Gaming Frustrations

How often have you been playing a game and become so frustrated that you wanted to toss the controller across the room or violently kick the nearest inanimate object?

Unfortunately it happens to us all for one reason or another. It might just be that the objective laid out before you is insanely difficult, you might be facing an unholy uber boss of stupidity or maybe, just maybe, the game controls are ridiculous?

Is the irony lost on us? Here we are playing a game and getting so irritated that it ceases to be fun; the entire point of a game. Is it a phenomenon among gamers that we all possess a deep hidden rage within us that can be brought to the surface by an annoying game sequence?

We all have our breaking points, our Radecs. Anyone who has played through Killzone 2 will know what I’m referring too. Remember Radec, remember your reaction to that terrible last battle? Remember how your murderous rage drowned out the men in white coats as they hauled you away? 

How about the ending to Red Faction: Guerilla? Do you remember ascending Mount Vogel like Moses up Mount Sinai? No..? Probably because Moses didn’t have to contend with the equivalent military of a small country. I mean come on they really, and I mean really, try and push you on the last part. While you’re clawing your way up that mountain you’re probably being dragged into a deep pit of despair.

Then we come to the little annoyances. Many games have quite interactive climbing abilities these days, games such as the Uncharted series or the Assassins Creed series. It’s fun climbing our way up through giant caverns or bell towers and seeing beautifully rendered scenery below us. But there’s always those really awkward jumps you have to make that really drive you nuts. It’s not the jump itself that makes it awkward though, it’s the controller. Although the joysticks on modern controllers are far better than using the older d-pads sometimes they have trouble differentiating Right from Down… sending your character flying off a guard tower like a sack of potatoes… and hitting the ground like one too. Ouch! Wait until it happens repeatedly and ouch turns into a string of nasty expletives.

Despite the numerous frustrations, great and small, that we find in various games we keep playing; why? Is it an addiction or are we simply masochists? I don’t think it’s either. With each game we’re taken to a new world, something different that escapes the boring reality of life. A little bit of mind numbing frustration isn’t going to cause us to give all that up is it?