There are only two video games my wife has ever enjoyed: Mario Kart, in which she has gleefully brought up the rear for the entirety of our family life; and Crash Bandicoot, of which she was, at one stage, the greatest player in the world.
She completed every molecule of every Crash game in the 90s. I swear I saw her get 105% on one of them, but this being the 90s, I have filed that memory under “things I may have hallucinated in an altered state”, along with Gary McAllister missing that penalty at Wembley, and the band Menswear.
I have never been a completionist like her. For me, platformers are the greatest video game genre that I absolutely hate – be it manic miners, plumbers, hedgehogs, Mega Man, Aladdin or Earthworm Jim. There’s too much frustration and failure to make the reward worth it.
By the late 90s I judged myself too old to cry over these games, so I skipped all the Ratchets and Clanks, Jak and Daxters and Banjo-Kazooies. I did co-op play Super Mario Sunshine with my then five-year-old daughter. She did the levels, I did the bosses, and it was our most joyful gaming experience ever. I felt pride and wonder watching her coach her brother through a homicidally difficult level of Rayman Legends a decade later, in which they were being chased by aliens while leaping across platforms so small they were invisible to the naked dad eye. Evidently platforming talent runs in the family. Just not on my side.
But in 2020’s Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (best double meaning of a game title ever), my wife met her match. She has had three eras of trying to complete it and is currently languishing at a paltry 48% after 68 hours of play.
So I thought I would step in there and show her how it’s done.
The game gives you the option of Retro mode, which takes you back to the proper gaming era of limited lives and banishment to the start of the level upon death. I select Modern instead, because why in the name of all the devils of hell would I want to go back to a time when things were even more difficult? Sure, it’s authentically old-school, but so were mumps, Global Hypercolor T-shirts and Margaret Thatcher, and I don’t want to revive those.
My age doesn’t help. When I played games in my teens and 20s, I was chill. When I played them in my 30s and 40s, I was irritable. But in my 50s I am positively cantankerous. My family won’t get in a car with me because I rage about the traffic, other drivers, filthy streets, useless politicians, shrinkflation and architecture like King Lear in a Honda Civic. But I swear that platform games are designed to turn even the happiest of people into an Obelisk of Irritation.
The phasing levels hit me hardest. Blocks appear and disappear with a button-press. You have to jump into the ether, then push a button to make the next block appear beneath you. Sometimes they crumble, and you have to leap again, remembering to phase the next block in. It is like walking while trying to peel an orange in your front jeans pocket.
I howl. I scream, I spit swears, more swears, then combo swears where I run two or three together to level them up. My wife tells me to stop: the neighbours are looking in from their gardens. So I invent entirely new swears, spitting out expletives like fluntsel, gabberbast and a primeval yelp. I hate the person I quickly become.
One early boss level, Stage Dive, nearly ends me. You have to jump over and under things that kill you, spin a baddie at the boss three times, then sprint forward, then climb phasing blocks until you can whack him. Rinse and repeat. Classic infuriating gameplay. Persevere, though, and magically enter that almost zen state where you fail and start again over and over, but the earlier parts become almost soothing by their repetition. Like whittling wood. And when I finally end him? The sense of reward feels like the last day of school before the holidays.
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Maybe that is the lesson of platform games. Life is difficult. Failure is irritating. But if you invest the time and keep failing then you will succeed, and the reward is a balm for future trials.
I am soon rewarded by one of the most perfectly crafted levels of gaming I have witnessed. Hook, Line and Sinker features every platform move imaginable, on an assortment of pirate ships. A reminder that imagination allied with execution is what art is. Alas, it is but a moment of fleeting joy in a forest of fail. The game gets harder. And harder. I get angrier and angrier.
My wife orders me to stop. She thinks I will have a heart attack. I tell her I just have to complete this level. She sits down, and very patiently points out a jumping technique I haven’t used on a block I couldn’t see. It opens up the whole level. She coaches me like I did with our kids. I am Luke. She Yoda is.
I complete the level. My wife breathes a sigh of relief and wheels me out to shout at clouds.