i wrote this and then decided i could respond to an email that i was anxious about because I beat neopets the darkest faeries, and I can do anything!!!
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Please use this terrible power responsibly
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i think about searching desperately for anyone to help and every time we got stuck all i coudl find were 32948392458930 questions from people who were ALSO stuck. so many people asking āhow do i get out of the oublietteā IT WAS SO ACCURATELY NAMED
THIS LIKE PLAYS IN MY HEAD SOMETIMES. ITS SO SUBTLE BUT I CAN HEAR IT
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I feel like I always heard this quote that hideo kojima joined Konami to āmake moviesā (definitely heard it on gccx) and I was overjoyed when I finally heard the other half of the story.
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some examples of this from my favorite games:
Nirvana from Doom 2
floors 1 and 2 of Episode 6 in Wolfenstein 3D
the Thieves Guild level in Thief Gold
that one diagonally scrolling level at the end of World 5 in Mario 3
the Paris Catacombs section of Deus Ex
i also replied to the tweet saying Halls of the Damned from Doom which i think is actually a good level but is absolutely designed to frustrate and annoy. i guess maybe like Slough of Despair from Episode 3 is a more accurate answer.
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Fighting game bosses seems like a pretty universal one.
Xen in Half life
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I think in some games this spot is occupied by an out of place stealth segment or a heinous fishing minigame that gates progress
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It has no impact on my life, but I just think there are too many Trine games.
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yeah i think of it as being more this kind of thing than the obligatory frustrating boss battle. i still think there are a lot of games that could be improved by either better or no boss battles, but i sort of like the experience of some random level over the course of the game embodying the sloggy low point of the experience
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The time-limit water level in Konami NES TMNT is the example that comes to mind for āsucks in the wrong way so it lost everyoneā
When I got past it with save states I discovered the level design of the next stage is secretly fantastic. It feels vividly three-dimensional with how it has you rotate between surface stuff with vehicles, rooftop stuff with ninja ropes, and cramped sewers
(Admittedly the whole game is very difficult and has no continues, so itās a bit of a Battletoads-type situation, where if it hadnāt been the water level it wouldāve been a different one.)
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From Software poison swamps
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Blighttown actually rules when it doesnāt run like shit
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i find myself thinking about (pardon the phrase) ānintendo hardā a lot, like, the really punishing difficulty of a lot of games that gets most oft associated with NES but is effectively true for lots of 8-bit/80s stuff
i basically grew up with SNES and only really got a chance to dig into NES stuff via friendsā houses and, much later, emulation. NES games just always seemed so ridiculously difficult
they still seem difficult! ninja gaiden enemies spawning during jumps and cobra triangle missions dance in my head, the crushing defeat of losing oneās last life and being shat out on the title screen unceremoniouslyā¦
i think about this a lot. games sometimes have this, maybe letās call it a āfascination taxā. lacking sufficient humility and gratitude in oneās approach, the game may shun would-be players entirely. something about the mere existence of a machine that produced interactive light was enough to afford even some awful software lots of patience and repetition - and is that still true? - is it a domain of children? or everyone? is it tied to a moment in history, now gone? or are we fated to repeat
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as far as i can tell itās generally not true anymore, unless that thing is a) a meme and b) used to create content online. even though Dark Souls did create a whole trend of a particular type of difficult being popular, i feel like thereās not the sort of universal experience of difficulty that kids growing up with an NES had anymore. itās more opt-in or opt-out now i guess. there is still sorta of that āi have to git gud and prove my status as a true gamerā thing but itās not the āiām attempting to play this to have fun but itās really difficult!!!ā experience of the NES.
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It was funny playing Dark Souls on Switch, because once I got past the gauntlet of goons on the rickety little platforms coming from the sewers, I posted something like āI donāt see what the big deal is, this place kinda sucks but itās not that bad.ā
Finding out the older versions had all of its quirks and ran at like 10 FPSā¦I guess I get it.
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besides the ever-increasing demands on our attention since the NES heyday, I think there was a significant difference in how we approached games then and now. Games were to be played, and finishing them was a distant secondary goal, whereas now I think thereās a strong culture around completionism
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must lay eyes on all assets or money wasted!!!
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I watched you play Divinity 2 for 6 months, donāt tell me that you donāt like to see all the Content sir
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i play lots of stuff for 6 months but nothing pleases me more than thinking thereās still shit i missed!!
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Sometimes I wonder just how many quarters Iāve put into arcade cabinets in my lifetime.
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