It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I’ve finally had to abandon a game on the Backlog Bingo board. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, nor is it anything I even open myself up to when playing through a game, but sooner or later I have to stop and ask myself if it’s worth it. I don’t make any money from this. I don’t have a reputation as a guy who beats all the super-hard games. I’m old. I’ve been playing video games for almost forty years now, and I no longer have the energy or willpower to torture myself with shit like this.
I debated on whether or not to do a Rant-astic article over The Messenger rather than the Backlog Bingo, but Rant-astic works better when my emotions are high and my blood is pumping, and I’ve already had a good 24 hours to get over this decision. At the same time, the decision was made with a quiet resolution anyway, not a rage filled tantrum (which is usually what sparks a Rant-astic).
Anyways, I played a pretty good chunk of The Messenger. It’s a faux-retro style platformer similar to the old Ninja Gaiden. Now, I usually avoid these faux-retro games like the plague, for a couple of reasons. One, because they’re usually stupid hard, and two, because I spent my entire childhood dreaming of the day when games didn’t look like that. I don’t need new retro games, I already lived them. Here’s the thing about retro games; they live off nostalgia. I still play Galaga, not because it’s an amazing game (even though it is) but because that game takes me back to being a kid playing in the bowling alley arcade on a Thursday morning. If I came up to a Galaga arcade cabinet at my current age and didn’t have that connection, I would probably play it for a few minutes, then move on and never think of it again. So to me, faux-retro always comes off as disingenuous, trying to tap into a part of my brain it has no business having access to.
Imagine The Messenger knocking on the door my brain. The door opens, and TMNT Arcade sticks its head out and asks, “The fuck are YOU doing here?” That’s pretty much how I feel.
But… every once in a while… I’ll give one of these games a chance. This time around it was The Messenger. I was intrigued, so I played it for a bit, and it kinda grew on me.
If there’s one thing these faux-retro games have over our true retro titles, it’s that they run significantly better than those old games from back in the day. As well they should. If I’m playing a game that looks like an NES game on my 6-teraflop console, it better run like a damn wet dream. This buttery-smooth control is what gets you in the door, right before the difficulty takes a ball peen hammer to your nutsack.
Seriously. I don’t know why all of these games have to have the difficulty jacked through the roof. That’s not retro. Yes, a ton of our old games were hard as shit, but not because they were brilliantly designed. Those games here hard because the developers didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. Level-design was barely a thing because levels were barely a thing. I don’t remember which game it was that had the first horizontally and vertically scrolling levels, but that was a fucking revelation at the time. If you look at some of the best and most fondly remembered video games from that era, only a handful of them were balls-hard. Games like Battletoads were fucking stupid, and people think back on them fondly because of the nostalgia, but in reality only a small, small percentage of us actually beat that shit. I didn’t. I could barely get past the speedbike tunnel. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is a loving fan-favorite, and it had infamously bad level design.
Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Zelda… these games were beatable. They weren’t a cakewalk, but they were beatable. Contra could be beaten with three lives.
The Messenger snuck up on me because it has a pretty generous learning curve. The game starts out pretty easy (as opposed to most games of this genre that kick you in the nuts right off the bat) and I played a great deal into it.
But then I reached a stage in the clouds where I had to fight a dragon. This boss battle with the dragon takes place on a cloud, and the dragon attacks literally remove your available real estate as your fighting. It’s a bitch of a boss fight, and it took me many, many tries to defeat it. But defeat it I did, finally. Yet I didn’t feel good about it. I didn’t feel elation, I felt relief. I was so mentally and emotionally exhausted that I didn’t even celebrate my victory.
I continued to play, and the game’s consistently placed checkpoints made the platforming challenges manageable. I never felt any hesitation in trying something daring because a checkpoint was only one or two screens away. Which makes it all the more a shame that a single bossfight was enough to make me walk away. I enjoyed the level design for the most part, and it was enough to keep me going.
The boss fight with a red demon that flies around the screen and throws fire on the ground is where I finally drew the line. At first I accepted the challenge. The flying dragon was a bitch, but I overcame it. I attempted the boss fight many, many times. I kept telling myself I had to get better, I had to get faster. Then, finally, at one point I told myself this, and then I asked myself, “Why?” Why did I have to get better? Why did I have to play this boss fight over and over and over, to the point of just being angry and frustrated? I knew how I would feel. I’d feel the same way after the dragon battle. It was at that point I realized it just isn’t worth it. I have way too many other games to play to waste my time and energy on something like this.
I know what some of you are probably saying: “Get gud.”
Let me reply to that, nice and clear. Fuck off. There are a wide range of people out there, with a wide range of skill, time to invest, and dedication. “Get gud” is a stupid elitist attitude that’s dismissive of all three of those aspects. Not everyone has the time to “get gud” and not everyone cares to. I’m getting older. My reflexes aren’t what they used to be. I have a bazillion other things on my mind and a shit ton of real life things to do. If I can’t get past a certain a part on a game after a certain number of tries, then it’s not worth my time. Plain and simple. I probably could beat that boss if I really, really wanted to. I could try 200 times and beat him on the 201st. It’s always a possibility. But I don’t really want to. I just don’t care that much.
That’s all there is to it.
