Friday, November 7, 2008

I'm back, baby!

Tuesday's events made me happy (all things considered, it was a pretty great day), but I hope when January 20th rolls around I'll be in personal circumstances more conducive to celebration; it seems like champagne, jazz music and good company should be involved.

I have an interesting relationship with that elite class of videogames that includes titles such as the original Pokemon Pinball, Devil May Cry 3 and (most pertinently) F-Zero GX. On the one hand, I respect their general excellence, and superb delivery of their respective gameplay styles. On the other, they make me angry enough to punch a goat. If, that is, I could just get mine back. It's not just that they are all extremely difficult games...actually, it is just that they are all extremely difficult games, but if they weren't so fun otherwise I probably wouldn't resubmit myself to their punishment.

Pokemon Pinball at least is only infuriatingly brutal if you want it to be - the process of catching 'em all may not appeal to all comers, who would likely find the game an entertaining pinball experience with a superb integration of the Pokemon theme. Just wait until you're going for that second evolution and trying desperately to shoot the ball up one specific lane where the final item remains to be collected, only to watch a) the time run out, b) the ball vanish down the gutter, or c) the time run out and the ball vanish down the gutter. This may not sound all that frustrating, but if you understood the work involved to get even to that point, it might be clearer why the temptation is very great to knock a hole in the wall using the Game Boy. Fortunately the GBA sequel is a lot more forgiving. Devil May Cry 3 needs less discussion, bringing its hammer down only during the ridiculously challenging boss battles.

F-Zero GX is in a class by itself, offering the highest concentration of fury-to-playtime of pretty much any game I have EVER played. It's amazing - as though the title finds a way to tap directly into the primal rage centers of my brain, and then provides incessant stimulus. If it weren't stellar arcade racing, I'd toss it out the window, then drop an anvil on it, and perhaps an elephant if the zoo would go along (if they needed convincing I'd just make them play the game). How does this work, you ask. The thing about F-Zero GX is that it offers no mercy. Ever. Nothing in this game comes easily and - with very few exceptions - nothing in the game comes even with significant effort. It takes absolutely herculean effort to triumph over the basics, and then you make the mistake of trying the same thing on harder difficulties. This is my current dilemma, which I blame on my brother. Motivated by his obnoxiously-heroic example, I have recently gone back to the game with the intention of unlocking various things I never got around to (i.e. lost patience with/doubted ability concerning) back when it came out. This involves defeating monstrous challenges, but also the joy of remastering the challenges I beat before because I've gotten rusty.

This is actually a practical necessity - what makes F-Zero GX so difficult is that, at least in the beginning you are racing against the track as much as the other racers (all 29 of them). F-Zero GX is a very, very fast racing game, which is part of what makes it so exhilarating but also what makes it so exasperating, the tracks being designed to maximize the consequent danger. The futuristic motif makes for lots of interesting and visually-arresting track designs, most of which are a blast to play, but they're also as unforgiving as it gets. Not only is it easy to fail to place, but one must also avoid falling off the course AND depleting the vehicle's energy bar. In Mario Kart there's a Lakitu 'enemy' that will save you and place you back on the track should you fall off, with only time lost. There is no such luxury in F-Zero (except in multiplayer as an option), and when you fall off the track or explode, that's it. You get lives with which to restart that particular track, but a very limited number. Imagine tackling a Grand Prix cup and defeating three (or even four) of the five tracks, only to plunge over a tricky edge on the next...and then to do it again...and again...and again, until all lives are used up and you have to start the whole cup over again. Then you get to the same point again and repeat the experience. Failure over and over and over again, hours lost with no progress - it's very demoralizing. Thank goodness there is a practice mode. This is part of the reason why it's necessary to start with the 'easy' difficulty: that way you receive crushing defeat at the metaphorical hands of the tracks until you master them and can cruise to victory, and THEN receive crushing defeat at the hands of the other racers on the harder difficulties until you best them. Heaven help you if you tried to learn the tracks while battling the brutal expert CPUs. Of course, racing against the harder CPUs it's necessary to learn new strategies and often to remaster the tracks; ditto if you try a new vehicle with significantly different handling. It's hard to win. Really. And that's just the Grand Prix mode.

The Story Mode is what really brings the pain. This is a series of the most sadistic individual challenges the designers could imagine, and they're brutally difficult even on the Easy difficulty I was stubborn enough to finally defeat back in the day; now I'm facing down Hard. There's Very Hard, too. It's the rule rather than the exception for me to spend a whole hour trying one challenge and not beat it, or even feel like I made any progress towards beating it. If that doesn't sound like a lot, consider that these are often sixty-second challenges, with restarts occurring on average every thirty seconds. Do the math. Then I try another hour the next day and don't win. Then I try an hour the next day and still don't win. Then I consider the benefits of a monastic life, but have another half-hour go at the mission instead and, STILL, don't win. How many tries at this point? It's in the multiple-hundreds, for Pete's sake. I'm looking at you, 'Challenge of the' frigging 'Bloody Chain.' It gets to the point where it's not even fun anymore. But I really hate to lose, and so I persist. In this small world where I hold some dominance, there is no way I'm going to accept defeat at the hands of any impertinent game design. People who don't play games probably can't understand this, but I'm sure everyone knows how it feels when something in which one has invested oneself goes sour. The urge to demonstrate control and superiority is overpowering. Victory will be mine, and then maybe I'll go play a Barbie game or something. Meanwhile I'm glad no one is here to see me blacken the air with vocalized anger. There's one rule of thumb when tackling such a challenge as this: you better hope that in this race, no one can hear you scream. At least if you still want that person's respect.

I long for the quiet tranquility of an RPG, where all the happens is the world ending. Speaking of which...

1 comment:

Jennie said...

I think Pokemon Pinball was the first game I ever owned, back when I got a GameBoy Color... fortunately, I was not one of those crazy completionists who ever even considered trying to get all the Pokemon in the game. Still, I sympathize, because that must have been insanely difficult.