DEEP DIVE: WE CAN'T ALL BE HEROES…CAN WE?
The Pre-ramble
All the way back in '23 I took on the task of beating this game.
Yes, I've been sitting on this forever. Is it because I’m terrified of what might appear on this intimidating blank box? This time tomorrow, will it stand to scrutiny? Will I blast past the word cap (yes)? Should I watch less video essays and find a real hobby? These and other questions can wait. I’m here to put a different sort of question.
✨Video Games✨…why play them?
What do we really get out of the endless grind for XP, the perfect execution of S-tier combos, the side-quest box-checking or the hollow victories?
Ask our confused parents and bystanders, who’ll look on in silent disapproval as we glare intensely at the blue hue of our crystal screens. They know little of the strife we endure, of how we suffer at the hands of our enemies, who’ll tirelessly scorn and goad us, or how in spite of that we still charge towards them swinging at dead air, jumping from platform to platform, dashing and somersaulting into death’s cold embrace. They can’t begin to know of all the trouble we submit ourselves to, so as to push the boundaries of our breathless virtual universe.
We mustn’t be ashamed, rather we must forgive them for failing to understand that entire worlds and the very essence of life itself, hang on the balance. Whole NPC populations are counting on the speed of our button-mashing, our dexterous key-bashing and trailblazing wits. Some do it for loot, others do it purely for their love of the sport.
✨Video Games✨ are not for the faint of heart, only the strong of body and mind shall prevail through the endless speed runs, collectible and achievement hunts.
Still the question persists, why play video games?
The Ramble
Even as a self-proclaimed 1%, every now and again I fancy myself as one who dabbles in the business of beating games…and it could be said this lesser-known indie title fit that agenda pretty well and who knows maybe I misjudged it the first time around and hadn’t given it enough time to reveal its hidden quality to me.
Here’s the thing though, some games to put it mildly, fail to reach their potential. They fall well below the bar set by their contemporaries and even their ‘inspirations’. You jumped the gun, you read the (paid) rave reviews, bought into the hype, or went with your gut feeling that this game was needed in your life... and then you played it and it sucked big time…or worse yet, it was just a big nothing.
Welcome to the underworld of under-cooked, lame-ass games.
Enjoy your stay, but whatever you do there’s no going back. Something beyond the bogus title of this absolute gem must have really appealed to my inner sensibilities. It could be that Mike, the dim-witted yet staunch protagonist, oozes that Earthworm Jim Saturday morning cartoon charm that would certainly have impressed my toon-loving ten-year old self.
More to the point, a brilliant mind once said something along the lines of 'we choose to play Zheros and other games to exhaustion, till the skin peels off our fingers, our joints stifle and our eyes become sore, not because they are easy, but because they are (inconceivably) hard.'
Furthermore, here are but a few sins showcasing why this may very well be the most painful beating a beat ‘em up could ever deliver:
-Swarms upon swarms of enemies will mob and overwhelm you on a regular basis
-Ludicrously heavy hitting mini bosses with bogus hit boxes, especially for larger enemies
-Enemies turn invincible while attacking
-Boss fights have no clear path to victory
-Occasional poor visibility thanks to mob clutter/larger enemies blocking your view of your character depending on their orientation
-Occasionally wonky 2.5D camera where enemies will come at you from an off-screen angle
-Infuriatingly fast and spammy, at times unblockable enemy attacks
-Checkpoint placement is often insidious ahead of bosses
-Haphazard mini boss deployment when you could barely deal with that 1st wave of minions
-Once selected, there's no ability to change characters or difficulty mode
-No double jump
-No lock on function
-Glitches, glitches, glitches
-Bosses are consistently frustrating as the stages do not encourage tactical thinking.
Instead, you'll die a couple hundred times until you button mash your way to an unsatisfying victory.
With all of that said, I was clearly not playing this as the couch coop it was intended to be so that must have significantly bumped up the difficulty and made its flaws all the more glaring and hard to ignore.
Now why would anyone in their right mind submit themselves to such torment? They are few and far between, still, I might as well list a few positives which I should emphasize, are at a disproportionate disadvantage, jank considered.
+Amazingly imaginative art direction with characters that would've wowed my younger self
+Aforementioned cast is exceptionally well animated
+Wide variety of combos that feel great to pull off
+Addicting simplicity, easy to pick up and hard to drop
Was I trying to make myself hate video games through this severe punishment? It’s been a complicated relationship with games lately. Maybe it's just me getting older, but games seem to increasingly test the limits of my patience these days.
ZHEROS was by no means the hidden gem I so wanted it to be and still, against all reason something in my lizard brain drove me to keep playing. I just HAD to obtain all the hidden stars! The game’s completion outlook was ZHERO to none and yet Mike and I trudged on. I mean, who doesn't love big bright yellow collectible stars that go poof and scatter frisky confetti when you walk over them? If they were ever to retool the combat and fine tune the single player difficulty, this little obscure beat em' up might have gone on to become a cult classic in my book.
The Afterthought
Few things unite us more than a chance to rag on that negligent developer making the headlines, but for once, let’s go against the grain, against the popular notion that games are cheaply made and ‘devs are lazy hacks’ and assume that games are actually incredibly hard to make, that even your average video game is arguably a painstaking labor of love employing the talents of many passionate creators.
It's then easy to surmise how everything that releases in a playable state or better yet, in a state that is polished, optimized and a joy to play is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ miracle.
Did anyone really think THIS would be the one to shatter new ground and reinvent the beat ‘em up genre? Yeah, me neither. But I sometimes wonder, what goes down behind the scenes of games that fail to fulfill their potential by launching in an unfinished, buggy, straight up broken state? Who was to blame? Who was the first to derail the project? Whose idea was it to add that infuriating, blighted mechanic? Did they even personally play test it? What if their budget was a gross miscalculation and they ran out of dough halfway through development? Maybe someone ran away with the fund raiser jar!
It's a world of possibilities, things fall apart. These and many other questions whirl around players heads as they grovel on the ground in excruciating pain from engaging with a perfectly crafted torture device.
Or maybe, just maybe it was someone’s ✨Broken Dream Video Game✨, a misfire crystallized for all of time.
Thematically, it could be said this became an exploration of what it feels like to finish and unfinished game. Even still, in more than a few ways, flops are even more fascinating than success stories, much like how a horror film will intrigue and capture the imagination of so many.
Hold it there, so why DO we play✨Video Games✨?
Well, it’s quite simple, really.
Good and bad, they are akin to computer generated dreams. If that’s true, we should hail game creators as our most unfathomable, both nightmarish and spectacular dream machines that do also break down.
*Edited for legibility
