Baroque

Crumbling...

Baroque taunted me. I was mocked, ridiculed, and generally made to feel like an idiot for the entire time I played it. After around an hour or two, I started to hear its sneering, contemptuous voice whispering in my ear:

"Exactly how pathetic, boring and stupid are you? Can you really not find anything better to do with your time than hack and slash your way through me, with my predictable enemies, predictable dungeons and unpredictable camera? Remember reading those previews and thinking I could be interesting? Ha! What a fool you were for ever thinking I might entertain you.

"But how about that rare special item you've just picked up? It's gone a long way toward speeding up your progress through my bland repetitive levels, hasn't it? In fact, you're almost starting to enjoy yourself, aren't you? But here's the thing. As you get deeper down into my dungeon, the enemies will get stronger, your health bar will continue to tick down, and inevitably you will die. Then I'll take away that powerful special weapon. Along with the rest of your items! And just to be sure I've crushed any sense of progression you might have had, I'm going to reset your character to level one as well!

"But I know you think you're pretty good at hack and slash games. You've been interested in the genre ever since Rogue in the 1980s, and reckon you might be good enough to avoid death. Well bad luck, you deluded idiot. You have to die for me to reveal any plot to you. And let's face it, my almost-interesting story is the only reason I'm ever going to give you for continuing to sit there like a button-pressing zombie who's completely forgotten what it means to have fun.

"Do you like the way I don't allow you to lock onto an enemy until it's right under your nose? Isn't that just ingeniously infuriating? Combined with the clumsy camera controls and the way enemies keep sneaking up behind you, you're in for some of the most infuriating hours of grind you may have ever experienced. I really hope you feel completely demoralised by the way I've ignored all the important progress that's been made in the action-adventure genre over the last ten years. I want you to despair at the state of modern videogames, and when I'm finished with you, you'll be disgusted that something this turgid, repetitive and dull can still get released in 2008.

"But what's really getting to you is that I'm not so far off being a decent game. A little bit of you wants to love me. Within the mediocrity and repetition I'll occasionally give you a glimpse of an intriguing and original idea. But let's face it, no matter how hard you try, I do the little things so badly that you'll never be able to forgive me.

"Let's take my dungeon map for example. You would have thought that my designers would place it in one corner of the screen, to help you keep your bearings as you wander through my identikit brown and grey corridors. But why do that? It's much more annoying to force you to choose between no map at all, or have it superimposed across the entire screen in a way that's totally distracting; so naturally that's what they decided to do. Yep, that's right. I guess they must have wanted to wear you down, and see if they could take you to the point where you refuse to play another videogame for the rest of your life.

"But don't throw your Wii remote out the window just yet. It'll be a few more hours before my repetitive nature completely ruins you, and before then you might even think I'm atmospheric. You have to admit that limited though I am; I've probably got one of the more unique post-apocalyptic worlds you've played in. And before you get bored of seeing the same designs over and over again, you might like the weird and twisted look of some of my enemies and dungeons.

"And what the heck, if you're post-modernly inclined, you might eventually see me as a masterpiece! Do I make you feel frustrated, confused and bewildered? Brilliant! That's exactly how your character feels. Normally it would be bad game design to leave the player unsure of what they're trying to do, but what I'm doing is creating an emotional link between avatar and player like few games do. Can't you see? You've related so closely to the insane, amnesia-and-guilt-ridden protagonist that you're now imagining a videogame talking to you!

"No? You think post-modernism is boring and pretentious? Oh dear. So you're not going to forgive my videogaming sins in the name of artistic expression? Ah. Okay.

"How about you cut me some slack because you're so starved of decent RPGs on the Wii? No? You'd rather play Twilight Princess for the 11th time than continue to suffer the joyless ride I'm offering? I suppose that makes sense.

"So you're saying I'm just a couple of interesting ideas, lost in ancient, tired game mechanics? And there's nothing I can say to change that? I see."

And so then, with forty long and irretrievable hours of my life behind me, I pressed the Wii eject button on Baroque for the final time. What relief! I promise you, pushing one little white button has never felt so good.

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By Rob Foster