So my girlfriend played Dark Souls...

and it was hilarious...

The only game she has really ever spent time playing was Call of Duty: World at War. And when she was learning it, she used to jump into an absolute frenzy when something would appear on screen, freak out, throw the controller, scream, jump, all types of crazyness because she didnt know how to play and because stuff was popping up "unexpected" for her. Then add in the BONZAI!!! enemies popping up and charging her with a knife, she'd literally throw the controller, haha. She ended up learning how to play it a bit and could even do decent enough in the zombie survival modes. Nothing great, but not horrible. She could even do decent enough online, getting 1:2 k/d.

ok, i give you all of that to set the stage for the awesomeness. That is pretty much her only gaming experience.

So Saturday morning, we get up and i broke down and decided to buy dark souls PTDE on PC (had it on 360, but i dont have an active live account anymore). So i set it to buy/download before we left the house. We get back and i made sure it installed correctly. I end up running a char through the tutorial while she was on the phone. well, she wraps up just as i finished the tutorial and arrived in firelink and i showed her a speed run to taurus demon.

Just as she was about to leave, i quit the game and went to make a new character as a female and name it after her, as a joke, thinking nothing beyond that. The next thing i know, she tells me to load it and took the controller....

She then starts trying to get the hang of the game... reading EVERY soapstone message, practicing how to attack, how to use the menu... etc. she's killing every harmless hollow trying to figure out stuff. she stands in the hallway trying to learn how to roll for a solid 10 minutes.... 20mins later, she hasnt left the first hallway haha.

finally she starts to explore, and upon entering the room with a harmless hollow sitting on the ground in the water in the dark, she jumps, haha. then she tries to attack him and hits him, but fails to hit him on teh 2nd attack so he starts to come after her, so she screams and flails around wildly trying to kill him...

fast forward.. she is taking every corner, every hallway super slow. she arrives to the first bonfire.. she explores the courtyard in every direction checking for every possible hidden area or a place to run to escape... then it comes... she enters the church... ofcourse i knew exactly what was going to happen. the funny part is, she paused before walking in and looked around the room and made a comment that she knew something bad was about to happen... she even looked up!!!! but, she just barely didnt look high enough and decided to suck it up and enter the room... sure enough, the demon drops down and i have never seeen anything like it. she immediately starts screaming, tosses the controller in the air, and mid-scream looks at me while i'm busting out laughing.

she runs around in circles in the room screaming trying to figure out what to do... she tries running out the 2 big doors, passing right by the real exit, then circles back around, not ever even once trying to fight the demon, and finally runs out the room and is basically 1 breath away from crying and is sobbing from terror haha. she litereally took a 3minute break from the game because she was so scared.

she gets up the nerve to start playing again. she reads a note showing her how to kick and jump attack, so she spends 15 minutes practicing how to do the move, despite me saying she didnt really need it for this session. well, she became so proud that she could do it, she decided to try and do it against the next set of enemies (2 hollows/archer). well, that ended quickly as she forgot to target lock and got beat up pretty bad before managing to kill them.

i warned her that she was now about to fight the boss. i gave her some pointers... use 2h (she was way better at rollign than blocking) and use a plunge attack.... gave her a briefing on what kind of attacks he does, how to beat him, what to look for, etc. She walks in first try having no ability to really kill anything and she manages to stay alive for an impressive amount of time and got him down to 60%... she actually took the time to watch how he moves/attacks prior to actually trying to damage him. Next time she walks in and dies due to some bad luck (got stuck). 3rd time.. she used every flask she had, used every bit of skill she could muster and somehow managed to beat him with a heroic triple swing at the end. She was so worked up, she kept checking her pulse over and over and over and took a 10minute break haha.

finally, i jokingly said she should try the taurus demon. she has seem me kill the taurus demon 2-3 times, unlike the asylum demon. Well, to my surprise, she said ok and started clearing to him. she made a b-line to him, dieing only once to the firebombers, with many close calls and only screaming twice haha. i teach her to grab the pine resin... tell her a strategy to use plunge attack once, then bait/attack thereafter with 2h (again, she is way better rolling than blocking). She manages to kill him in two attempts, and then basically runs away from teh game because she is too afraid.



i know most people won't care about this, but this was so epicly funny. That and the fact that my gf who doesnt play games at all and is easily terrified by things she can't control was able to beat the 2nd boss of the game in 2 attempts (with coaching) when a good chunk of people quit the game without even doing that was impressive to me.

i wish i could have shown everyone the face she had when she FREAKED OUT when the asylum demon dropped down. mouth wide open, eyes wide, screaming, and staring at me while flinging the controller in the air... priceless.

