Irish Coffee July 18th, 2012

Another day, another warm up post. As I'm now going to make this a regular thing, I've decided to call it Irish Coffee. Partly because the word whiskey is in the title of this blog, but mostly because I've got a pretty serious problem with alcohol.

I have two Grand Theft Auto IV saves that I load at least once a month. Both exist after the completion of the main story line and in both I’m completely stacked with cash. They do, however, differ in loadout. In save one, I’m in the pimpest of apartments with a complete array of weaponry. Two super cars idle outside. This is a save I load for friends who want to go on a  quick rampage over beers before we head out on a Friday night. Save two is my personal save. Nico is in his stock immigrant gear and has a shitty car parked in front of an apartment that I’d like to imagine is filled with lice and smells like bum urine. We’ll call this my connoisseur save. My personal stash.

When I load the connoisseur save, the goal varies in execution, but usually goes something like this: I exit the apartment onto a dark street, and get into a car that I would like imagine smells as much like bum urine as the inside of Nico’s apartment. As I slowly and legally make my way through the darkened streets of Liberty City, I call on one of Nico’s friends to meet him at a bar. To make sure he’s sharpened up for a bit of ultraviolence. Then it’s off to the gun store. I take the long way and listen to chill tunes.

After arriving at the gun store, it's time to shop. One of everything. Ten of some things. Hundreds of others. Then I calmly drive to the Ferrari dealership. Inevitably, it’s closed. No matter, now I have guns. I fire through the window and a woman shrieks as she escapes into the darkness. Having gained access, all I have to do is pick a color. Tonight it’s blue, but it’s usually black. Then I drive a luxury car through a plate-glass window.

Three stars. Right off the bat. Within a block the police are on me, but in this car I’ll lose them in ten blocks. That’s not how this night is to go. I need to park and let them know that if they manage to live through the night,  they’ll be telling their grandkids about the ensuing events.

I’d rather not fuck my car up for now. I’m going to need some breathing room. As their sirens fade into the night, I make a hard right and look for a shady place to park. It needs to be out of the way. The action’s going to happen in the middle of the street and there will be explosions. Ferrari’s hate explosions. Accessibility is also a necessity, as is a quick escape route. I find an alley that stretches for two blocks. It will do nicely.

I exit the car and walk into the middle of the street with my eye down the gun barrel just in time for the first and least lucky patrol car of the evening to come screeching around the corner. My first clip goes into his tires. He skids to a stop. The next clip rips through the windows of the car, killing both cops inside before they have a chance to get out. My grenade goes off just in time to detonate the gas tank as the next two cars come around the corner. The last telephone pole for a hundred yards falls on the burning rubble with an audible plink as I reload.

The cops keep coming, and I keep shooting, reloading. Four stars. It starts to get a bit heavy once SWAT shows up. I switch to a rocket launcher to clear the air. Just in time. A police helicopter sounds overhead, and I take it out as it banks for a clear shot at me. More SWAT now, and my position has become untenable. I lob one more grenade at an incoming SWAT van as I run away. I don’t care if it hits. Before it lands I’m half a block away, back on a my assault rifle, and in the door of my idling supercar.

A straight shot for two blocks down a narrow alley. I lose a headlight on the side of a dumpster while I try to switch to grenades. When I exit the opposite end of the alley, fresh cops have already spawned in front of me. I fishtail to avoid them, hoping all the while that I can get up to speed before the grenade I just dropped decides to detonate. 

I do. The cops can’t manage it.

Five stars now and the airport seems like the only reasonable option. As I hit the bridge I spot a roadblock. Car’s already showing some damage. Might as well speed up.

I catch a small gap in the roadblock and lose a fender. Not a big deal, but it slows me down and gives the FBI’s overpowered sedans a brief advantage. I switch to an MP5 and spin the car backwards, firing out of the window. I manage to catch a couple of tires, but the MP5s not cutting it. I switch back to grenades and j-turn as I leave the FBI their present. It hits. Their cars are crippled and on fire. Six stars. I’m not going to make it to the airport, but I shall lead the military on a merry chase.

Then I die in an alley that I'd like to imagine smells like bum urine.

As a gamer, at around the time I drop that last grenade my hands have started to sweat and I’ve leaned so far forward on my couch that I might as well have furnished my apartment with plastic kindergarden chairs. It’s not because GTA is the best game ever, or even my favorite game. It’s because of the investment. That if - in this case, when - I die, that’s it. I spend an hour of my life setting Nico up for his little rampage, knowing that this process will make me more involved with Nico's inevitable battle to the death. It's quite likely that I won’t turn GTA on for another month. I could load a save, but I never do. I’ve been sending Nico on rampages through Liberty City for quite a while now and once a month tends to slake my thirst these days.

But more than any of that: I like the fear. I like knowing that this is it. Even if it’s a self-imposed thing, I miss that visceral sense of consequence for fucking up in a video game. Like fighting the final boss of Ninja Gaiden with no continues and half of a life bar, knowing full well that I'm probably going to lose and that when I do, I’ll have a long road to hoe if I plan on trying again. Not many games offer than anymore. I know, Dark Souls, but the gameplay’s wooden and everybody knows it. The fear of loss is tempered by the nagging thought that my loss won’t be directly tied to my control, as Dark Souls (like many games) makes me feel more like I’m operating a prize crane in a grocery store than effecting any real control over the character on-screen.

I don’t find the fear in online gaming. I find frustration, sure. Nervousness bordering on panic. But no fear. No fear of consequence. I just respawn and get back to the business of getting my ass kicked while teenagers and grown men take turns calling me a fag. Then I turn off Battlefield 3.

Offline I have just as much difficulty finding the old school fear, often times having to resort to my own set of rules in order to create a gameplay experience that’s just the right combination of consequence and difficulty. The first time I fall off of a cliff in Uncharted, I wince, the second time I grumble, and the third time I giggle as Drake bounces off the rocks like a rag doll because I’ve stopped giving a shit. 

After noticing this phenomenon I stopped using autosaves. Which can be a fairly epic pain in the ass when a game insists on auto-loading every time I die. And having to access the pause menu so I can force the game to punish me for sucking kind of kills the immersion.

I’m not suggesting that video games aren’t difficult enough, or that I’m some kind of sadist that can't enjoy them unless they punish me like Ving Rhames in a gimp suit.  I just can’t help but think that games lost a little bit of a flavor when they completely removed consequence from failure.

I grew up poor. Wah. Not the point. Video games were a luxury. Needless to say my PS1 and copy Resident Evil 2 are sporting some pretty serious city miles. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a memory card and my mother couldn’t afford one until my birthday (which fell a whopping 5 months after Christmas). My only choice was to play through RE2 without a memory card. Which I managed. Then I managed to do it quickly. Frustrating? Sure. (My first PS1 controller rocked both electrical and duct tape.) But I got pretty fucking good at Resident Evil 2.  I can still get from Leon’s A game spawn to the gun shop with my eyes shut. Seriously.  I operate on the sounds of his boots hitting the pavement and the gaps in that sound when the camera angle shifts. What?

(To this day, when I play RE2, I try not to save. If I do, I only allow myself one [usually before the encounter with Birkin on the tram].)

I propose a simple solution to this problem that would also make truly difficult games more accessible to the average player. In the options menu, allow the player to set up a specific number of retries and continues. That simple. Checkpoint restart until you run out of retries, and level a more severe punishment for using a whole continue. Even if it’s not rigged in such a way that I can select a specific number of saves and continues, at least include it as a toggle option. I don’t want to play an impossibly difficult video game, I just want my death to have some consequence. It makes already immersive video games that much more engaging.

Just a thought.