There’s this kid I used to know. Pretty decent guy all around, to be honest with you. But looking back on him, his flaws become more apparent, and perhaps none are so noticeable than those related to his gaming.

See, many of his choices were spotty at best. He spent two years on World of Warcraft, enjoying his time immensely but ignoring nearly every other game that came out during that period. He would choose a game like NFL Street over Beyond Good and Evil. Worst of all, he would take lengthy breaks from gaming altogether, playing little to nothing at all besides random games already in his collection—some old, many bad.

Worst of all, he missed out on the great offerings on entire consoles. It’s hard to say exactly why: perhaps out of financial necessity, perhaps out of a misplaced and nonsensical sense of loyalty, and perhaps some combination of these. But the reason is unimportant, as the sad fact is that he deprived himself of great things.

Let this kid serve as a warning to you all, for this misled youth was me, and I’m still paying the price today for his past transgressions.




There are plenty of reasons that people have dreamed of going back in time, but I bet few of you would do so in order to change your gaming habits. Yet, thinking of the differences between the player that you are today and he or she who inhabited your growing body many years ago, how many glaring and sometimes disappointing disparities can you see? For me, there are many—some that I alluded to above, and others that I might not even be able to identify.

For instance, I never finished Final Fantasy VII. In fact, I purchased it on release date or very near it, and played only about five hours before moving on to something else. I never played Final Fantasy VIII or Final Fantasy IX. I got to the final boss of Final Fantasy X and never completed the game. And don’t even get me started on previous Final Fantasy games.

The even younger version of me played seemingly only the worst games of the SNES/Genesis era. Earthbound meant nothing to me until about four years ago. Super Metroid was a game that I knew about, but had no interest in. Super Mario RPG was not even a thought in my mind. Even Chrono Trigger is a game that, to this day, I have not played a single moment of.

My problems extended into the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 eras. I give them that designation because, to me, that’s what they were. I never wanted a Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Dreamcast, Saturn, Xbox, or any other console that you could dream up. I played Sony consoles exclusively. Early on, I don’t know what the justification for this was, but over time, I fell into the same traps that so many people suffer. There are no good games on other consoles. Sony does it better than everyone else. I don't care about anything else.

Yet even on those console, my history is filled with failure. I purchased fantastic games only to never finish them. I ignored great games in favor of poor ones. I went years without purchasing anything new at all, finding myself consumed by World of Warcraft. What I missed out on during this time is staggering to think of.

It’s very possible that at least one of the admissions above has made you cringe in disgust and pity. But why? It’s because many of these games are those that you have to play. It’s a sense of obligation, and one that I most definitely feel.

That’s where the me of the present comes in.



Obligation is a terrible feeling for the working man. A 40-hour workweek coupled with various real-life obligations leave, even for someone like me, less time than I’d like for gaming. Yet, as someone who wants to feel like he has played the best that the world of videogames has to offer, I feel a deep sense of obligation toward those games that I missed out on. I have to play The Wind Waker. Ignoring it is not an option; if greatness exists, then I must experience it.

But it goes deeper than obligation. I know I’ll enjoy the hell out of these games. It’s not a matter of biting into a chocolate-covered grasshopper just to say that I did, as if it’ll enter me into some esteemed society of the hardcore. The obligation I feel is to myself, to end my self-inflicted depravation.

There is, of course, a problem: all of those pesky new games that keep coming out. Yes, with three pretty good consoles going right now, as well as a couple of handheld consoles that I try in vain to keep up with, time is a precious commodity even for those without a backlog. Yet mine grows daily, rolling ever on like a katamari of awesome, becoming larger and larger until it threatens to consume everything around me. Yet I must ignore this all simply to keep up with the greatness of today.

And it can all be blamed on that little bastard from my past: he who was ignorant to all that is awesome, he who lacked the fortitude to finish what he started, he who placed me in the impossible situation that I face today.

But this is not a post to lament the size of my backlog. Not exactly. See, a backlog is something that we all experience at some point. It’s impossible to avoid. My current situation, however, is very different. I am paying for the idiocy of my past self, and no matter what I do, I’ll never be able to truly repair the damage that he caused. Unless I find myself suddenly afflicted with the “lottery winner” status, I fear that I’ll never have the time to experience all that I know I should have experienced.

It’s deflating, quite frankly. And in the face of tine’s continual movement forward, I’m helpless to do anything about it.



And so we reach the warning—the true aim of this post. It’s with an overabundance of sentiment that I deliver this warning to you, and though I struggle to find the words that will express the true gravity of my feelings, I hope they ring true.

Do not, dear friends, let yourselves become like me. Don’t lead yourselves into a pit that you cannot escape. You may not think you're doing any damage now, but you will live to regret your actions or lack thereof. You will wish that you could go back and do it all again.

