Pain is the Game
I’ve been terrible keeping this blog updated recently but it comes down to the fact that I’ve been incredibly busy, as per usual. Launching new, complicated things at work and trying to stay on-track with various other projects, it’s been a nightmare and so this blog has fallen by the wayside.
However, it’s not all been doom and gloom.
I recently discovered Super Meat Boy and the sub-genre of games often known as ‘masocore’. Incredibly, brutally hard and unforgiving games that seem to be designed to just cause you pain and frustration more than anything else. However, it’s a healthy pain, a healthy frustration. Yes, you might be tearing your own hair out, throwing your game pad at the wall, but you’re enjoying it even as the game gorges itself on your bitter tears. From that description you might guess that the ‘maso’ in ‘masocore’ comes from masochist.
Given that I’ve been doing a fair amount of research into fetishism as part of a story I am writing (which turned out terribly during NaNo this year), I’ve developed an academic interest in that kind of thing. I enjoy psychology and understanding the mind, so not only am I getting a masochistic kick from playing these games, but I’m also getting the buzz of the introspection such feelings bring.
As stated earlier, what brought me to these games was Super Meat Boy. Super Meat Boy is a relatively simple platformer. You can run, jump and slide down walls. That’s pretty much it. The fun comes in from the fiendish level design and the general quality that all the separate elements come together. It’s an incredibly polished and silky smooth game which makes coming back to it again and again really quite easy. It also pays homage to several other indie computer games, such as Aquaria – one of my favourite all-time games, VVVVVV – which I shall be mentioning in a moment, Mighty Jill Off – which I shall be mentioning as well, and several others such as Tim from Braid and Gish – everyone’s favourite ball of tar. The story line and sense of humour is awesome throughout and appeals perfectly to me sense of humour. I mean, after all you play a boy with no skin whose girlfriend (who is made of bandages) is kidnapped by a fetus in a jar with a monocle. That sets the tone for pretty much the entire game. One of the awesome features in it is the end of level replays where the game replays every attempt you’ve made that session simultaneously on screen so you can revel in you success and failure all at once. Awesome!
Another game I’ve enjoyed a lot recently is VVVVVV. It is an awesome retro-style game in true Commodore 64 style with an absolutely awesome chiptune soundtrack. The key mechanic in VVVVVV is that you can’t jump, you can only invert gravity and then only when you are stood on a flat surface (so no hovering in mid-air by hammering the gravity button). This leads to some really interesting challenges when navigating the levels, as well as some incredibly evil levels that revel in your suffering such as this one.
After seeing it in Super Meat Boy I was intrigued by Mighty Jill Off which is essentially a sort of BDSM remake of Bomb Jack. A bit easier than the previous two, I felt, but a very fun and cute little game. 
The core mechanics here are jumping and gliding and you need to navigate your way up a tower, avoiding spikes and fire and monsters along the way. It incredibly simple, but often the best games are, though it surprisingly forgiving, I fully expected to have to start from the beginning when I died but you actually start from the last room of the tower you were in. It’s a quick pick up and play game though and is enjoyable pretty much whenever you fancy a quick challenge as it can be completed easily in 15 minutes. My first run netted me a time of 13 minutes or so.
It’s good to get back into games and these things are just what I needed. I’ve been getting increasingly disillusioned with the mainstream games industry because for the most parts, games are all too samey, focusing too much on cinematics and graphics to actually make them fun or challenging. I want to watch movies, not play them. Indie games seem to understand that a lot better. They don’t have the budget for things like that so the gameplay is what they poor their hearts and souls into it and the games are ultimately better for it. I’m fed up with a game that doesn’t feel rewarding to play, that gives no satisfaction when you complete it because it presented no challenges. Not only that, but there is a difference between hard games and games that are awkward. In Super Meat Boy it is clear that if you ever die, it is your fault. You didn’t jump quite right, you got the timing wrong, you ran instead of walking. Super Meat Boy punishes you for your own mistakes, while many other games tend to essentially cheat, giving the enemies unfair advantages that make no sense, or just make the game more awkward to play (and by virtue of that more difficult) which results not in a more challenging game, but a less enjoyable one, as you feel like you are being punished just for trying, rather than for your own inability to succeed.