“Cor, what I like and what I hate about perseverance
Ooh, what I’d give and what I’d take for perseverance”
Perseverance. Aside from the cool song by Terrorvision it’s not really my thing. Struggling on with something against all the odds? I couldn’t really see myself making the effort. Ask my friends if they can name one thing that I’ve made the effort to keep pushing on with despite all the odds and they’ll probably reference the time I tried to squeeze an extra two weeks out of my wardrobe without going to the university launderette.
I think the main reason I’m not an Achievement whore on 360 (or Trophy Trollop on PS3) is the simple fact that some of those Achievements really do live up to their names. They are frankly epic achievements (note no capitalisation), that you could stand up and be well and truly proud of. That’s not me though. I play for fun. When the fun stops, so do I. I make like a tree and leave. Or make like a banana and split.
A cursory glimpse through my gaming collection reveals scores of games that I’ve gotten right to the end of, found a bit hard and just given up on. Not enjoying it? Not playing it. That’s how I am.
A lot of people, of course, are not like me. Even a glimpse at the Ready Up gamerscore chart shows one or two of our writers who have more than just a passing interest in accumulating points. *cough*Jake!*cough*.
The reason I am mentioning this today is the fact that all the time I have been writing this, and indeed for quite some time before, I have been listening to the first 33% of Raining Blood by Slayer, on loop. Which is very annoying. Add to that the fact that it is constantly accompanied by swearing and the frantic clacking of a Guitar Hero controller being battered into submission and you’ll see where I’m going with this.
My partner is trying to beat the song. It’s the last song on the Hard level. She can’t do it. From watching for an hour, I don’t genuinely think she ever will. Personally, I would have quit about 55 minutes ago.
As a partnership, I’m the gamer and she is the casual one; hence she plays games like Guitar Hero, Viva Piñata and Sim City. Yet oddly she is the one who gets totally and utterly hooked on these games. She’ll play for five hours non-stop on Sim City or Viva Piñata. I expect if I didn’t stop her tonight she’d keep trying to beat this shit-sounding song until the small hours. Or at least until her wrists splinter with a billion fractures.
The trouble is, she’s not enjoying herself. She’s admitted to me many times that after about 5 hours on a game, she’s just playing it to try and make progress, and no longer enjoying it. Her ambition to not be beaten by a game forces her to play on and on way past the point of enjoyment, and I think that’s a shame.
So maybe I’m lacking in ambition, or a bit of a wimp for bailing out when the going gets tough – but I can tell you one thing for sure; when I play games, I enjoy it!
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