Yes, sometimes, experiencing all that is great is impossible. Financially, I can’t play everything that I want to, nor do I have the time to do so. It’s extremely likely that you’re in a similar situation. College was a busy time, and it’s no surprise that I didn’t play so many games. I do not blame my former self for this, and nor should you blame your current or former selves for circumstances out of your control.

But as I wrote above, many of the games that I missed were needlessly avoided for one reason or another. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to finish a game, instead moving on to the new flavor of the week despite that fact that it was a piece of trash. Perhaps I was blinded by a pointless devotion to a certain console, and told myself that The Wind Waker must not be any good if it’s only being released on the inferior Gamecube.

Even if you don’t have the means to afford every console, don’t let yourself fall into a cycle of insulting other exclusives and bolstering those on your own console. We cannot help what consoles we can afford, but we can help what we do with that fact—whether we wield it as a sharp, angry sword or keep it in its place above the mantel. The same goes for games: don’t deprive yourself of something great simply because you have some strange loyalty to a competing game.

Simply put, don’t find ways to avoid playing something great. You will regret it when your self-made barriers disappear and you’re left wondering why you didn’t make the most of your time while you still had enough of it.

Thank you for calling the Review Score Crisis Helpline. For English, press 1. For Nerdrage, press 2.

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If you have recently read a bad review of a game that you have an irrationally strong emotional connection to, please press 1.

If you are a console fanboy upset by the high score of a game on another console, please press 2.

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[ding] We understand that you have recently read a bad review of a game that you have an irrationally strong emotional connection to. We are very sorry to hear about your situation, and we promise to get you through this tough time. In fact, you may consider yourself very lucky: if you have selected this option, you have yet to do something unwise about your situation. We're here to make sure that you never do.

First, close your eyes and count to ten. When you open your eyes, envision all of the things that caused you to have this emotional connection to this game. Unless you worked on the game personally, you should see nothing at all. Good! You're on your first step to getting over your irrational emotional connection.

There may be some lingering emotional feelings. This is perfectly natural, and it's nothing to be alarmed about. However, you want to get rid of those feelings as soon as possible. We recommend ending the call and visiting your local game store. There, you may procure a copy of the game for yourself, play it, and form an intelligent opinion. This may take some practice, but once you master it, you'll find that the bad review can't hurt you inside anymore.

[ding] We understand that you are a console fanboy upset by the high score of a game on another console. This is a serious problem, so please stay on the line.

You may be a young player. This is OK. Some of us grow up much earlier than others, and if you're still thinking these dark thoughts, it doesn't mean that your life can't be saved. But it won't be easy. A young person cannot grow into a mature gamer overnight, but there are many steps that you can take to get over yourself.

First, bear in mind that you are not being subtle. Your minor jabs here and there do not go unnoticed by your preferred gaming community, and your overall angry demeanor is quite visible. Denying that you have a problem will only make that problem more apparent to onlookers. Acceptance is the first step in your recovery.

Once you have acknowledged your problem, your recovery process will be accelerated tenfold. Yet there is even more for you to do. Seek out the assistance of friends and family. They may have recognized your problem long before you did, and friends tend to be affected terribly by your fanboyism. They'll be waiting with open, glowing disc slots to help you get over your condition.

If you require additional help immediately, please schedule an appointment with one of our trained Fanboyism Extraction Specialists. Please note that your recovery may involve playing games for enjoyment and learning to use strange, foreign controllers.



[ding] We understand that you are thinking of leaving an angry comment regarding a recent review. We are glad that you have sought help before making this tragic decision. Please keep your hands off the keyboard until we have had an opportunity to talk you through this difficult time.

You may be thinking that leaving an angry comment will solve all of your problems, and that it will make your dark feelings go away. But such a rash action will not solve anything. It will not make the pain go away, for the pain is not contained in the review. It is in your heart. You are broken.

But there is hope! You can rid yourself of the darkness in your heart if you try. Reading a bad review doesn't have to bring your inner demons to the surface. If you fight them--if you fight the urge to post that scathing comment--you can eventually defeat them. The darkness in your heart will disappear, and you'll be able to contentedly accept opinions that differ from your own. Stay strong! You can do this!

[ding] We understand that you are thinking of writing an angry blog in response to a recent review. You may want to consider using the nearest firearm on your computer case as a preventative measure. You're about to make the biggest mistake of your life.

What would your family think? Imagine if your father were to walk in on you as you were writing an angry response. You'd try to hide your screen in shame, but he would know. It would change you both forever. Shame would fill your eyes at the very sight of him. Word would spread to the rest of your family, and your friends, and soon, you would be known as "that guy" all across the Internet.

