yeah, I might like beating games, but I LOVE getting beaten by games, you know?
Like, the feeling of reaching the end of something, seeing the credits roll, seeing that super rare achievement notification flash, any of that, is so serotonin-inducing that I can’t really word it. The experience, the love, the care, the afterthought, everything. Beating a game is fantastic. It’s also one of a kind. Once you beat a game and reach its end, there’s no way to truly replicate that feeling of completion. Shoah, you can do it on a higher difficulty or with a different build or on a new save, but for you to experience the game the same way from start to finish is a once in a lifetime event. A beautiful one at that most times as well.
But like...
When a game is good and fun...
But you haven’t quite felt the click yet...
You’ve been kind of skirting by on your skills and reactions and haven’t leaned into everything the game has to offer...
AND THAT ONE LEVEL COMES ALONG. THAT ONE BOSS. THAT ONE RHYTHM SEQUENCE. THAT ONE CARNIVAL MINIGAME. THAT ONE STUPID ASS RACING PART. THEY COME ALONG TO HUMBLE YOU.
The part of a game where they go, “Hey player, you know how this game reminds you of that other game and you’ve been going off of muscle memory essentially up to this point? Well it’s time to break that down. Make some new memories. Tune your reactions differently. Crack your world view open.” Something comes over the player. Game over after game over, death after death, loss after loss. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it’s frustrating, and other times it can be straight up miserable. Those parts?
I fucking love those parts. I feel alive. I want the click to happen. I want my teeth kicked in and I want everything I’ve ever learned to not matter. I want the wall to be so high that I can’t see the top and it hurts my neck to lean back and look at it. Because I want to be shown there are new ways to play. I want to be put in a place where I have to adapt. I want to be stomped on by players that know this game so well, they don’t even see textures anymore, they just see lines of code. I want to be molded into the thing that I wasn’t at first. That way, at some point, when I beat that boss, win that race, outplay that team, when I beat this game, I can do it all over again with the next one.
I want it. I want it. I want games to beat me.