I wish I could've seen this.
What's funny is that I spent my time looking at Demon's Souls videos, learning how to do things just by watching, and she did better than me...

whats awesome is that she is very much into reading books. i and i her the night before about the lore of hte game and how they specifically tell you very little and you have to piece it all together, and i went on to tell her a bunch of hte lore that i knew about. particularly telling her about gwyn's relatives/family and the workings of his two sons, etc. i think that got her interested. she was hyper obsessive about reading every soapstone. when i ended up playing a new char to taurus demon (cause my first one didnt save for some reason) after her, she was almost saddened that i wasnt reading soapstones haah. she would even have me read item descriptions.

i know for a fact that she wont play the gamme, but the fact she's willing to give it a try and see what it is that im talking about was awesome. if it wasnt so terrifying for her, i think she might hactually try it, but she gets too afraid to be under that kind of stress for 30hours.

+1, op. Great story. Keep her going and keep us informed. Taurus Demon on the 2nd try? Thoroughly badass.

Indeed, took me three hours to kill Taurus my first playthrough.

I'm glad you got her to play it with you man.

My girlfriend doesnt like zombies :shock: so she absolutly HATE when i'm playing dark souls while she's sleeping by my side

i wish my wife would even give it a try, she used to be a gamer but the only game we play together is bomberman ultra(which is pretty awesome)

Great story.

My girlfriend also tried the game and it was pretty funny. She bumbled through the Asylum, dying to the boss a few times and the skeletons. She never blocks and seldom rolls. It's hard to watch her play; her complete lack of caution or strategy gave me heartburn.

Until she gets to the Taurus Demon... I didn't even tell her there was a boss on the bridge, because I wanted to see her get clobbered, like I did when first played the game. She just ran up to him like he was nothing and started swinging her Zweiahander at his knees while the archers on the tower she neglected to kill, fired at her back. She had one hit left, and the Taurus Demon was at half health. She continued to swing at him and narrowly dodge his attacks. When she killed him, I shouted, "What!?"

She killed the boss on her first try without using the ledge attack. The Taurus Demon killed me four or five times my first time through the game.

She is about to get to Blighttown, and I doubt she'll get through it, as she is easily discouraged.

That is freaking hilarious. I wish you had it on video. She must've stayed in that safe zone right at his ankles... and a ZWEI??? I bet her stamina bar showed no green the whole fight.

she has agreed in the next few months to try the gargoyles.... but i doubt she'd make it to quelagg. if she did try quelagg, i bet she could win, but i dont see her getting through sen's fortress afterwards.

if she did make it through, i think the first boss she couldnt beat may be ornstein/smough or the hydra,. i bet she could beat everything up to that point, minus the asylum demon's big brother.

That's okay with me. If she just rolled through the game it wouldn't be as fun to read!

callipygias wrote:That is freaking hilarious. I wish you had it on video. She must've stayed in that safe zone right at his ankles... and a ZWEI??? I bet her stamina bar showed no green the whole fight.

I wish I had it on video too, because I couldn't believe her luck. And yeah, she stayed at his ankles, hammering R1 attacks, and somehow, he kept missing her.

for laughs, i loaded a pic of us as my avatar - ya, she's a keeper. =p

She tagged you?

Also, while helping another player in the Parish, she killed an invader. Her first invader. The invader was either TERRIBLE at the game, or her complete lack of skill confused the invader, and she got the upper hand.

She beat the Gargoyles and the Capra Demon too... on her first try, as well, but she had Stone Armor for those two.

Forever alone...

this is interesting cause most of new players share these reactions.
and it can show that this game isn't impossible, you just have learn how to play it, and it makes you learn it with your mistakes.
the fact that she could make the Burg dying only a few times it's because she was cautious enough, what the game actually wants from you.
my first playthrough i died only a few times because of that, i knew this game had lot of traps as i've played demons souls before, so i almost went through the whole game basically just walking and watching for everything. now the overconfidence makes me die to stupid things i'd never do.