Don't be that guy. The best way to not be thought of as a gaming invalid is to not do something stupid. So close that browser window and begin your rehabilitation.

[ding] We understand that you are angry about a review score but have not read a word of the text. You are unlikely to listen to any of the advice recorded onto this service, so we will now play soothing music with subliminal mental encouragement in the hopes that you might learn what all of those crazy symbols on those websites mean, and how enriching they might be to your life.

Listen, and let the music change you. You are better than rash reactions to numbers.

[ding] We understand that you have sworn off a website based on a review score. We're sorry to inform you that there's little that we can do for you. An agent will be by to confiscate your cable or DSL modem shortly. Since you'll likely end up swearing off every other site, we might as well make it easy on you. If your threats were hollow, perhaps you should not have cried wolf.



[ding] We understand that you are experiencing number meaning confusion. Numbers, like words, are very hard, and this is nothing to be ashamed of. Luckily, you only have ten of these cryptic symbols to learn, so let's get started right away.

Though you may be surprised to hear this, there are, in fact, more numbers than simply 7, 8, 9, and 10. Yes, truly! This opens up a whole new world, as no longer do you have to regard a seven as the lowest possible score in the rating spectrum.

Indeed, numbers start at 1, or zero, depending on the particular site. Those numbers are very bad numbers. Even two, three, and four could be considered quite bad by most people. You should learn to keep these numbers in your mind at all times. If you do not see these numbers before you, the horror that they suggest shouldn't enter your mind. Soon, those sevens and eights won't seem so terrible to you anymore!

Better yet, you can learn to acknowledge those crazy words that accompany the numbers. This may not be easy at first, as it is so much easier for your brain to understand those simple numeric characters. But imagine the possibilities of a life with words! Don't let numbers become your prison. Break free, and frolic in a meadow of philological bliss.

We are glad that you called the Review Score Crisis Helpline in your time of crisis. Have a nice day.

Much has been said about how much Uncharted 2 does right. The Destructoid review offers a ton of praise for the game, especially its ability to offer thrilling moment after thrilling moment, keeping your adrenaline pumping and your controller gripped tightly in your hands. These moments are truly excellent.

Yet this excellence, for me, proves to also be one of the more disappointing things about Uncharted 2; not the excellence itself, but the moments in which the game doesn’t offer the same level of quality as its high points. Indeed, Uncharted 2 seems torn between the incredible scripted thrills that it offers a couple of times per level, and the same tired, poorly done shooting that leaves the player feeling unsatisfied.

I’m not here to review Uncharted 2 for you, but rather to look at a specific issue that the game brings up—how excellence ends up making something “good” feel simply mediocre. I’ll be discussing specific scenes from the game, just to warn you.



It’s my feeling that the majority of the incredible moments in Uncharted 2 are made so excellent largely due to how they look; they’re visual wonders, taking our breath away much like the view from a snowy mountaintop does.

Take the example of the opening train sequence: one that contains so many incredible scripted events that, as Nick suggest in his review, it instantly propels itself above the somewhat lacking “adventure” films of recent memory. You instantly feel as if you’re participating in a truly grand adventure.

Much of this feeling is due to the visuals, both technically, artistically, and what I’ll call “situationally” for lack of a better word. It’s fairly apparent that Uncharted 2 is an incredible game visually, and these three elements combine to make it leaps and bounds above other recent games.

First off, the screenshots of this game show of just what the team was able to pull of technically. Whether the characters are inside or outside, everything looks incredible. Textures are fantastic, characters move fluidly (for the most part), and environments look impressive.

Similarly, the artistic side of the game is quite extraordinary. Dilapidated cities have the look and feel of real dwellings, and old temples, despite having seemingly been built with Drake and his jumping ability in mind, have some incredible designs. But perhaps the most effective artistic choices are related to camera angles and movements, giving the game a far more cinematic feel than any game before it.



When you’re in control of your character, the camera is in constant movement, especially during those heavily scripted events I’ve referred to before. But let’s take a simple example of squeezing through a crack in the landscape. This is necessary a few times during the game, and while it’s an incredibly basic and, frankly, meaningless action, Naughty Dog has managed to make it look exciting simply through the use of camera movement. As Drake approaches the crack, the camera sweeps extremely close to Drake, showing both him and the crevice itself in extreme detail. You can see every body movement required of Drake as he squeezes through, and you even share in the feeling of contorting your body to pass through the crack.

