This post may contain spoilers of spoilers and nautical navigation.

Gamers are like horseflies. They’re drawn to sh*t. Just as the horsefly seeks out the stinkiest, most putrid piles of crap in which to lay their eggs, gamers seek out the most ridiculous, embarrassing topics to roll around in like a proverbial pile of mind feces, diving in headfirst as if they’re Scrooge McDuck going for an afternoon swim in his money bin.

This is nothing new to the sane gamers here, but there’s still one thing that has the power to get nearly all of us riled. It’s not dedicated servers or any other recent debate, sane or not. It’s something far more Keyser Soze, if you’ll allow me the indulgence of using a proper noun as an adjective.

It’s the plague of the spoilers, which seem to be coming like a swarm of locusts lately, filling your favorite social network with angry posts and warnings not to watch videos or use any of those Internets. But are spoilers really that bad, and why do they seem like a far more troubling problem in games than any other storytelling medium?

It’s because we’re too damn neurotic. If you want to sail the seas, but you don’t want to get wet, you’d better learn the fine art of staying below the poop deck.



Think back to the last major film spoiler that you experienced. If you’re anything like me, you can’t actually remember one. Sure, CNN spoiled an episode of House for basically the entire country, but aside from that, nothing much comes to my mind. And no one liked Kutner anyway. He’s got the expressiveness of Nicolas Cage and the likability of a radroach.

The last gaming spoiler, however, is probably much fresher in your memory. Perhaps it was even just this week. A particular level in the new Modern Warfare? Something related to Dragon Age? True story: while writing this paragraph, someone “spoiled” something for me in gchat. They seem to be an unavoidable no matter what you do. When faced with a sea of spoilers, what do we do to remain among the ignorant for as long as we want to?

The reality is that people like us can’t do much. We are part of a site that discusses videogames. A presence here mixed with an expectation of avoiding all spoilers is truly like suggesting a nice dip in the Atlantic Ocean without the expectation of getting wet. There’s no way.

Unless, of course, there is. The ancient world realized that walking took too damn much effort, and swimming was even worse, so why not build a boat? It does all of the floating and moving for you, and you stay dry up until the point that you vomit down the front of yourself.

Avoiding spoilers in gaming is much the same, only with less regurgitation. “Building a boat,” in this insanely stretched metaphor, has to do with learning to navigate and staying afloat.



The stars serve as guides for navigators even today, allowing a sea captain to know the direction that he’s heading even if no other clues are present. Similarly, gamers need to be aware of the navigational clues that will allow them to avoid spoilers if they choose to do so. Much of this is not a matter of expecting others to do the work for you. People are probably going to discuss the story in the official thread of this year’s biggest game, and if you aren’t expecting this to happen, you’re kind of a lame duck. No matter what, someone’s going to say something that you haven’t learned yet, and they may or may not realize that this could be a spoiler for you.

So, if spoilers are that atrociously damaging to your enjoyment of a game, consider how you navigate the Internet. Even sailors must deal with the occasionally wave that crashes against the hull, sending a fine mist of seawater onto the deck. You’re going to have minor things spoiled for you, and if you’re not prepared to have that happen, then maybe clicking on that gameplay video or reading that latest preview isn’t the greatest idea.

Staying afloat is simply a matter of your attitude, not letting the occasional spoiler fill your lungs and deprive you of oxygen. It’s a matter of attitude here; not every spoiler needs to be fuel for your nerd rage. I recently made a satirical Twitter post about how upset I was about learning the massive “spoiler” contained in this whole Modern Warfare 2 terrorist debate. And you know what? People thought I was 100% serious.

It speaks to just how overboard people go when it comes to spoilers. Unlike films, we considering settings, weapons, character appearances, and the most minor of game design elements to be spoilers. We wouldn’t get angry at a trailer for Iron Man II because it shows Iron Man in a public restroom, would we? Then why get pissed when a game reveals a new level in a game? I acknowledge that there’s a sense of wanting the game to be totally fresh, but there’s an even larger disconnect here in that games involve interactivity, whereas movies do not. Even if we see a gameplay video of a new level, we don’t have the experience of playing it yet. We have no idea what that’s going to be like unless we sit through the whole thing, which would just be stupid.



For instance, did anyone get pissed at Uncharted 2 for revealing the falling train section so early? If you ask me, it’s the most thrilling part of the game (which the developers seemed to realize since they make you play the damn thing twice), yet it’s also present everywhere in the coverage of the game—even on magazine covers. Oh, spoilers, by the way.

The benefit we gamers have is that we get to experience something in a way that’s deeper than just the look of a film or the plot contained in a book. We may learn that Drake dies at the end of Uncharted 2 (he doesn’t, it’s just a spoiler-free example of a spoiler, which is totally anti-meta), and, yes, this would suck a bit. But we also have an entire game to play through before this event—plenty more to learn, and many reasons to become attached to this character that we’ve inhabited for however many hours. How much, then, is the impact of this changed by the fact that we know it’s coming? Somewhat, I concede, but it’s not the enjoyment-ruining work of the devil himself that some make it out to be.

So, should we start throwing spoilers around like water chestnuts in a cheap Chinese restaurant’s poor excuse for moo goo gai pan*? Absolutely not. The desire to avoid spoilers is a good thing, as anything that could potentially increase a person’s enjoyment of a game is a worthy pursuit indeed. But I think a paradigm shift in the way that we react to those inevitable spoilers would do us a lot of good. It may not be easy, and we may still want to rage a little, but over time, we might be able to learn to accept spoilers when they do happen, and simply avoid them whenever possible.

*this is the most ridiculous comparison I have ever made.

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!

