the character they're backstabbing me with. They've earned their right to fuck with people. Lordran is a desolate place and any shared experience, even a deadly one, reminds me that I'm not as alone as it often seems.  I'm aware that all games have cheats and cheaters, yet with this infiltration seems more personal. Jolly cooperation just isn't same if your companion is an invincible hacker with juiced stats. I feel like a cheater by association. All I had to do was stay out of the way; I was simply following in the hacker's wake. The illusion of Dark Souls, the supernatural dread, had been diminished, exposing the reality of programming and numbers.  The feeling has never really left me: when I'm most frustrated, when an area seems impossible, there's the knowledge that I could go online and whack my stats up to 99. It's an easy temptation to resist, but it remains. The boss never had a chance against a dweeb and his 200kb trainer. This was rubbed in the other night when I attempted to beat the boss unaided with a new character. I was whacked around the arena. I felt like I was fighting a hippo with a coathanger. I alternated between getting naked and housing myself in stone armour. I died time and time again. People made fun of me on the stream I was running.  Here was the frustration I'd feared when I first approached the fog gate beside Dickwraith. I learned, though. I memorised