![]() You might remember part of level 5 of Castlevania where you can push an axe-throwing knight off the screen, which is easier than trying to kill him. In any difficult platformer (and I can't name a satisfying easy platformer), you will encounter a group of obstacles that seem impossible to overcome you will invent a plan, or trick, to handle each of these individual obstacles in turn you will learn to execute this plan perfectly you will feel very good when it finally works. Memorization isn't often a glamorous activity, but it's one of gaming's essential pleasures. Cavanagh removes every complication, every concern beyond the task at hand, leaving only a test of memory and performance. VVVVVVV's memory challenge is harder than Mega Man's (I know because I just replayed the Quick Man stage, piece of cake) but it also isolates the hard section by installing a checkpoint right at the base of it Mega Man 2's killer sequence arrives in the middle of a level full of other difficulties. This famously difficult setpiece could be avoided if players had acquired the Time Stop ability, but where was the fun in that? Players had to commit the sequence of platforms below to memory to scramble off them in time to avoid the beams. In player input, the challenge resembles outracing the Quick Man lasers in Mega Man 2, which also required a precise, memorized series of left and right taps from the player, who evaded death beams by falling as they emerged from the sides of the screen. ![]() You learn the exact amount of pressure to apply on the Left arrow when exiting Vidi to place yourself in the center of the narrow path between Vici!'s walls of spikes. Completing the sequence seems impossible at first, but as you fall through these screens you learn them literally forward and backwards you find yourself getting just a bit farther, miraculously, with most attempts. You only need to press the left and right keys, and the action key, once, in the 6th room, at the peak/nadir of your jump/fall. You come untethered from a checkpoint for probably the longest period anywhere in the game. The 6th screen (Getting Here Is Half the Fun) lets you rest on a dissolving platform for about half a second before you head all the way back down. The only thing to do, then, is fall up, speeding through 6 screens bristling with spikes, flashing by quickly enough that the lurid solid colors conspire to give you a seizure. Damn your non-vaulting legs! It's a mark of the designer's wit that he begins this notorious segment with a literal stumbling block. You stand on a platform on the first screen, "Doing Things The Hard Way" (every room in the game is named something), separated from the extra credit bauble by a waist-high barrier. Like every good dare, they start with a taunt. They're a crazy dare you can't help but accept, because you'll always remember that you couldn't do it if you don't do it. ![]() The main plot, rescuing stranded members of your crew, is tough the VVV rooms themselves are an optional challenge. Checkpoints appear in nearly every room and you respawn fast Quintin Smith probably said it best by saying that VVVVVV's checkpoints "allow players to exist forever in the scorching heat of insurmountable challenges." In VVVVVV, you use a simple gravity-flipping mechanic (no jumping) to progress through various snappy platforming challenges, packaged as individual rooms. It's the titular sequence of rooms called Veni, Vidi, Vici!*, and in it you learn how to play games again. Everyone who plays the game will remember it Kieron Gillen already wrote about it. There's a sequence in VVVVVV that deserves to be famous. If you want to set friends at each others' throats over a game, there's no better question than "how hard was it?" You're asking "how much did the game frustrate you," or, finally, "how much do you suck at playing games?" The conversation enters a death spiral as one party says old games aren't playable, another says every good game is hard, another says that real men play Wizardry, and someone or everyone is called a "baby."īut it doesn't have to be like this! If everyone plays Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV, the world might be mended. ![]()
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