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

The nightmare continues. What, you thought that it was over? Unfortunately, this is not the case, as status effects are nearly as numerous as the hitpoints of a high-level Final Fantasy character. I don’t want to talk about all of them, as some of them actually make sense. But where’s the fun in that? It’s not the JRPG way, man!

So, instead, let’s take a look at some of the other bizarre, nonsensical, and pointless status effects from the world of RPGs. Is it going to be a fair and accommodating look at them? No. No it is not.


Curse



Voodoo shit. Execration (not excretion). Hexing (not Hexen). The fine art of cursing is something that we’ve probably all tried at some point. That dick stole my money in the lunchroom, so I’m going to recite a curse that will cause his head to be replaced by his ass while he sleeps. They never work, unfortunately, not even with the use of a voodoo doll or an elaborate ritual site crafted in the luggage closet.

However, the world of Final Fantasy does not play by our rules. In fact, a curse is a very dangerous thing to even the greatest of heroes, as a curse spells certain doom for someone who does not act to nullify this terrible affliction. How so? Well...that’s the tricky part. Sometimes, it kills you after a certain number of turns.

Or it makes you unable to use special attacks.

Or it lowers your stats until it is cured.

Or it just up and fucks your whole party with poison, disease, confuse, and sap.

Seriously, can’t someone standardize this shit? I mean, calling it “curse” is pretty damn vague anyway. How about “Bullshit?” It’s far more representative of the actual spell, especially for the last one.

Honestly, what the fuck kind of shit is poison, disease, confuse, and sap all at the same time? For everyone in the party! It basically means that you’re going to slowly lose health in three different ways, and cast random shit on your fellow party members. Good god.

No matter the particular version of curse, it can die in a fire, which would probably be more effective than trying in vain to get one of your characters to heal it.

Confusion



As long as we’re on the subject of stuff that makes no sense, let’s have a chat about confusion. The basic concept behind a confusion status is that a character’s brain got rewired temporarily, and he’s no longer able to tell who is a friend and who is an enemy. He’ll often respond to this with plenty of sword swipes, fire spells, and sometimes even beat the shit out of himself.

Holy hell, where to begin.

First off, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a JRPG enemy, but let’s have a quick look at this guy:



FUCK. OK, now let’s have a lookie here:



What is enemy? I do not know! How do I tell? Is it the one that I most want to have sex with? Hmm, still can’t decide!

Not stupid enough for you? OK, how about this? When you get confused about something, what’s generally your instinctual response? To attack the thing nearest to you? Or to, I don’t know, maybe take a step back for a second, reevaluate the situation, maybe have a nap? I typically don’t get cast-happy when I’m confused, but maybe that’s just me.

I also don’t start cutting myself with a sword. Is this some sort of psychological doppelganger response here? Oh god, I’m confused! I think that perhaps this enemy has replaced the real me with an evil twin, and to defeat this evil, I must defeat myself! I suppose it isn’t that farfetched considering how often you have to fight an evil shadow version of yourself in JRPGs. But, come on man, in that case you don’t actually have to try to light yourself on fire!

How do you cure confusion? In a way that’s more likely to cause confusion than anything: by smacking the afflicted character in the face.

Here’s what the game assumes:

Party member 1: “Oh no, I’m confused! Better start punching myself in the crotch!”
Party member 2: “I’ll save you!” *smacks party member 1 in the crotch*
Party member 1: “My eyes have been opened! You are a gentleman and a scholar.”

Here’s what the situation would really be like.

Party member 1: “Oh no, I’m confused! Better start punching myself in the crotch!”
Party member 2: “I’ll save you!” *smacks party member 1 in the crotch*
Party member 1: “What have you done to my fucking crotch? You’ll die by my hand, you evil bastard!”

The best part of confusion is that you lose all control of your character, which is awesome when your healer gets confused and you happened to be all about of panacea bottles. It’s even better when your whole party gets confused and you get to watch some ultra-violent version of The Three Stooges play out in front of you. Dammit Curly, stop spamming firega.

Stop



Remember playing “Red Light/Green Light” as a kid? When someone yelled “red light,” you had to freeze in place; if you moved, you were out. You could only move when the leader yelled “green light.”

Stop, otherwise known as temporal stasis (I guess), is very similar. Someone yells stop, and you stop. You can’t move, attack, use items, or do anything. You just stand there.

“Oh, you mean like paralysis?” you say. Yes, just like that, except that it doesn’t make any sense! No matter how you understand stop, it’s total bollocks.

Let’s say that it’s just as simple as someone stopping because they’re servile and they were told to, just as in “Red Light/Green Light.” Maybe they just really like that game, and they couldn’t really get over it as a kid. Either way, as their friends die around them, you’d think that they’d say, “Hey, maybe I could recite a healing spell under my breath and still win the game!”

If temporal stasis is more to your liking, you’re going to be disappointed. Temporal stasis means that a person experiences no passage of time, even though the passage of time continues around him. To him, massive amounts of time would pass in an instant. Now, to achieve stasis, the actual space around that person would have to be affected, as would anything that entered that temporal field. So, let’s say a jackass tries to swing a sword at the stopped character. Nope. Impossible, because as soon as that sword enters the temporal stasis field, it would be subject to the same rules as the person in stasis. No movement would be possible, not even that of inertia, so a sword stroke that began outside of the stasis field would still stop instantly.

Also, my scientific logic is as impenetrable as my conception of a stasis field, so step off.

And with that, friends, the prosecution rests. There is nothing left for me to say about status effects, and I hope you’ll agree that we should cast petrify on those little bastards.

But the fun isn’t over yet. This is but part two of three in this series of happy fun. Part three will be a great time, of this I am sure. What could it be, you ask? Well, I’ve talked about all of this existing status effects that I hate…but what about new status effects? A new star is born every day, right? Let’s give birth to some stars, baby.

Gross.