falling back into the old addiction

[egypturnash]

ultraken mentioned getting Psychonauts for his PC this past weekend and having a lot of fun playing it. He got it via Steam for twenty bucks. Rik has Steam and a machine capable of it, and I haven't played anything like this in about a year. I happen to have picked up a USB controller for MAME purposes the day before Ken talked about the game, too.

So I got it. A day later, after it downloaded, I stayed up late playing it, and then spent all today playing it. Literally. I didn't even get up off my ass to go out to the store to get a new bottle of Diet Coke until Rik came home and wanted his machine back. I got out of bed and booted it up, I got up to pee a few times. That's it for today. Good thing I don't have any paying deadlines, though this is getting me no closer to doing Bucket O Blood in time for a Halloween release. (1/4 boarded, ship designs being pondered. Hints of gags evolving from chance things filling in these mostly full-page boards.)

I think I'm about halfway through it; I got stuck for a while on the very creepy world inside the paranoid conspiracy nut's head. It started to get to me before I finally got through it. It's a really well-done game - and it's clearly made by cartoonists. Moreso than pretty much any 3D platformer I can remember playing, it's a world that's clearly designed. Everything is weird and off-kilter and stylized. But pretty.

Some self-destructive part of me has been wanting to get a used PS2 for, well, a fix of pretty much just this kind of game. With the price of the controller I got, I'm only out forty bucks and a few days, instead of however much a used PS2 costs now plus a game and a TV and a much greater chance of impulsing on another week of my life down the drain every few months... instead I'm getting my fix this way.

Story-based platform bouncy games still just eat my fucking head in a way that I'm really not comfortable with.

I wonder if this is what drives some people into making games: the knowledge that they can so easily lose themselves in one, and wanting to short-circuit that by losing themselves in their own world instead of someone else's?

Comments

[grrrowly.livejournal.com]

Psychonauts is an amazing game. ♥

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's certainly well-loved. Watching Rik play it this evening, I saw him triggering conversations I completely missed, in my different path through the first few levels. it does a nice job of parodying 'bright kid completely failing to fit in' experiences; damn near every corner is polished. "Huh," I thought, climbing the tower in Lungfishopolis. "That's the first time I've actually noticed pixels in a texture."

It's just that the combination of well-done narrative and reflex loops keys into my brain in a really obsessive way, that I'm less and less comfortable with as the years go on. I still like the experience when I'm having it, but I just get stuck in it.

This is why I will never, ever, ever join a MMORPG. The procession of new goals is never-ending, and I'd get stuck on the addiction treadmill.

[eriscontrol.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Sort of. But it even drives me to keep playing a game after I decide that I don't like it.

I thankfully managed not to get too addicted to World of Warcraft on that 14-day trial disc I had. For a while I kept grinding out of what I can only describe as a deep feeling of necessity, but I ended up ditching the game for good long before the trial period ended. I hate that game.

[grrrowly.livejournal.com]

Ditto on the MMORPG thing. I also have somewhat of an obsessive personality, though not as bad as when I was a kid.