Gaming News

It’s Not That I’m Not Good At Silksong, It’s That I’m Playing It Too Fast

On Sep 14, 2025 4:47 pm, by NuclearCoffee

Playing Silksong, I’ve realized something that may change the way I play games. It’s got nothing to do with the game itself, which I do think is lovely and I’ll probably listen to the soundtrack more than normal people listen to normal people music. Rather, it has to do with a realization that’s taken me far too long in my stupid life: I’m the most impatient player imaginable and it’s ruining everything.

I’ve kind of always known this about my personality. I’m the type of guy to get furious at ads before movies because I want to see what I paid for. I’m the type of person to go to a party and then be ready to leave as fast as possible because I felt like I’ve checked off the box. Shop for a good deal? Nah, what if I just click on the fastest junk up top and realize my mistake later. Bringing it back to games, I’ve spent years thinking that I might not just be as good at certain games. But what I really needed to do was find a goddamn crumb of patience.

Look, I’m more than ready to admit that I’ve sucked at a lot of games. While I’m not the type of person to throw a controller – these stupid ass things cost like $90 now – I am definitely the type of person to get very frustrated and then make the same dumb mistake again and again and again. Then, once I’ve figured out exactly what I’m doing, I do it wrong again anyway. “Got it. Understood. I’m supposed to roll here and take a swipe when the giant enemy swings his club. But what if I try to make it quick by running straight towards – nope, I have died and lost an hour of progress.” In almost every game, every time.

I Can’t Help Speedrunning, Even When I Don’t Want To

This isn’t even limited to Soulslikes. When I play Metal Gear Solid, I start clicking through all the codec conversations rather than spending a precious extra ten seconds listening to talented voice actors. When I play turn-based RPGs, the bastion of giving players time to think, I’m just mashing that confirm button to make my characters attack until the battle is over. Because, why spend time having fun if you can just rush through it? This, too, leads ultimately to numerous needless deaths. Instead of strategizing, my brain is trying to bumrush through it. And I’m not talking about speedrunning. Speedrunners are actually good at what they do. I’m talking about, for some reason, trying to finish whatever section of a game in as fast as possible while often not taking the time to enjoy any of it.

Back to Silksong, I know a lot of people have complained about the difficulty. And it is hard, no doubt. But early on in the game, for some reason, I finally allowed myself to recognize the real problem. After dying twice fighting Skarrgard, that annoying mini-boss that everyone seemed to hate, I realized that if I just took a breath and played it slowly, hitting a piece at a time rather than trying to maximize my damage each opening, I could easily beat him. And I did. Honestly, I didn’t even know he was supposed to be hard. It’s as if a door in my brain opened saying, “Shut the hell up and think for a second.” Hit once, run, wait. Hit once, run, wait.

Perhaps this is obvious to anyone reading this. Of course you’ve got to be patient! That’s the key to everything! Think, you moron! It’s always a little easier said than done. There’s still an itch at the back of my skull to just blow through it all so I can move on to the next thing. But with Silksong, I think I’ve begun to slow myself down a bit. I’ve observed more and cared less about completing this game when my friends do (and ultimately failing anyway). Getting good for me isn’t about reaction time or complexity as I told myself, it’s about me ignoring the most obvious way to do well and trying instead to do it fast.

Silksong Is Too Good To Rush, And Too Good Not To

The Great Conchflies roar during their introduction in Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Again, this is likely common knowledge amongst people who are normal. But so much of video game culture around hard games is about whether someone is good or not. Whether someone has the right skills. We make games sound much harder than they are by emphasizing talent and timing. And when everybody is posting about how fast they’re completing a game, it’s easy to think you’re bad at it because you aren’t speedrunning. And once you think you’re bad at it, it’s easy to give it up as if the Calvinist version of God marked you from birth as sucking. Maybe I’m alone in this. I don’t know.

Looking up strategies and then ignoring them because I wanna be done isn’t magically going to make me better. And I’m probably missing out on a lot of the magic because my attention span is set to shuffle. But something about Silksong has kept me steady. I don’t know if it’s the calm music or the beauty of the world or I’m just getting older. Either way, to get good, I’ve got to be patient. And, seriously, Skarrgard was not that hard.