Awesome story. My girlfriend games and she tried Dark Souls only once (so far) and instead of panicked screaming it was more like overly frustrated swearing. She does have a phobia of birds though and that bird that flies at you and plucks you from the cliff freaked her out big time.

To the OP- a +1 to your lady for facing up to her fears, and for putting the beat down on both the Asylum and the Taurus Demons, well done girl!

Now set her up against the Capra, but don't tell her what to expect!

My eldest daughter was much the same, and even though DkS brought her to tears on more than one occasion, she kept pushing on to the point where she ended up making better progress in the game than what I did on my initial run.

I had been gaming for 15 years before my husband decided to give it a try (I guess this is kind of unusual). Anyway I set him up with my old Crystal XBox and 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein-Resurrection', as he fancied a shooter. It was priceless, I have never laughed so much, I was literally crying with laughter at one point but he persevered and now he's totally hooked on gaming. We both play everyday and it's added a whole new dimension to our relationship. Some people say gaming can drive people apart but that hasn't happened with us, so I hope your girlfriend carries on.

I have been trying to persuade my husband to give 'Dark Souls' a try but he has resisted so far. He says I only want to see him play it so that I can have a good laugh. Too right......! What I wouldn't give to watch him play it.

she wont keep playing it. she's isnt the 'gamer' type. but, the fact she gave it a go was still really cool.

she's a total busy-body, so sitting down to watch tv for hours or play a game isn't going to fly with her.

besides, not sure i even want that to become a full time thing. games are my quiet little secret. only a few that i put decent time into. i dont play much. not really wanting a relationship with someone who plays them often. i got stuff to do! ;p

it's still really friggin cool.


side note - if i didnt tell her what to expect/coach her, she wouldnt keep playing/trying. i have to give in to that aspect or i risk abandoning the entire thing.

tard01 wrote:and it was hilarious...

The only game she has really ever spent time playing was Call of Duty: World at War. And when she was learning it, she used to jump into an absolute frenzy when something would appear on screen, freak out, throw the controller, scream, jump, all types of crazyness because she didnt know how to play and because stuff was popping up "unexpected" for her. Then add in the BONZAI!!! enemies popping up and charging her with a knife, she'd literally throw the controller, haha. She ended up learning how to play it a bit and could even do decent enough in the zombie survival modes. Nothing great, but not horrible. She could even do decent enough online, getting 1:2 k/d.

ok, i give you all of that to set the stage for the awesomeness. That is pretty much her only gaming experience.

So Saturday morning, we get up and i broke down and decided to buy dark souls PTDE on PC (had it on 360, but i dont have an active live account anymore). So i set it to buy/download before we left the house. We get back and i made sure it installed correctly. I end up running a char through the tutorial while she was on the phone. well, she wraps up just as i finished the tutorial and arrived in firelink and i showed her a speed run to taurus demon.

Just as she was about to leave, i quit the game and went to make a new character as a female and name it after her, as a joke, thinking nothing beyond that. The next thing i know, she tells me to load it and took the controller....

She then starts trying to get the hang of the game... reading EVERY soapstone message, practicing how to attack, how to use the menu... etc. she's killing every harmless hollow trying to figure out stuff. she stands in the hallway trying to learn how to roll for a solid 10 minutes.... 20mins later, she hasnt left the first hallway haha.

finally she starts to explore, and upon entering the room with a harmless hollow sitting on the ground in the water in the dark, she jumps, haha. then she tries to attack him and hits him, but fails to hit him on teh 2nd attack so he starts to come after her, so she screams and flails around wildly trying to kill him...

fast forward.. she is taking every corner, every hallway super slow. she arrives to the first bonfire.. she explores the courtyard in every direction checking for every possible hidden area or a place to run to escape... then it comes... she enters the church... ofcourse i knew exactly what was going to happen. the funny part is, she paused before walking in and looked around the room and made a comment that she knew something bad was about to happen... she even looked up!!!! but, she just barely didnt look high enough and decided to suck it up and enter the room... sure enough, the demon drops down and i have never seeen anything like it. she immediately starts screaming, tosses the controller in the air, and mid-scream looks at me while i'm busting out laughing.

she runs around in circles in the room screaming trying to figure out what to do... she tries running out the 2 big doors, passing right by the real exit, then circles back around, not ever even once trying to fight the demon, and finally runs out the room and is basically 1 breath away from crying and is sobbing from terror haha. she litereally took a 3minute break from the game because she was so scared.

