There is now one less copy of Viewtiful Joe in existence, because I just snapped the game disc in half.
INTERIOR: CLOVER STUDIOS BOARDROOM
"Gentlemen, I bring you the blueprints for the last level of our electronic television game! Envision if you dare: a mammoth hangar bay teeming with endlessly respawning enemies who can kill the terrified player in a single staggering hit. Does that sound malevolent? That is only the first circle of torment. The inferno in which he now burns is merely hell's porch.
"The player's goal here will not be to fight his way through this teeming sea of death, but rather to activate three switches to unlock the way forward. These switches can only be triggered by zoom-diving from a great height, and that height shall remain unspecified: too low and the impact will not be enough to trigger it; too high, and the player will exhaust his miniscule VFX meter before ever reaching the ground, rending the attempt null and void."
"We can't do that to the players, that's madne--"
"WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD SO FAR IS ONLY THE OVERTURE TO MADNESS. ITS FULL OPUS FOLLOWS: The necessary height will only be accessible by navigating a glut of flying platforms which, if touched from the wrong angle, will hurt the player and send him hurtling back to the ground. You wonder, "can there be more?", and there is: the player's journey will carry him so far above the ground that the target switches will be long gone from view, leading to frantic guesswork as to where they might be situated. We have now blinded the player along the x-axis and along the y-axis.
"You may now feel the urge to faint; fight it! For it is in the hearing of this final revelation that you shall all become men: the very selfsame platforms which ferried the player to this apex shall continue drunkenly along their routes far below, unseen, and their mass will shift a descending player off his otherwise unalterable trajectory with heartless regularity. To wit: we shall challenge a human being to make a leap of faith from a height he does not know, onto a target he cannot see, through a gauntlet of obstacles he cannot avoid. Three times. For entertainment.
"And that's just the first room."
FADE TO BLACK
Alright, so I didn't really snap the game disc in two. That was a bit of drama on my part.
It sort of crunched and crackled weakly as it folded over in my hand, and I threw it into the trash.
