The Video Game Rocket

With video games, there always comes a point on the interest curve where you understand the mechanics. When this happens, there are no new tricks: it will follow forward in much the same way without new skills or modes; it’ll be the same thing but different from here on out. It’s the brennschluss of media: the rocket’s run out of fuel and now it’s being carried home along its plot-arc by sheer interest.

As a kid, my father refused to buy me games because of the befalling boredom that’d come when I felt like I’d figured everything out. This is how we wound up with a mod-chip’d Playstation and spindles of games. Without the weight of the game costing anything, that rocket was free to run out of fuel as fast as it wanted. It became a game of attrition: some, like Pepsi Man, would captivate me for weeks on end. Others, like Metal Gear Solid 2, would reveal my faults as a player and cause me to run away in shame.

Super Mario Galaxy is the latest example in the mold of revealing my faults. This is why the rocket ran out of fuel after about 30 stars. I devoured the game initially because it was all brand new to me, but from the start I was absolutely frustrated by the controls because they require you to time the camera move with joystick movement. I am not good at this, just as I am not good at any song on Hard in Guitar Hero. I was bound by my own ability to function within its confines. And so it reached this point after about 30 stars where I saw what I couldn’t accomplish because I kinda suck as a player and that there was gonna be next to nothing new comin’ up–just more showdowns with Bowser and his simulacrum. I could see the cup clearly, and sticking around would only show me what liquid it would be filled with.

This doesn’t happen with every game, although it is a common occurrence. I made it through the entire story of Red Dead Redemption 2, and that took me 120 hours and nearly a year of real time. In this case, I learned all the controls but there was so much left to explore. The world itself carried the rocket as the plot moved along: I understood that it’d be “horse ride, shoot out, maybe some dynamite” for a lot of the missions, but the discovery remained in the new areas of the map and the ability to freely interact with so so much. I even started a second playthrough just because I wanted more of the world: more hunting, more berry picking, more cooking, more gambling–all the little things I set aside as I tried to get through the goddamn story.

Baseball video games get me every time too. In MLB The Show, they have a Road to the Show mode that’s basically story mode: you get drafted as a minor leaguer and work your way up to the majors and greatness through practice and in-game activity. The controls are mastered fairly quickly, but the game holds my interest because I’m a baseball obsessive.

The most recent game I finished was A Link to the Past, and it came on the heels of running out of gas with Earthbound. In the case of the latter, I just got sick of all the battles with all the enemies that you’re forced into and which absolutely suck out way too much of your HP to be ready for the next boss. It drove me nuts that I couldn’t just avoid all the snakes and evil taxis and bag ladies and moles and shit–you have to fight them, and these fights generally go the same way. When I started A Link to the Past, I thought that the fighting mechanics were the same: I’d have to fight every enemy. I quickly found out I could just avoid the shit out of them and move on with my day. At the same time, I still fully expected to give up on A Link to the Past because it was consistently beating my ass. This completed playthrough was more about finding out about emulator save points and sheer grit & tenacity. The plot was cool enough but I was straight-up determined to see the game through.

So the mileage of the rocket may vary. It’s a ballistic missile that’s sometimes short-range and at others intercontinental. But my continued play of a game definitely revolves around this point of brennschluss: it’s a turning point in a game’s playthrough that I often recognize and actively determine whether or not to plow forth.