Since the start of pandemic, a few of my oldest, closest friends and I have played multiplayer games once or twice a week. I’ve more or less kept up with gaming since college, but these guys didn’t do more than the odd few rounds of Mario Kart during Thanksgiving. That was until we all had to sit indoors for a year.

I mainly got them into the Souls series. We branched out to stuff like Monster Hunter, and I even got them to play my favorite, Mordhau, which doesn’t play great for them on console.

One of these friends has cerebral palsy. He walks with canes or rides a scooter to get around. He can hold and use a controller well enough, but, as he puts it, when the pressure builds in game his spastic reflex gets the better of him and he can’t do much more than panic dodge roll.

The Souls series can be very forgiving at times when he can be a magic user and nuke things from a distance. Bloodborne, on the other hand, was rough and we had to use PS5’s remote share a few times to get him through some spots before it all became too much.

Then we bought HD2 during the sale. I was a big fan of 1, and was honestly unsure of the new perspective (boy was I wrong, but that’s another topic). Despite his physical disability, my friend has become a god on the battlefield. With turret, HMG emplacements, and mines, he consistently gets the most kills during a dive, usually twice over.

I don’t know if there is more to say. I feel like a lesser game would have nerfed those “crutches” into oblivion. But most use them as a way to pad out survivability while you try to have fun with the rest of the weapons.