I Play Video Games - Not My Cup of Tea

Author's Note: It has been a while since I last posted one of these blogs but for those that don't know it is a reoccurring joke that I do not play a lot of video games. The only issue that I have with this joke is that it's mostly true. Part of it is work, and another part is my own personal problems with time management. Regardless of the reason I'm trying to get better. So please join my as I try to rectify an injustice.

A Virus Named Tom

As hinted on the last one of these back in November of 2013 I indicated that I was playing A Virus Named Tom, and I was not enjoying myself. Since then I have been intermittently playing it in thirty minute to one hour burst. Ultimately this is the optimal way to play most puzzle games, but my resentment towards A Virus Named Tom continued unabated.

A Virus Named Tom commits what I consider to be a cardinal sin in puzzle games. With the progression of every single level there’s a new mechanic to create difficulty as you progress. This is fine the first couple of times, but eventually you hit a gameplay wall. Whenever puzzle games rely on this strategy there comes a time when the game expects you to micro-manage everything in a matter of seconds. At that point you either “get it” or you don’t, and you might be able to guess where I stood by the time I reached the final stage of A Virus Named Tom. You have to flip puzzle pieces, avoid bugs, grace them ever so slightly to get extra time, and plant well timed “bombs." Slap on a countdown timer and things just got a bit too hectic for my tastes.

So at some point I just decided to stop playing A Virus Named Tom rather than seeing it through until the end. At that point I decided that if I was going to play a frustrating game it was going to be more than a Pipe Dream derivative with a “light” story.

VVVVVV

I must say that as someone who doesn’t really enjoy the “masocore,” VVVVVV was a fun time, but this might be all that I can handle. Masocore games are designed exactly opposite to what I want to see in my video games, and as a result I avoid them like the plague.

One of my fundamental issues with the genre of masocore is that I have never really been a fan of “designed frustration,” and the caveats this entails. Part of it is how trivial death ends up becoming, and another is that this genre as a whole does not reward genuine experimentation. On the first point I oftentimes don’t understand why I am not able to get past certain obstacles or why I had finally conquered others. Solutions are sudden and death occurs swiftly which prevents real productive meditation on ones actions. The only real solution in this regard is to see things as the developer which I will extrapolate on further. This also leads to my second point of experimentation. Experimentation can only occur in video games if the consequences of dying are light, and if it is possible to reach multiple right conclusions when presented a problem or obstacle. Masocore games usually permit neither and as a result do not permit genuine experimentation.

So what do masocore games value most of all? Revelation and progression. Revelation is the emotional sense of finally understanding the design logic behind a puzzle or obstacle after having been murdered so many times. As the player starts to understand the logic of the designer they begin to feel they are getting better at the game. This is the only way to get better at the game as few of the obstacles have more than one real solution disregarding bugs.

Now in regards to progression this is the ultimate reward for masocore games. The real punishment in masocore games is not death, but the failure to progress further in the game. Whereas in other genres you might be able to avoid certain situations or side quests you know you would have issues with masocore games do not permit this. If there is even one mechanic or type of situation you find especially difficult you are, for lack of a better word, shit out of luck. You as the player must master everything, otherwise you will get nothing.

I say all of this merely to point out why I have problems with this particular genre of games. After five hours of trying and almost two thousand deaths I finally beat VVVVVV. I also should say that I am thankful that VVVVVV has a myriad of well-placed checkpoints and the look of the game was a charming homage to the ZX Spectrum. However, even then I find the overall design to be “eh” so to speak.

Proteus

So after discussing restrictive game design we move to the other side of the game design spectrum with Proteus. In fact Proteus maybe pushes things a little too far on the other side of the gaming spectrum towards anarchy.

Proteus is a sandbox game of the walking variety à la Dear Esther or Thirty Flights of Love. The difference here is that Proteus lacks a formal narrative and instead relies on audio and visual “flair” to encourage user exploration. This lack of a formal narrative is admittedly a distinctive aspect of Proteus, but it is also one of its weaknesses. The complete lack of any real or tangible objectives caused me to struggle find any real benefit to discovering new objects or sounds. Sure each object and thing makes a distinctive sound, but because everything is spread apart you aren’t really creating music, nor are you “solving” anything.

What you are doing is inducing transitions from Spring to Summer, from Summer to Fall, and finally from Fall to Winter. While the transitions are notable in their own regard I just didn’t feel like they were special enough. Now the exception to that would be the transition to Winter which reveals that the island is actually dead and what you had experienced up to that point was a reflection of what the island once was. It is a beautiful message, but it is one conveyed using only the most barebones of means.

It is however difficult to condemn Proteus outright. It is a very brief audio and visual experience that ends up being more dazzling than actually “fun” to play. It just lacks a sense of established mood to place its conclusion into a better, more powerful context.

Other Stuff

I almost did a write up of Divekick, as someone who does not enjoy fighting games. If you wanted to know it is an enjoyable riot that is a little beyond my comprehension than what I had hoped. I had hoped that a fighting game with a two button fighting system would more greatly value timing and reflexes versus more technical technique. The online community is a reflection of this considering how I got my ass handed to myself time and time again. At least getting defeated is hilarious though.

I do not like Kill la Kill (anymore). Expect a formal review of the series once it has concluded. Might I recommend Space Dandy or Samurai Flamenco instead?