That got the old brain cogs a-whirring. If all of these games have poison swamps and the big man behind them thinks they’re really important, it’s obvious that we can figure out which one is the objectively best game by rating the poison swamps! Folks are always banging on about objective game rankings, so this is just giving them what they want. Genius, right? No, I wasn’t intensely sleep deprived from cramming in too much Elden Ring while working on this article, why do you ask? In order to complete this arduous, malodorous task, I needed the right tools for the job. To that end, I have devised the SWOMP system to rate a poison swamp from each game. Highest score wins, simple! How does SWOMP work? Allow me to explain.
Stickiness: The first obstacle of a poison swamp is how all that ooze sucks at your boots and tenderly engulfs your legs, making movement harder. That’s what Stickiness rates. Wetness: Related to Stickiness, but obviously different enough to require its own category for scientific reasons and not just to make the acronym work. Odour: How bad does it stink on a scale of pleasantly floral wetland meadow to Bog of Eternal Stench? We don’t have Smellyvision technology yet, so we’re just going to have to use our imaginations like kids did in ancient times like the seventies. I did try very hard to think of a suitable word to make the acronym SWAMP, but there aren’t any. I checked in the dictionary, but I got bored and stopped at arolla. Murkitude: This is an absolutely real word to rate the visibility, or lack thereof, in the swamp. Being unable to perceive the proper path is a large part of the poison swamp’s dastardly design, so we need to take that into account. As well as actual low visibility, this also includes how hard the area is to navigate in general. Puissance: A poison swamp has gotta have poison, obv. Puissance is a rating of that poison’s power. How quickly will it sap your health? How easily can you mitigate or overcome it?
With our objective, highly scientific system explained, let’s bring on the swamps! S: 2 W: 4 O: 5 M: 4 P: 2 Total: 17/25 S: 1 W: 1 O: 4 M: 4 P: 5 Total: 15/25 S: 5 W: 4 O: 3 M: 5 P: 3 Total: 20/25 S: 3 W: 3 O: 2 M: 4 P: 3 Total: 15/25 S: 1 W: 2 O: 3 M: 4 P: 2 Total: 12/25 S: 1 W: 4 O: 4 M: 1 P: 5 Total: 15/25 S: 0 W: 0 O: 0 M: 0 P: 0 Total: 0/25 Looking at the scores, which I pinkie promise I didn’t add up until after writing the whole thing, it seems the winner is Farron Keep, making Dark Souls 3 the official, objectively best Soulsborne title from From Software. Next time: We look at Ryu’s eyebrow game to determine the objectively best entry in the Street Fighter series.
