Hello and welcome to another Dominik's Little Old Purple Column, coming to you from... ?
Well, that's an interesting question. By the time you READ or LISTEN to this I will be in the UK. In London. But I'm writing/recording this NOW incase things get all shagged up with transatlantic flights and whatnot. I don't want anything to stand in the way of you and this marvellous theme tune, do I?
(Lo! Another line completely ruined if you just read this rather than listen the audio. WHEN WILL I LEARN????)
Another Day Another Angsty Middle Aged Fear About A Video Games Thing.
I played a game on Apple Arcade called Cricket Through the Ages that I thought seemed like a really good idea but awakened yet another of my angsty videogaming psychoses that was apparently lying dormant within, just waiting for middle age to strike.
I thought it was going to be a humourous cricket sim, just using things like dinosaurs and knights on different levels as it wound its way through time. I have to admit I like the idea of dinosaurs playing cricket, and I especially liked the picture they used on the front-end button of the game, featuring as it did a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to hold a cricket bat in its famously tiny hands. But when I started it there was something that I just cannot handle in games. Any game.
Ragdoll physics.
I am sorry. I have never liked ragdoll physics. They freak me out. They scare me on a primal level in much the same way as I thought the Nintendo Zapper would give me cancer if someone shot me with it. If you want to read more about that AND the accompanying poem I wrote about Duck Hunt and Nintendo Zapper anxiety? That was in last week’s PAID PALS version of Little Old Purple Column #24 which you can access as a paid subscriber. Click on this wee button to become one.
I think there are a number of reasons for my fear of ragdoll physics and why I get a little bit queasy watching and/or playing this genre. I think I have a deep subconscious fear that one day I will wake up and have lost control of my body to the point where I walk and move like a ragdoll. I have nightmares about that: Ones where I’m not quite in control of my body. Apparently, it’s not uncommon with people who suffer from anxiety and depression. I also have a recurring nightmare where I end up in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. And then there’s that HUGE recurring nightmare where they bring back GamesMaster without me. Yikes. How scary is THAT?
Also, ragdoll physics doesn’t make sense. And I know that is a terribly illogical way to judge something in a video game: that it doesn’t make sense. Why, only last week I was criticising those who got upset at the Super Mario Brothers trailer because the arse wasn’t realistically big enough glutewise for a character that can leap those distances. But I am nothing if not inconsistent. I reserve my right to be as inconsistent as I want. Or not. Just to be even more inconsistent.
(PIC: Mocked up ragdoll physics consternation. With accidental wife in background-type bonus!)
I also think that Ragdoll stuff isn’t as clever as it thinks. I feel we were supposed to think it was this big breakthrough because they added the word “physics” to it. And we’re always supposed to be dead impressed by anything to do with physics. All because physics does things like… er… literally make the whole world work and everything in it function properly.
Anyway, I played through the whole History part of Cricket Through The Ages and it was all a bit… samey. You are at one end, something or someone is at the other. You bash a button to approach and bash a button to throw something, but I never felt like I had any control over what I was doing. Then again, I feel that in so many games these days. Also, you know, there was the whole queasy unsettling feeling I get with anything ragdoll. It’s probably not the game’s fault. It’s probably mine. YOU might love it. So sorry to you, makers of Cricket Through The Ages on Apple Arcade. It’s a ragdoll thing. You’d understand if you had my nightmares…
And on that neurotic apologetic bombshell that is it for your FREE version of the column podcast colcast this week. PAID PALS? Hang on, your exclusive content is coming right up which includes stuff on games voice acting scandals, something that may help fellow glasses wearers when it comes to games (and everything else) AND a great little nugget that sees me revisit a classic moment from the GamesMaster TV show in a particularly interactive way I have never done before.
(Ooh… that is interesting…)
Until next week free folk – keep it little, keep it old keep it purple.
Dominik's Little Old Purple Column #25 FREE VERSION