It's 10 at night. It's been a quiet day; I'm jobless for the time being, my friends are all busy during winter break, and I'm stuck home again. But it's not a normal night.

"NO!" I scream. "WHY??? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?" Tears welled up in my eyes. Violence ensues in my household, and when it's all said and done, I find myself unconscious on the floor.

[b]My name is Phoenix Gamma, and I'm in an abusive relationship...

...with Contra 4.[/b]

I don't get mad very often. Granted, that's what everyone with an anger problem says, but I myself am actually very passive. So it's rare that a video game actually frustrates me. But usually when I throw my 9-year old temper tantrum, it's for good reason. Tonight I played Persona 3 for about an hour, and died on 4 occasions. I made ZERO PROGRESS. I tossed my controller on the couch and tried to think happy thoughts.

But when I play Contra 4, I find myself pretty upset. Not to the exaggerated degree seen in my second paragraph (try beating the final special stage of Sonic Triple Trouble. I nearly snapped my Game Gear in half) but if it pokes the wrong buttons long enough, I'll turn on the DS and find something else to do.

And that's when I realized something: I'm NOT having fun. And yet, I keep going back to it. My girlfriends tell me to stop, that he's just going to hurt me again, but something pulls me back. It's not a BAD game, but that just might be me trying to convince myself that I still need Contra 4.

I've ended abusive game relationships before; my last abusive lover was Mario Hoops 3 on 3. And I'm not the only one. But this was the first game that I actually broke. Like in the Penny Arcade strip, I had to take on the infamous Final Fantasy team: a Ninja that warped around and set you on fire, a Black Mage with all sorts of bogus spells, and a bullshit White Mage. ANY LEAD YOU GET IN THAT GAME CAN BE LOST IN ONE SHOT. I was winning by a landslide, and with 3 seconds left, the enemy stole the ball and got enough points to beat me.

I tore out the game from my DS and whipped it at my TV at mach speed. It split in three.

"WHAT was THAT?!" My confused roommate said, sitting two feet from me. I picked up the pieces and UHU glued the card back together. I returned it to the store and got Final Fantasy III DS instead.

But the other problem is that I am the Goldylocks in the Nursery Gaming World: either it's too easy or too hard. For every Contra 4, there's a Zelda: Twilight Princess. Nothing is ever "just right", and it's driving me bonkers.

Part of the problem is that game designers will make things too complicated (or downright impossible) for the player. In one part of Contra 4, you need to balance jumping from wire to wire, shooting flying enemies that grab you and carry you around, shooting enemies on the aforementioned wires, and shooting enemies on the ground. One Hit And Your Dead Rule is in effect. That's absurd and downright unfair.

Meanwhile, in Twilight Princess, I find myself doing the same old thing I've been doing for 20 years; light the torches, push the blocks on the switches, shoot every eyeball...remember when these puzzles were totally revolutionary and new? The bosses were even more pathetic. "HI! HERE'S MY WEAKPOINT! PLZ DUN HIT MEH!" Hell, I seem to remember quite vividly Midna grabbing Ganon, the King of Evil, by the face and slamming him into the ground.

Recently, I've been playing the Bleach game on the DS. I'm not that big of a fan of the anime; I think it was great up until they took the longest field trip ever when they visited the Soul Society for a couple of years. But I LOVE Treasure, and I like fighters, so I gave it a shot. Problem was that the game's standards for combos is just plain unfair; if even half of a second goes by between attacks, the counter resets. This makes Challenge Mode, a mode in which you're given a million different attacks to string together in one "combo" nearly impossible. You'll do a Special A, and you'll hit immediately with a Super B move, and it'll seem instantaneous, but if there was even a smidgen of a gap, the combo's broken, and you have to start all over. And it's bullshit. I'm not God, and the game shouldn't expect me to be. I feel horrible for people who aren't even used to fighters; they'll never make it out alive. Compare Melty Blood to Bleach; use Ciel's double quarter circle foward C special and she throws 29 knifes at spaced intervals of 3 or 4. There's a gap between each interval, particularly between the last two, but the game counts it as a 29 hit combo. But those gaps would never fly in Bleach. Every move needs to be instantaneous.

When a game's too hard, you feel like you're being cheated (hello, beloved NES). When a game is too easy, it feels like a chore, doing mundane tasks that don't stimulate you. I'm not sure what exactly causes developers to miss the mark; maybe they need more playtesters. Maybe they need to retool the game's engine. Maybe the level structure is broken.

One thing is for sure: broken difficulty shows a disregard to the gamer. Because if SEGA gave a shit about me, they'd make the homing attack WORK and the level design consist of something other than thin floating platforms above an abyss. If Square gave a shit about me, Kingdom Hearts II wouldn't be me hammering the X button all day and I'd do something DIFFERENT for a change. But everytime I get ripped off, everytime I fall asleep while playing, I feel abandoned, cheated out of $30-$60. It's not fair.

But it's not hopeless.

Back in October, I got the Orange Box. Having never played a retail PC game, I was in for a treat. Half-Life 2's difficulty is absolutely perfect; the developers knew how much ammo I'd deplete, how many hits I'd take, and when I needed a recharge. Ammo and Health packs were right where I wanted them, and right when I needed them. Each skirmish was so well placed, so balanced. My adrenaline was pumping; I was at risk of dieing, but I had the skills to survive. Nothing bogus would pop out at me, and the enemies put up a good fight. I was challenged, but not over or underchallenged.

For the first time in a long time, I felt like the developers cared about me. I felt like, hey, these guys know how I'd act and react, and they made the experience as fun as possible. These "Valve" guys are alright.

And I played Portal. They worked the environment to point me in the right direction, looking up and down when needed, but never put a giant red arrow that said "GO HERE" (hiya Perfect Dark Zero). The gameplay was so flexable that I could create my own hodgepodge solutions to puzzles.

And then Team Fortress 2 showed me that online multiplayer can be, LE GASP, fair! No one is overpowered? Anyone can take on anyone with the right skills? TEAMWORK?!

Maybe I'm spoiled. I've played a lot of amazing games. They can't all be winners, no, but once a bar is set, others need to surpass it. That's really the nature of the industry these days. But while you can dress up your game, have all sorts of pretty songs and characters, if you don't take the player into consideration, your game will just drive others away.

I'm going to give Contra 4 one last shot. But if it breaks my heart again, I'm NOT deleting it from my NOT R4. Them's the breaks.