Punish Me

“I will not die unless I achieve something. Even though the ideal is high, I never give in. Therefore I will never die with regret.”

Games challenge. That’s what they do. The average setup runs thus:

You are presented with an objective, a goal, a shining singularity of such colossal significance that to ignore it would cause the universe as you know it to grind to a halt, the planets to spin off their axis and every Twix in existence to blip instantaneously into the 11^th dimension.

Having been assured of the severity of the situation you are then informed that if this unspeakable event were allowed to occur, it would be your fault. That’s right baby. It’s no use looking all startled. You picked up the pad, you turned the console on; you read the briefing and watched the unskippable cutscene. All those innocents to be saved, captives to be liberated, evils to be vanquished – you cannot unsee what you have seen. To ignore would be to condone, to be complicit to the horror. Could you ever close your eyes again without feeling the accusing stares of the dead and Twixless penetrating the ethereal mist, boring into your very soul? I’m afraid it’s all on your shoulders now. Museltof.

So, you’ve been hoodwinked into playing the role of Digital Jesus in order to save [insert family member / love-interest / home planet here] from the evil machinations of [insert pointy-bearded super-villain / alien invasion fleet / Binary Beezlebub here]. Still, the objectives seem clear enough. I guess it’s just a case of wandering over and…

That’s right folks, having forced you into a quest of supposedly terminal importance the game has now put as many obstacles and adversaries as it can possibly render between you and the finish line. Not content with plonking you in the middle of an epic conflict and then putting you in charge of the coin-toss, it is now creating ever more vicious and ludicrously well-armed opponents to prevent you from coming up heads. What kind of sinister, Machiavellian joke is this?

And then, mid-way through your gazillionth attempt at defeating the 50th level boss, the one who fires lazers from his eyebrows and EMPs from his armpits, that’s when it hits you. It all becomes clear.

The game hates you.

That mission it roped you into? It’s a one way deal. The captives waiting to be liberated? They will rot in their coded prisons. The evils waiting to be vanquished? Their cruel laughter will ring out in the Halls of Eternity. You will not see the end of this game. You were never intended to. You were built up for one single, solitary reason: so that when the killing blow landed, you had further to fall.

And now the game is talking about you behind your back, smirking as it triumphantly relays the full extent of your failure to all within earshot. Your girlfriend decides it’s time to see other people. You’d defend your honour, but you threw your only controller through the front window after your last humiliating defeat. You can’t even buy another because you’re being sued by a pedestrian with a Dual Shock lodged in his visual cortex. Worse still, that consolation Twix you stashed away for your darkest hour has inexplicably vanished into thin air…

Putting the melodrama to one side for a moment, I would hazard a guess that I am not the first person to experience such irrational feelings towards a well organised bunch of ones and zeros. Every so often, in amongst the skilfully executed hadokens and perfectly timed plasma bolts, you come across a title that burns you to the point of despair. You’re no gaming God, but you’ve rattled your way through a fair few titles in your time. You can do your laces up with only minimal assistance, so you know you’re not completely bereft of hand-eye coordination. Even so, it doesn’t change the fact that this time you cannot complete. No matter how fast you dodge, no matter how much gun-ishment you unleash, the game refuses to be beaten.

But you can’t stop. The compulsion is too strong. You are in the game’s thrall. All it does is hurt you, punish you for the crime of daring to play it. Yet still you come, battered and broken, crawling back to the same game that cost you your joypad and living-room window the last time around. You will keep coming, keep falling, keep sacrificing yourself on the same bloody altar.

And that’s okay. It’s okay because through the KO’s and the time-outs, the disintergrations and the obliterations, you’ve come to realise something.

Sure it’s cruel. Sure it hurts.

But it hurts so good.