IThese are just two video games my wife has enjoyed: Mario Kart, which she has happily queued up for our entire family life, and Crash Bandicoot, of which she was, at one point, the world’s best player.
She completed every molecule of every Crash game in the ’90s. I swear I saw her get 105% in one of them, but since it’s the ’90s, I’ve filed that memory away under the “things I may have hallucinated in an altered state” category, along with Gary McAllister missing that penalty at Wembley and the band Menswear.
I’ve never been as much of a completionist as she is. For me, platformers are the biggest and most hated genre of video game, whether it’s frantic miners, plumbers, hedgehogs, Mega Man, Aladdin or Earthworm Jim. There’s just too much frustration and failure for the reward to be worth it.
In the late 90s, I considered myself too old to cry over these games, so I skipped all the Ratchets and Clanks, Jak and Daxters, and Banjo-Kazooies. did I played Super Mario Sunshine co-op with my then-five-year-old daughter. She made the levels, I made the bosses, and it was our most joyful gaming experience. I felt pride and awe watching her coach her brother through an incredibly difficult Rayman Legends level a decade later, in which they were chased by aliens while jumping on platforms so small they were invisible to my father’s naked eye. Obviously, platforming talent runs in the family. Just not on my side.
But in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (the best double entendre game ever) of 2020, my wife has met her match. She’s been trying to complete it for three eras and is currently at a measly 48% after 68 hours of play.
So I thought I would go in and show him how it’s done.
The game gives you the option of Retro mode, which takes you back to the era of proper gaming, with limited lives and banishment at the start of the level upon death. Instead, I select Modern mode, because, in the name of all the demons in hell, why would I want to go back to a time when things were even more complicated? further difficult? Sure, it’s authentically old school, but so was the mumps, Global Hypercolor T-shirts and Margaret Thatcher, and I don’t want to revive them.
My age doesn’t help. When I played video games in my teens and 20s, I was easy-going. When I played them in my 30s and 40s, I was irritable. But at 50, I’m absolutely grumpy. My family won’t get in a car with me because I get irritated by traffic, other drivers, dirty streets, useless politicians, inflation, and architecture like King Lear in a Honda Civic. But I swear platform games are designed to turn even the happiest people into an Obelisk of Irritation.
The phasing levels had the biggest impact on me. Blocks appear and disappear at the press of a button. You have to jump into the ether and then press a button to make the next block appear beneath you. Sometimes they crumble and you have to jump again, remembering to phase the next block in. It’s like walking around while trying to peel an orange in the front pocket of your jeans.
I howl, I scream, I spit swear words, more swear words, and then a combination of swear words where I run two or three at a time to level up. My wife tells me to stop: the neighbors are watching me from their gardens. So I make up completely new swear words, spitting out expletives like “fluntsel,” “gabberbast,” and a primal howl. I hate the person I quickly become.
One of the first boss levels, Stage Dive, nearly did me in. You have to jump over and under things that kill you, spin a bad guy towards the boss three times, then run forward, then climb phase blocks until you can hit him. Repeat over and over. Classic infuriating gameplay. If you persevere, though, you’ll magically enter that almost zen-like state where you fail and start over again and again, but the earlier parts become almost relaxing from their repetition. Like woodcarving. And when I finally finish it? The sense of reward feels like the last day of school before vacation.
After the newsletter promotion
Maybe that’s the lesson of platform games. Life is Difficult. Failure is It’s irritating, but if you put in the time and keep failing, you will succeed and the rewards will be a balm for future trials.
I’m soon rewarded by one of the most perfectly crafted levels of gameplay I’ve ever seen. Hook, Line and Sinker features every platforming move imaginable, on a variety of pirate ships. A reminder that imagination allied with execution is what art is all about. Alas, it’s nothing more than a fleeting moment of joy in a forest of failure. The game just gets harder. And harder. I get angrier and angrier.
My wife orders me to stop. She thinks I’m going to have a heart attack. I tell her I just have to complete this level. She sits down and very patiently points out a jumping technique I haven’t used on a block I couldn’t see. She opens up the whole level. She coaches me like I coached our kids. I’m Luke. She’s Yoda.
I complete the level. My wife breathes a sigh of relief and takes me out in the wheelchair to yell at the clouds.
