Well, this week crept up on me out of nowhere. One minute I was there writing about Codemasters and BABYMETAL, the next minute it was Thursday morning and I was playing a bit of this week’s game before it was free on the Epic Games Store. Then again, last week’s article was put together hastily following the Thanksgiving blob that engulfs America and threw a wrench in our plans at the time. So my time-frame is a bit shorter. I think we handled it well. Well, well enough to use well three times to confuse your brain a little and just move on.

Jotun: Valhalla Edition, a game about the messianic age where everyone sits about loving life, there’s no apocalypse, and you don’t have to kill anything. I’m joking, of course. Jotun is a game about the other gods, the ones Kratos last had a big argument with after that whole business with traveling through the nine realms and killing everything. Ok, that joke is fairly important because both games take Norse mythology, and both have a Dark Souls take and make it accessible. That’s what I want to highlight with Jotun, it is that idea of Dark Souls but with another twist.

Now, if you’ve listened to me talk for the last several months, you’ll know I bow at the hilt of the Souls/Borne/Sekiro series waiting to be spanked. I like the idea of throwing myself at the wall, time and time again, with only bits of either it or I falling off each time until one of us breaks. Some, our editor-in-chief Alexx for example, don’t and that’s ok. I’d rather be spanked by Gwyn than by Donald and Goofy in Kingdom Hearts.

The point I’m trying to get across is how I don’t know what it is like for a new player to play a Souls-like game when I’ve played the last five and their ugly cousins. So when I think Jotun is what a Dark Souls would be for children I don’t mean that in “Eww! it is for babies, go back to playing Jax and Daxter, scrubs!” I’m simply suggesting it is simpler for better and worse. For better, it doesn’t faff around with inventories, blood echoes, or a mass amount of weapons I want to sell to anyone willing to buy them. It is Souls-lite that would do well to teach a younger child both how to invent new swears and control.

Much like the eponymous FromSoft series, the hitboxes are taking no short amount of liquid sewage on gigantic scales. The first boss being particularly yellow-stained as I stood under him and still got hit by his Guisarme (poled weapon). Yet, that’s not the reason a while back I didn’t even bother getting that far. The reason I stopped playing is how slow it feels. Once again, not meant with bitter hatred, though I could see why it might seem like it is.

The much slower pace makes it more accessible for more players, and the bright and happy aesthetic around the grim Norse gods is fun. Though that slower pace makes moving at all feel wrong. I made mention of this in the Twitch Prime piece the other day, movement makes or breaks some things for me. Much like Hover, Jotun‘s movement feels off. Normal attacks feel like writing a letter by hand, heavy attacks are hand-delivering all your Christmas cards, and walking isn’t fun at all. Oddly, some praise I’ll give to Death Stranding.

What I’m trying to say, while suggesting you really do pick up Jotun, is how it does something I love. Dark Souls is my comfy place, so when something isn’t enhancing my experience that doesn’t mean it is bad, it is just very different. If you aren’t looking for something that is doing the Cuphead, Dark Devotion, The Surge-style thing of THAT game but different, I don’t know if you’d like Jotun. I think it has an audience and that audience is someone trying to teach the idea of Souls-like to someone who wouldn’t get it.

The Jotun: Valhalla Edition is free all this week on the Epic Games store and will be until December 12th. Next week, I think I’ll be talking about the worst port job I’ve seen when it comes to controls, as it feels as wrong as licking a dog’s teeth to clean them. It will have nothing to do with the PC port of The Escapists on the Epic Games store next week, but it is the biggest disappointment of a genuinely great game.

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