Games Inbox: Is Hollow Knight: Silksong too difficult?

The Tuesday letters page is not feeling optimistic about the rumoured Nintendo Direct, as one reader worries about the possible end of Destiny 2.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Artificial difficulty
I don’t want to state the obvious but Hollow Knight: Silksong is really hard, like stupidly hard. I never played the first one, but I like Metroidvanias and got caught up with the hype on this one, so decided to give it a go on Game Pass. I think that’s probably the happiest I’ve been with Game Pass, because if I had paid money for this I would’ve been livid.

What I didn’t realise is that not only is it like Dark Souls in terms of difficulty but it’s like Dark Souls 1 levels of perversity, that I thought we’d grown out of by now. Why do I need to go on a 30 minute hike to retry a boss and why is there no map? Even Elden Ring had a map. It’s just aggravating and so artificial.

I don’t even particularly like the graphics. The animation is okay but otherwise it’s kind of plain and not very detailed, if you ask for me. I’m happy for those that like this sort of thing but it’s definitely not for me and as far as I’m concerned it’s not only too hard but it’s hard in a really boring and irritating way.
Intellibon

Riddle me this
I think the only thing worse than leakers teasing what they know through stupid riddles is knowing that they do know something and are just milking it for the ‘fame’. There doesn’t seem much doubt that there is a Nintendo Direct soon but why can’t he just tell us what he knows?

Are they worried that they’ll get sued? Would Activision or Capcom really bother suing a leaker because they said a certain game was going to be shown in an event that would’ve been over for ages by the time the lawyers even drew up a writ?

I doubt it’s anything like that; they just want the attention and everyone guessing their stupid puzzles. Which is extra annoying because I was hoping it’d be Ace Attorney 7 and they’ve already said it’s not.
Geofferson

GC: No one’s ever been sued for that type of thing, as far as we know.

Destined death
A Destiny mobile game seems really late to the party to me. I know it’s not by Bungie, but I imagine they’re going to be wrapping that series up any time now, probably right about the time Sony shut down Bungie. I used to enjoy Destiny 2 a few years ago but for me the problem was not just the repetition and microtransactions but just how slow it felt.

I have no idea what the story was in that game, but it took them so long to introduce anything new and even then it was nothing nobody wanted. I still don’t think they have a proper new alien race even now, despite all the different expansions they’ve had. They would’ve been far better off having only one or two big ones than all these other that added nothing worthwhile.
Kubrak

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Price is relative
These handheld prices are insane to me. For over a grand you could get a half decent desktop PC, why would you waste all that money on a handheld that’s almost the size of a laptop and probably can’t run half the games properly anyway?

Maybe it’s all a scam run by Nintendo, so that that it all makes the Switch 2 look even better value for money by comparison? Obviously it’s not but it’s having that effect anyway. I wasn’t looking at getting any handheld but if Nintendo announces some new games I’d consider that way ahead of any kind of PC device.

For me the whole point of a PC is that it’s as powerful as possible, so it seems a bit silly to me, to instantly put a limit on it by being portable. Not to mention the whole keyboard and mouse problem, which only the Steam Deck seems to even try to address.
Norman

Streaming now
To the reader who asked about playing retro games for the Spectrum and arcade classics, they should check out Antstream Arcade. It has over 1,300 fully licensed retro games and looking at their website this include the three original Star Wars arcade games.

Never tried the service myself but it seems to be available on Xbox, PlayStation 5, PC, and mobile.
Aidax89

GC: That’s a very good call, we didn’t think of that.

The big one
I really hope that this week’s rumoured Nintendo Direct is the one we’ve all been hoping for, with lots of new games and stuff for next year but that sounds an awful lot like the hopium that PlayStation owners have been having to survive on these last few years. Every time before a new State of Play you hope this is going to be the big one and it never is.

I’m going to bet it’ll be the same for Nintendo as well and most of it will be obvious stuff and then maybe a bit of Super Mario Bros. 40 anniversary. I do agree though, that it’s silly that we’ve never had a tech demo for the Switch 2.

Now you mention it, there have been some very memorable tech demos in the past, especially the GameCube with its 100 Marios and the Zelda one. The Wii U had a really good Zelda one too, and I’m sure there’s others I’ve forgotten. Wasn’t the Mario face pulling originally just a tech demo, before it was used in Super Mario 64?

The point is, Nintendo saw a need for tech demos for all those years, regardless of the power of the console, and now suddenly it’s not a thing that they do? It doesn’t make sense to me, since it can only be a benefit – especially if it was Zelda again!

But instead, we see them getting super sloppy with demos they let their third parties put out. I can only assume someone got in trouble for that, but apparently not in time to stop it happening a second time. Everything about the Switch 2 seems so minimum effort so far and I’m really hoping a top notch Direct could be the turning point.
Taylor Moon

Compatibility issues
I’ve also had the same issues as SolidPete82 regarding to old reviews being scrubbed/erased. I’ve included a picture of Red Dead Redemption 2 review that’s been blanked out. It happens to a lot of games reviews I try searching for from yourselves.
Adam_Lion_23 (PSN ID)

GC: That is very strange. They’re definitely still there and can be viewed on a PC with Chrome, at the very least. We’ll have a word with IT though, as presumably there’s some sort of compatibility issue with older articles. If anyone having this problem can contact us with details of the device they’re using and the version number of the browser they’re viewing it with that would be extra helpful.

Giant enemy crabs
Just writing into say thank you to everybody who helped me with deciding what gaming PC to get from PC Specialist. I have got the new PC now and I am really pleased with it. The spec is very close to what Magnum sent in, in the inbox, so an extra thank you very much to Magnum.

I have been playing American Arcadia on the new PC, which is very good, and I didn’t realise is by the developers of Call Of The Sea, which I thoroughly enjoyed on the Xbox Series X/S. I also tried Sonic Generations (2011 version) which I bought before it was delisted on Steam, as my old PC, bought in 2013, struggled with this. Sonic Generations runs really well on my new PC but on one level I will have to turn the graphics settings down, because it froze on the enemy robotic crabs!

I’ve also started Bioshock 1 Remastered to see what it is like on my new PC. I never completed it on the Xbox 360 when I played it in 2009, as I had a bug that caused the game to stutter every couple of seconds after 10 hours of play. I plan to play through the first game all the way this time and also then play the second game and DLC because I missed this, because I hadn’t completed the first game. I have completed Bioshock Infinite on my old PC in 2013.
Andrew J.

Inbox also-rans
I was wondering you guys are going to review the Indiana Jones DLC? I loved the base game and was wondering your opinion on the DLC. Keep up the great work!
Will

GC: Thank you. We want to play it, if only for our own entertainment, but this post-Gamescom period continues to be very busy and we don’t honestly know if we’ll get round to it.

I’ve been buying a lot of lightgun games for the Wii, to play on my Wii U, and I came across Mad Dog McCree. I remember playing this in an arcade when I was at a school trip to the Isle of Wight! It’s a total nostalgia trip and it’s pretty rubbish but I’m still enjoying it!
Simon

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

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