But what’s most important to the overall quality of Uncharted 2 are the situational visuals that pop up in scripted events, and they’re the things that make an event like the opening train climb so thrilling. To offer an example, the struggle of climbing the hanging train car ends just as the rest of the train is falling off of the cliff, and Drake must make a last-second jump from the falling car to the cliff. If the scene sounds incredible, you’d be right, and the best part is that you’re in full control throughout, from rushing past the seats as the angle of the car rapidly approaches vertical to the last-second jump.

The visual details here are the main source of excitement. Chunks of rock and snow fall as the car slips closer and closer to its inevitable plummet, sparks fly as metal grinds on metal, and the camera remains in constant motion, getting closer to, getting farther away from, and sweeping around Drake. Even as Drake’s grip on the cliff slips, and control is finally taken from the player, the sequence remains completely gripping. The camera lags behind Drake’s movement, making it appear that he has fallen from the cliff.

These are the moments that define Uncharted 2, yet they are, for the most part, moments that last for no more than, well, a moment. Put together, their sum provides one of the most compelling experiences this year, but not all is well in Naughty Dog’s well-crafted world.



The core mechanics of the game—what remains when all of the incredible visual qualities are stripped away—are far less compelling. In essence, the game mixes jumping and climbing with cover-based gun battles, very similarly to the way that the previous entry in the series did. Is there anything inherently wrong with this? No.

But the fact of the matter is that those levels in which you’re simply progressing from point A to point B, jumping over and shooting anything in your path, pale in comparison to those heavily scripted events like the one described above. Your average firefight against the game’s bullet-sponge enemies simply doesn’t elicit the same excitement.

But in my disappointment over the regular jumping and shooting, I realized something: there’s nothing bad about them. Plenty of other games, like Borderlands, have bullet-sponge enemies. Prince of Persia made nearly an entire game out of jumping, and I thought it was great. So what’s the problem here?

The excellence of parts of the game was making much of it feel quite a bit worse to me. It’s something, as the title suggests, that I started to think of as the burden of excellence. If you’re going to make some sections of your game so unforgettably awesome, you must also be prepared for how it will affect the rest of your game. Here, unfortunately, I feel that it’s a negative effect. Parts of the game that are simply good seem mediocre or even poor simply because our expectations are raised so high.

Of course, I don’t want to suggest that Uncharted 2 fucked up by being so damn awesome. I still consider it to be a fantastic game, and among the best this year. But it does show us the danger of putting so much into a certain part, section, or aspect of a game. In this case, impressing the player with visuals—whether they’re technical, artistic, or situational—takes precedence over the actual gameplay mechanics, and if you ask me, the game suffers somewhat because of it, even if the game doesn’t necessarily do anything “bad.” Good enough isn’t good enough when it’s paired with pure excellence.

OK, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.

But take a short trip with me into the past. A Mega Man poster hangs on a young boy’s largely undecorated walls, situated directly above a television to which an NES is connected. Inside the slot is a game called Home Alone, inspired by the Macaulay Culkin film of the same name. For weeks, this boy has been toiling away, repeatedly being caught by the Wet Bandits despite his best efforts. Completion of this game seems impossible.

In fact, he dreams one night of completing the game. He keeps one eye on the game’s timer as it expires, while the other watches for a last-second Wet Bandit ambush that never comes. Before he knows it, he has beaten the game. Dollar signs light up the screen as if he has won the jackpot at a casino. Victorious music plays, and he halfway anticipates a suited gentleman jumping out of the screen just to shake his hand and celebrate his triumph. Instead, he awakes with the dim light of morning flooding through his window, and the still uncompleted Home Alone waiting in his NES.

Only the truly difficult games can make a young boy dream of their completion. So, just what was it about Home Alone that made it so difficult? Well…I’ll take a shot in the dark here, but it might be the fact that it was inconceivably terrible. And the best part? It was developed by Bethesda Softworks. Yes, that Bethesda.




Home Alone was released for the NES in November of 1991. The basic premise of the game was the same as the movie: you’re a kid who was accidentally left at home by his parents, and you’re being chased by some home intruders. It’s up to you to remain in the house and fuck with the intruders rather than go seek help like a rational person.

I suppose it makes a bit of sense, as the police are slated to arrive 20 minutes after you start the game. The game actually has a twenty-minute timer that constantly counts down, and the sole aim is to stay uncaught for twenty minutes. That’s it. In essence, it’s a game that lasts for twenty minutes, at least in a perfect world. For those twenty minutes, however, you’re on your own against two dudes who walk really damn fast.

