QWOP

Wow my itchy fingers just lost me a fanboy post about QWOP so I guess I'll try to replicate it once more, though the feeling is long gone, a feeling which I shall perhaps seek to emulate with 30 mins of soul-crushing attempts to complete the nigh impossible game.

I'll be the first to admit that my renewed obsession is well, inexplicable and very questionable, given that there's no actual point to the game, you control a ragdoll with the relatively simple controls of 'Q,W,O,P' for the left and right thighs and calves respectively, with the goal of crossing the 100M mark. However gameplay is all but, as you'd find if you were to click on that link above xD And yet there's something I find incredibly fascinating about it; despite playing god knows how many runs, I haven't been able to complete it even once, so the challenge could be a definite factor, or perhaps it's the process itself. A slight tap of 'O' to lean forwards at the starting line, 'W' to thrust the right leg downwards, 'O' once more to lift up the left, 'Q' to thrust the left down, 'P' to lift up the right, 'W' once more to push it down, again and again, over and over again. It's a simultaneously cathartic and frustrating experience. Mistime your steps just a little and you'll quickly find your endearing avatar falling flat on his face/ass, along with a very audible 'thump'. Do it well though and you'll find him gliding smoothly along to the soundtrack, engaged in an elegant dance with gravity and time your willing partners.

Far be it from me to over-analyze (well for those who know me that's not very far at all..) but to me at least, beyond simply being a game, QWOP is a brilliant allegory of life, elegant in the very bumbling and stumbling that one is bound to encounter as he first plays with the controls, more likely than not to end up in a tangle of limbs barely a meter away from the start line. There's a  very steep learning curve, not many would have the patience to go along with it, but the fulfillment once you get things sorted out and break into stride is definitely satisfying. But that's not all there is to it; it's by no means easy to keep the momentum going, how to resume once you've stopped is another tricky skill you'll have to pick up, get that wrong and you'll end up flat on your face, back to the start with you. Conversely as you go along, feeling pretty good about yourself, it's all too easy to get carried away by the momentum and lose control, break stride, stumble and fall. You have as many second chances as you'd like, but no save points, none at all. So, the recap, be incompetent, you fall, miserably. Over-confident and complacent, you fall. Overly anxious and unable to keep it up, you fall. Simply unlucky (countless times when lag/a sudden overpowering urge to scratch my nose caused me to miss a beat come to mind) and you fall. And yes, you can try and retry and re-retry over and over again, but You. May. Never. Succeed. And even if you do, so what? Is the whole world going to celebrate your achievement? There's no leaderboard to speak of, and even if there were, there's bound to be someone who can do it better than you; the next time you refresh the site, it's all gone. Quite a cheery message isn't it? Nah I'm obviously being sarcastic; it's downright depressing. Which probably goes a long way towards explaining my fascination with it, I'm just weird that way.

As an aside, reliable sources have informed me that there some soulless individuals have adopted a decidedly unorthodox method to complete the game, one which involves taking a strange posture, crouched very low down supported upon a mass of random limbs and thusly contorted, convulsing and sidling along the ground for very, very, long, all the way till the endpoint, the very idea of which is offensive to a purist like me. I mean, it's not exactly a Pyrrhic victory, but what's the point in that? Or maybe it says more about myself that I'd rather never reach the end and endlessly make attempts to do it the more challenging/'right' way rather than engage in something even more mind-numbing and downright ugly just for the sake of reaching the end. It's all about the style~

And yes, I just spent the better part of 750 words rewriting a post about a rather pointless game, so sue me. Or rather, SMS OTL