she gets up the nerve to start playing again. she reads a note showing her how to kick and jump attack, so she spends 15 minutes practicing how to do the move, despite me saying she didnt really need it for this session. well, she became so proud that she could do it, she decided to try and do it against the next set of enemies (2 hollows/archer). well, that ended quickly as she forgot to target lock and got beat up pretty bad before managing to kill them.

i warned her that she was now about to fight the boss. i gave her some pointers... use 2h (she was way better at rollign than blocking) and use a plunge attack.... gave her a briefing on what kind of attacks he does, how to beat him, what to look for, etc. She walks in first try having no ability to really kill anything and she manages to stay alive for an impressive amount of time and got him down to 60%... she actually took the time to watch how he moves/attacks prior to actually trying to damage him. Next time she walks in and dies due to some bad luck (got stuck). 3rd time.. she used every flask she had, used every bit of skill she could muster and somehow managed to beat him with a heroic triple swing at the end. She was so worked up, she kept checking her pulse over and over and over and took a 10minute break haha.

finally, i jokingly said she should try the taurus demon. she has seem me kill the taurus demon 2-3 times, unlike the asylum demon. Well, to my surprise, she said ok and started clearing to him. she made a b-line to him, dieing only once to the firebombers, with many close calls and only screaming twice haha. i teach her to grab the pine resin... tell her a strategy to use plunge attack once, then bait/attack thereafter with 2h (again, she is way better rolling than blocking). She manages to kill him in two attempts, and then basically runs away from teh game because she is too afraid.



i know most people won't care about this, but this was so epicly funny. That and the fact that my gf who doesnt play games at all and is easily terrified by things she can't control was able to beat the 2nd boss of the game in 2 attempts (with coaching) when a good chunk of people quit the game without even doing that was impressive to me.

i wish i could have shown everyone the face she had when she FREAKED OUT when the asylum demon dropped down. mouth wide open, eyes wide, screaming, and staring at me while flinging the controller in the air... priceless.

Should have recorded this,I was cracking up at the text, I can't imagine seeing this XD

I thought this was pretty funny because I imagine most all of us had a similar reaction, but it was contained in our heads, or limited to a quick cuss or yell. The fact that she was so engrossed in the game that she reacted out loud like that is hilarious, and I would pay money for a video of her playing Dead Space 2!

It would be great if you could get her to stick with her character for an entire playthrough and post the videos on YouTube. The best part of this game is that when she makes her next character, she'll be breezing through areas that used to give her trouble and she may very well be hooked.

so after a long hiatus from dksouls.. she tried again, this time heading towards gargoyles.

she picked up from the bonfire behind the red wyvern/dragon but before the armored boar.

she died a heck of a lot trying to remember the controls fighting the archers and spearmen...

my favorite was when she fell off the ledge on the archers and the boar came charging at her... she screamed so bad that she stopped staring at the screen and turned and stared at me in the eyes will screaming before finally turning back to watch herself die.

so she spent about 2 hours just trying to make it past the boar area...
finally she makes it to the indoor area behind the boar and has no issues until she gets to the first balder knight guy before the bonfire. she dies on him 2-3 times, then finally makes it past everything and gets to the bonfire.

so at this point, i had her farm a tiny bit to get stats for uchigatana and had her rank it to +4.

then she went to fight the black tower knight guy inside the church... she spent about an hour just fighting him repeatedly - not because she couldnt kill him, but because she wanted to practice on him, haha.

so she finally kills him (using no potions, win). she gets to the caster guy, has little issue with him.


now she made it to the gargoyle. i basically advised her to go 2 hand and dodge roll instead of blocking since that works for her. she did well dodge rolling. her problem was always knowing when and when not to attack. she kept getting beat up in her attack animations.

it took her about 5 attempts to even figure out there's a 2nd gargoyle... then i watched her fight these gargoyles for almost a full 3 hours, never getting a single one down before we turned off the game to go watch walking dead.


....on the bright side, she made a comment before sleeping about muscle memory improving after she sleeps, haha, and she said her biggest problem was she kept mixing up the attack and roll button when she was playing due to poor muscle memory.

..... and the other bright side.... i got to rip the entire dashboard, console, instrument cluster out of my 75 chevy pickup and clean it up and paint it a new color while she was distracted with the game, haha.