The game gives you plenty of tools with which to fend off the two bandits, including boxes with Christmas ornaments on them, boxes with light bulbs on them, and boxes with paint cans on them. Yes, you pick up these little symbols, and you set them down again. This temporarily incapacitates the bandits, giving you a chance to put some distance between you and them. And by incapacitate, I mean that they appear to melt into perfectly square bundles of limbs. It’s one of the most bizarre animations that I think I’ve ever seen. As a side note, the design and animation of the main character, Kevin, makes him look like he’s constantly riding an invisible bike. Occasinally, he’ll refuse to turn around when you want him too, and he’ll instead just backpedal. It looks like he’s fucking moonwalking. That is not a widely accepted method of avoiding home invaders, but I appreciate the creativity, Bethesda.



You also have a few hiding places in which you can take refuge. You can hide inside the Christmas tree, which is completely inconspicuous since your head sticks out the whole time. Yet the Wet Bandits will walk right by you…but only a total of two times. See, they’re only fooled twice by each of the game’s eight hiding spots, so once you’ve used them up, they become useless, and you’ll get nabbed if they walk by you. It might not sound like a big deal, but in twenty minutes, you’ll want to use hiding spots a lot more than that.

You also have the whole house that you can run through, including a pretty large basement, a tree house, and the outdoor area directly in front of the house. The various sections of the house are connected in a variety of ways that sort of make sense. You have staircases of course, which are surprisingly difficult to actually get the character to employ successfully. The front porch steps are especially great, as despite their rather large surface area, Kevin seems able to only use an extremely small portion of that area, and if you attempt to ask him to do anything differently, he’ll just stand there. If he does manage to mount the stairs, he walks up them at a speed that would make an amputee frustrated. Stairs is hard…



The main section of Kevin’s home and the tree house happen to be connected by a line that Kevin can climb across, which is a model of responsible parenting. Seriously, it’s a two-story fall, and it’s as if they thought, “Hey, we might as well train Kevin to be on Ninja Warrior one day!” Then again, I suppose Home Alone is one big critique of the modern family and its hands-off approach to parenting. Or it might just be a way to cash in on a cute little kid. Whatever.

So, what makes all of this nonsense so difficult? Well, if you can get past the punishing boredom of essentially running around in circles for twenty minutes straight, you’re presented with the harsh reality that you’ll be doing this for much, much more than just twenty minutes. See, there are no checkpoints in this game, and no forgiveness. If you happen to last for nineteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds, only to be caught, then it’s game over. You’ll start the game again with twenty minutes remaining.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t so infuriatingly easy to get caught. Little Kevin must suffer from some sort of degenerative leg disorder, because not only does he run like some sort of gremlin, he also does it far more slowly than the Wet Bandits. So, if one of those assholes is on your tail, you’re screwed unless you have an item handy.

Even worse is the inability to see where the two bandits are until they’re right on top of you. If you’re heading in one direction, and one of them comes at you from the other direction, you’ll be caught in a matter of milliseconds. The number of times that you’ll be running from one bandit only to have the other one appear directly in front of you is enough to make you want to kill a child. A specific child, but a child nonetheless.



So, just what level of difficulty will you experience in this game? Well, I’ll be impressed when I find a single person who finished this game on the NES. None of this emulator, save state crap that pervades YouTube. If you try to do this right, you will lose. This is not a game that you will beat. It will beat you. Most of the time, I was captured within two minutes. Two freaking minutes. Those times that I did manage to last about ten minutes were perhaps worse, because I knew that all that progress was immediately made meaningless.

It’s hard to know just what to say about a game like it. People still play it and post videos on YouTube, likely just to make the recurring nightmares from their childhood cease. It’s an absolutely terrible game, surpassed only by its sequel, Home Alone 2. If ever there were a game that I could call a waste of time, this is it.

You’ve been telling yourself to stay away from that latest gameplay video even as you’re clicking through the post and staring at the screen as the video buffers. The rise in your hype level is palpable as the sound thunders from your speakers, and you sit in your orthopedic chair wondering why you can’t just play the game now, why it can’t be here when you want it. You immediately regret your decision to watch the video.

Finally, the day of the game’s release comes, and you purchase it on your lunch break knowing full well that you cannot play until the evening. You tear the game free from its packaging and stare at it like it’s the first videogame you have ever owned. A sense of pride washes over you even as you set the game down and return to work, where you waste the company’s money for your remaining four paid hours.

That night, you forget to eat dinner. An hour of play turns into six, and you groan quietly as you finally look toward the clock and realize that work starts in a short five hours. You resolve to sell some items and quit. Two hours later, you finally turn your console off and stumble into bed.

That night, you dream that you’re playing. You wake up disappointed and consider calling in sick to work. Your conscience gets the better of you. The level of your uselessness at work approaches the caliber of Peter Gibbons, and you realize a startling fact: you are consumed, and you’re helpless to stop it.




