Ancient Evil
Let’s get one thing clear: I know what buttons are. I wear pants almost every day of my life. That’s not what this is about.
I’m not proud of what I am, you know. It’s just … buttons. I don’t get it. I don’t get it! I just don’t get them! They’re just there, with little letters on them that mean absolutely nothing to me. And then you touch them, and they … touch you back? Ew. Don’t get me started on how each type of controller is different. I almost got the hang of Mario Kart until I tried to play Call of Duty. I kept expecting to drop my banana peels, but all I managed to do was throw a grenade.
Some buttons are normal, round things, but other times, they’re Cthulhu guts jutting viciously out of controllers. When you press them, you see some ridiculous fake map, or a list of inventory supplies you’ll never need. Some buttons are just there, only meant to be pressed once every blue moon. These strange buttons call to you, begging to be used, even though they have freak letters on them that you don’t think should be next to each other, like RL. Ugh, RL. I get shivers just thinking about that blight on humanity. I am Sisyphus, continuing up the mountain of gaming with my boulder of obsequience — forced to continue pressing buttons though I know not why or how, trudging endlessly in my task until I press the wrong thing and am forced to go back all the way down to the main menu. I tread onwards, endlessly, beating back against the wave of zombie hoards until a misplaced crossbow fire gets me shot in the head.
I haven’t played many games recently, I’m too burned out from it all. They stopped being enjoyable for me. It’s kind of weird, you know? At first it seemed cool that I could win without knowing any combos, or even how to jump on purpose. The luck of the draw, perhaps. But my wins never feel earned. Neither do my losses though, so at least there’s that!
Day in and day out, it was the same routine. The same screen. The same me. But different buttons. You just press things, and then things happen, and then more things happen, and then a screen pops up saying if you’ve won or lost. Sometimes people talk, and that’s an interesting break from monotony, but then it’s back to button pressing. Wouldn’t it be cool if there were games you could just play without pressing buttons? And you would just watch characters talking to each other, a plot unfolding along the way? Too bad games like that don’t exist yet, and I must stay this way: a gamer without a cause, rebelling against the constraints of Big Nintendo.
Former Editor-in-Chief. Like an ouroboros, her jokes consume themselves until no one knows whether they were ever funny. But they are.
