#Getting over it game fails full#

My chances of success were a function of time more than anything else, and the fastest way to make progress was by avoiding the controls, not mastering them. In the game’s hardest edge-case jumps, the lack of consistent feedback turned my curiosity into resignation. The camera drags awkwardly on your cursor when you move quickly, your mouse sensitivity changes wildly whenever you pull the hammer in close, and the cursor itself is almost totally invisible on light or busy backgrounds. Your mouse movements are only vague suggestions to the on-screen cursor, and there’s another vast layer of abstraction between that and the hammer. The fact is, these Designated Failure Points are the only challenge in the entire game, 3 and it’s a kind of challenge the controls don’t support. Maybe the controls are just another piece of the ensemble, working alongside the dull sound effects and the smarmy jazz stings to slowly get you boiling, but I don’t really think it matters. 2 Getting Over It’s controls have some clear shortcomings, but I don’t know if I believe that they’re accidental. Foddy’s responsible for QWOP, after all, a game entirely defined by its deliberately-impossible control scheme. It feels like I’m falling into a trap by complaining about the controls. The game’s most memorable moments are nothing but steep angles and awkward overhangs, one-off setpieces designed to test skills you haven’t practiced, and they push the awkward controls well past their breaking point. They’re always placed at the end of long, placid climbs and invariably dump you a few screens back if you fall-more than anything else in the game, they’re built for you to fail.

The garbage mountain has a handful of brief and brutal difficulty spikes, short sequences never lasting longer than a few jumps.

But it still needs that minimum fraction of your attention and your time. It’s never about herculean feats of dexterity or precise timing: it’s about finding the right places to stand and the right places to plant your hammer. Once you’ve finished a section, you can finish it again in a fraction of the time. Getting Over It isn’t shy about erasing your progress, but it never felt like I was fighting my way back up. “It was supposed to happen.” There’s no save to reload and no checkpoint to return to. And there’s a sly little jazz sting, 1 an auditory replacement for Foddy’s smug, apologetic smile. Bennett Foddy offers his condolences in the form of an inspirational quote. Your cauldron hits the ground with a dull, metallic thud. But there are plenty of other ways to fuck up bad, and they all end the same way. If you’re like me, you’ll forget that the hammer’s physical extent never turns off and accidentally launch yourself off a cliff. Sooner or later, though, you’ll make a big mistake. The early moments teach you this silently and seamlessly: each area feels like a puzzle, wrestling with the cursor-only controls and the quirky, inconsistent physics until everything comes together at once, and you enjoy a few brief moments of satisfaction before moving on. The hammer is defined by what it can’t do: it can’t find purchase in smooth surfaces, it can’t stay put if your weight pulls against it, and you can’t fit it through tight spaces without plenty of awkward maneuvering. Your job is to climb a mountain made of garbage with only a sledgehammer. You are a man with a cauldron for a lower body. It’s built to get you angry, and it’s quite honest about it: from a designer so fascinated with frustration, it seems only natural. There are no tutorials, there are no checkpoints, and the game never fails to taunt you when you fall, Foddy himself voicing every jeer.

#Getting over it game fails full#

Getting Over It bills itself as a masocore enthusiast’s dream, full of precision challenges and punishing setbacks.

“I created this game for a certain kind of person, to hurt them.” -Bennett Foddy