We have all been there to some extent. Games have a definite power to draw us in and refuse to let go, consuming our time despite our efforts to fight against it. But is it simply the high quality of a game that leads to the consuming of our lives, or is it something beyond that. To me, not all high-quality games possess this. Instead, there are a variety of independent qualities that affect whether a game can suck us in or not, and they act in rather different ways upon us, even if the result is the same.

There are two recent games that have consumed me in very different ways: Demon’s Souls and Borderlands.

Demon’s Souls, as many have said, is not an easy game. You may disagree about the level to which it is difficult, but it is, without a doubt, a game that will kill you often. It’s the sort of game that is liable to make you go crazy if you don’t take a break from it fairly often.

So how is it that, despite my desire to take frequent breaks, I can never force the game from my mind?

You may have read other blogs about this game discussing the strategizing that goes on in your head even after you’ve put the game down for the night. Well, all of these blogs are 100% accurate. Demon’s Souls is the sort of game that requires your complete attention; in fact, perhaps it is more correct to call this a demanding game than a difficult one, though I do believe that both apply. However you decide to categorize it, one thing is completely clear: if you are not constantly thinking, you will die. This is not a game that allows you to turn your brain off and have some mindless fun. It will punish your lack of attention with ample doses of frustration.

But once your brain is switched on, it is extremely difficult to switch it off, even after your PS3’s light has dimmed. It consumes your thoughts, and even as you have vowed to stop playing for the night, you will invariably come back to it, sometimes far sooner than you have planned. Somehow, it manages to be the only game that I’ve ever experience that you find extremely difficult to put down even as you’re consistently threatening to give up on it completely.

So, what is the source of the game’s consuming power? It’s not the difficulty itself, but rather how the difficulty interacts with you. Some games (Brutal Legend on brutal difficulty, for instance) offer a brand of difficulty that doesn’t do much in the way of sparking your mental powers. It’s a difficulty that is made so artificially. The game was programmed with one difficulty in mind – a normal difficulty – and both the easy and brutal difficulties do not represent the true experience of the game, the one that the game itself suggests is the true difficulty.

Therefore, the difficulty leads most often to frustration. The game is made to feel more difficult than it needs to be, and you wonder why you chose that difficulty at all. It seems like mindless self-violence inflicted upon you simply because you thought that a tougher setting might be enjoyable. A slider that make you die more easily and your enemies die more difficultly is not difficulty.

Demon’s Souls is difficult because you, as an in-game character, are rather easy to kill. One solid thrust of a spear is quite enough to kill you in many instances, and these thrusts often come out of the shadows when you least expect them, leading to more deaths than you might be willing to admit.

But in this case, it is the only game experience. You aren’t able to make the game easier, giving yourself more health and your enemies less. There’s no easy way out. If you are dying too much, and you want to find a way out, it is up to you and you alone to find a way to progress.



But the main quality here that will lead to you being consumed – the one that so many reviews have mentioned – is that when you die, you know that it is your fault. Sure, the camera has occasionally led me to get killed, and the hit detection has been a little shaky a few times, but in the majority of cases, I have died because I did something stupid. “Hey, is that gigantic dragon asleep? Let’s find out!”

While other games make you frustrated at the game, Demon’s Souls makes you frustrated at yourself, and it is this frustration that keeps you moving forward. After all, we all want to believe that we can achieve difficult things if all of the required tools are presented to us. Indeed, Demon’s Souls does this. There is no challenge in this game that is insurmountable if your actions are chosen very carefully and executed flawlessly. If you fail, it is because something went awry either in your planning or execution. Perhaps you didn’t realize that a room would have three magic users rather than two, and you were killed. Next time, you know that you must plan ahead to tackle all three casters at once.

The idea of “next time” is absolutely central to the game ability to suck you in. Whenever you die, you immediately begin to think of what you can do differently next time, and, before you know it, you are consumed by your desire to plan and act out your next brilliant strategy. So, you plan, you execute, and you succeed. The feeling is inimitable – the great feeling of accomplishment, one that, in a demanding game such as this one, is intoxicating. So you play again until the next time you fail, and you begin strategizing once again in your head. It is an endless cycle, and one that does, without a doubt, consume you.

So, what’s the one unifying quality that makes Demon’s Souls so engrossing? Accomplishment. It a brand of accomplishment that isn’t gained by unlocking achievements, beating games on artificially difficult settings, or winning an online game of Madden (though human to human interaction does provide a very interesting concept of difficulty). This is true difficulty, the kind that is incredibly rewarding. Perhaps the fact that it is so rare in games is what makes Demon’s Souls such a consuming experience. We can only hope that we begin to see it more.



