing its final God in one last terrible battle where all my party members were killed and me without healing items and only two HP remaining I struck the final blow I sat upon the throne of Ascension I had done it I had beaten fear and the game was not over I was transported to some ancient primordial and terrifying Place haunted by things Beyond Human Experience I I stumbled blindly and in fear once again the game reduced me to a small terrified coward this playthrough had lasted nearly three hours I was exhausted but surely just a just a little more and I could be free of this awful place and that's when I stood before some ancients glowing Abyss when out of it Rose some impossible Eldritch being older than time older than space more powerful than both and I knew this was it this was the game's final boss Beyond it lay freedom so with the knowledge of everything I have lost every debt that had come before me I stepped forward and faced this impossible God in a primordial bottle that would determine both our [Music] so why put yourself through this why put yourself through the misery and pain and Agony of this game well I feel like the easy answer here would be to say it's the satisfaction of overcoming something difficult but honestly I think it's more than that when I first started playing fear and hunger it didn't just feel hard it felt like chaos death felt immediate and random and unfair but after spending dozens of hours with this game well honestly it still kind of feels that way the feeling I have isn't Mastery but something else survival the feeling of adapting of taking this game's [ __ ] of every unfair and cruel thing it will do to you and enduring of looking at your situation your resources your actual options and using them to carve a path forward and if it doesn't work well you learn what you can and you do better next time because that's kind of how [ __ ] life is right one day you're fine and the next you're not you get hurt you lose something your wife leaves you or someone you love gets cancer there's no reason to it this is just what your life is now and it's easy to fall into despair it's easy to feel like you have no options but what you can do is try is look at your situation look at the resources you do have and adapts and learn from it try and make today better than the one that came before I don't know that there's any other medium that could give me that feeling besides video games and fear and hunger uses that this simulated experience of suffering of pain of losing things and surviving so yeah this game is cruel it is unfair it will make you want to stop going chances are life will do those things as well but there is always something you can learn there's always something you can take away from those experiences and grow from it that's what's beautiful about fear and hunger it's a game about moving forward in that cruelty and surviving regardless friends thank you for joining me today as ever be sure to check out ipetuals.com to pick up some perpetuals merch and also to subscribe to my patreon to get 15 off and I just want to thank my patrons for making this and all my videos possible special thank you this week too zarok will maester David Robb Claire Burns Super Moon doggy Cesspool of hatred man oh stupid underscore phone fund me on twitch.tv forward slash superipatch wolf where I stream most Fridays friends take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 2,677,650

Keywords: Fear and Hunger, Dark Souls, Eldin Ring, Difficulty, Rpg maker, Fear and Hunger Termina, Difficulty in Video Games, Bloodborne

Id: dRIkWHo1SJY

Length: 48min 37sec (2917 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2023