Borderlands is a very, very different game. It isn’t the sort of game that you would call difficult, especially not in the same manner that Demon’s Souls is. Yet there’s no doubt that it has a similar power to consume your thoughts and free time. I have already had far too many nights where I have told myself that I was ready to quit, only to continue playing for hours and hours.

For the very few of you who might not know, Borderlands tosses you into a world of loot, guns, ammo, and plenty of badasses to hunt down and kill, all seen from a first-person perspective. It has been considered Diablo with guns, and while this title is only partially accurate, it serves at least as a decent introduction, and it does prepare players to be consumed in a similar way to what Diablo did to us so many years ago.

But accomplishment isn’t what gave Diablo its consuming power, nor is it what gives Borderlands its own power. It would be easy to suggest that it is pursuit of loot that makes it so hard to put the game down, but I think that’s selling the game short. After all, while I enjoyed Sacred 2, I never felt as consumed by the game as I do by Borderlands. Something else more powerful is in play here.

I think the source of Borderlands’ consuming power is progression. Now, all games have progression to some extent – you progress through a story, through tiers of fighters, and so on. What Borderlands does differently is give you many, many things to progress through all at once. You have a main story to progress through, a variety of side missions, character statistics, weapon proficiency levels, a large set of specific challenges, skill trees…the list goes on and on. There’s just so damn much to progress through that you always have something on your mind that you want to do next.



Again, the idea of “next time” reappears, but it’s very different in this game. Rather than thinking ahead to next time in order to plan out a new strategy, your thoughts of the future will be how you can next progress. Maybe you’re ever-so-close to that next level, and you want to hit it before you go to bed for the night. You get your level, but now you see a chest off in the distance, so you decide to run over to it quickly before you go to bed. You find an amazing sniper rifle, but your skill level is a little low, so you decide to pop off some enemies before bed to get your skill up. Before long, hours have passed and you still have so much left that you want to do.

So, Borderlands succeeds in being an engrossing game because it always gives you something to focus on to allow yourself to progress. You’re never at a loss for meaningful things to do, at least up until that nasty level cap. But while it lasts, Borderlands will grab you, and it won’t let go.

So, these are obviously two very different games, and they go about grabbing hold of the player in very different ways. But the one thing that connects them is that they put the thought into the player’s head of “what’s next.” All games should do this, whether it’s with an incredibly engrossing story, a fantastic character progression system, a rewarding sense of difficulty, or any other quality at all that contributes to this feeling.

Any developer needs to approach the creation of a game with this idea in mind. It can’t just be something as simple as “Well, this waypoint will tell players where to go next!” That’s not at all what I mean. It needs to be a desire created in the player to know what’s next, and that desire needs to be strong enough to compel a player to either continue playing or to constantly thinking about playing next. It is what makes a game great, and what makes it memorable.

For part one of this three-part status effect miniseries, head over to this post, Status effects are poisons that turn my silent heart to stone. For part 2, head over to Curse you, status effects, stop confusing my heart.

The walls have ears, and I know what you’ve been saying. “Ohh, if you hate status effects so much, I’d like to see you do better!” you said in your best Scottish accent. Bagpipes played softly in the distance.

Well, I’m here to take up this challenge in my best Armenian accent. To you I say “Bring it on!” Let’s do this thing.

But wait. There’s a voice from the darkness. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” it says in a stunning Ethiopian accent. Impressive! I didn’t even know what that sounded like. A figure emerges from behind the curtain…

…it’s walkyourpath! His stern glare burns holes of creativity in my soul, and I know what I must do. It’s time for a tagteam.

So sit back, relax, and keep your panacea bottle handy, because we’re about to bust some mad status effects all over the place.



Trollbait: The trollbait status causes all of the affected character's actions to be replaced by random idiotic statements, inciting rage within the party. All other party members may attack the affected character until he is incapacitated or until the status is cured by item "forum beatdown." All characters with intelligence stats above level 12 are immune to this status.

Toxic Megacolon: This status may be inflicted upon a player character through various infectious bites or attacks. This terrible medical condition causes the affected character's colon to become highly enlarged and the blood to become toxic, rendering the character ineffective in battle. If not cured quickly, toxic megacolon may cause poison in other party members as the floodgates open. This status can only be cured at a town hospital.

Noodly Appendages: A character afflicted with noodly appendages loses all muscular control of his or her arms and legs, causing an inability to move in battle and a severe reduction in damage. However, the character is still able to counterattack melee damage by flopping about, though this damage is extremely low. Item Viagoro can instantly cure this status, but may have unwanted side effects. Characters are advised to seek medical help for an erection lasting longer than four hours.

Roidrage: This status is automatically put into effect if a single character uses three or more attack stat buff items in a single battle. This causes the character to increase all stats by one for one turn as euphoria kicks in. On the character's next turn, the character will begin to attack with reckless abandon, extending to trees, rocks and other background objects. The character may also attack fellow party members. After five turns, the character will commit suicide. Item "Bobby McFerrin's Panpipes" has a 50% chance of curing this status.

Puberty: This status has a random chance of affecting younger party members and causes a variety of negative effects. As the affected party member's voice cracks, spells that rely on vocal recitation have a 50% chance of failing. The affected party member may randomly become enamored with party members or enemies of the opposite sex, causing them not to attack. A character with "puberty" may also randomly acquire the "fapping" status, which stops all battle actions until item "nude portrait of Carrot Top" is used. If two party members of the opposite sex are afflicted with "puberty" simultaneously, both have a random chance to get the "experimentation" status, causing them to disappear from battle for no more than two minutes. They will then acquire the "embarrassment" status, causing them to fight in different rows of the formation for five turns.



Bleeding Heart: Affected party becomes a monster-rights activist and will interpose himself between the monster and any attacking characters, absorbing all damage dealt. The affected party will also throw a red dye potion at any party member wearing leather armor or bear-skin items. The affected character may also summon celebrities to assist them. Any healing items containing monster meat or other substances made from monsters will be ineffective.

Gender Confusion: Androgynous characters may receive this status when item "mirror" is used upon them. This status causes the affected character to attack himself/herself for the remainder of the battle. This is an incurable status in any game in which the status applies and will remain in effect until the end of the game.

Papercut: Player only receives this status from damage equaling 1hp. Affected character takes no action until a healing item is used on him. Character's moral is lowered until the end of the battle. Status also has a chance to inflict fear and sadness.

Identity Crisis: This status can only be acquired if spell "Severe Concussion" is used upon the character. As soon as this status is inflicted, the character will immediately be transported out of battle and a popular character from another videogame will take his place in battle. This character will have a personalized skill set based upon the game that he or she comes from. Others members of the party can cure this status either by using "Freud's Herb" or by attacking the character's head with a lightning spell.

Gump: The gump status is afflicted randomly upon party members. If gump is active upon one character in the party, the entire group will be unable to flee from battle until the status is cured. It does not disappear over time, and can only be cured if "leg braces" is equipped on the affected character. The character also has a random percentage chance to replace the selected action with the special skill "Life is like a box of chocolates," causing the character to cast a random spell.

Babydaddy: This status affects only male characters and can be acquired at any time. Upon receiving this status, the affected character begins to slowly lose energy points, and money begins to be deducted from the party's wallet. Using item "paternity test" has a chance to cure this status. This chance is calculated based on the character's charisma and luck stats.

Apathy: Upon being afflicted with this status effect, the character ceases to be interested in combat. If the character is attacked, any counterattack will be replaced with a shrug and a sigh. Character's theme music will change to an emo song, and any equipped armor will be temporarily replaced with a Hot Topic t-shirt.



Passive-Aggressive: With the Passive-Aggressive status, an affected character is unable to directly inflict damage on their enemy, and may only cast status effect spells in response. The spells Guilt Trip, Poor Me, Backhanded Compliment, and Undermining Gossip all double in duration and potency for the player.

Impotence: When stricken with impotence, the character's equipped weapon becomes malleable and noodle-like. If attacking, the character will inflict no damage, and immediately apologize to the enemy. "This has never happened to me before." will become a dialogue option in conversations. Player can remove this effect using the Powdered Bull Horn item.

Fanboy: The affected character is restricted to one type of attack and one weapon to the exclusion of all others for the duration of the battle. Any attempt to swap out the characters attack or equipment will result in character being afflicted with the Nerd Rage status effect as well.

Severe Allergies: Any character under this status effect will be unable to use plant-based healing items for the remainder of the battle. Any use of herbal HP items will result in sneezing for 3 turns. Player may use the item Benadryl to remove this effect, but at the cost of halving their action speed and losing all initiative rolls.

. . .But What Am I?: An enemy may cast this status effect spell once they are under 25% of their original HP. Player's HP/SP are changed to the enemy's. Players may negate this effect with the use of the Snappy Comeback skill.

PAX Plague: Any player affected with PAX Plague will immediately lose the ability to take all actions other than feverishly sweating and clutching their swag items. Character will gain immunity from item theft. Unless the character is removed from battle, all remaining party members will also receive this status effect the following turn.

Ahh, so much to fear. The world of RPGs is truly a terrifying one. But the horror doesn’t need to stop at the end of this post! Indeed, I have created a forum thread for the status effect party to continue forever! (Doing so here in the comments of this blog would be too difficult due to the lack of bumping ability.)

Please join the party! Invent status effects funnier than the world has ever imagined!