I can’t stop playing this preposterous game about falling off a mountain games

IInstead of doing anything normal with my life for the past week, I’ve been on a terrible vacation with the worst man in the world. In Baby Steps, you play as a useless moron named Nate who has done nothing in his 35 years on this planet except sit in his parents’ basement and watch anime reruns. One day, he is transported, in his adult costume, to a surreal mountainside decorated with phallic images, and you must get him to the top by controlling his feet individually, carefully lifting them with the console triggers and placing them with the analogue stick.

This is very difficult. Sometimes you’re walking down an easy slope, but more often you’re stepping over narrow shingles, climbing sand dunes in small steps, or gripping rock ledges with your toes. Again and again, Nate stumbles and falls, whimpering pitifully as he slips down a muddy slope or sand bank, his clothes becoming increasingly dirty. Over and over again, you get up and try again. Every once in a while a crazy-eyed Aussie guy or a jackass with no pants and dangling genitals shows up to gently mock you and offer help that Nate infuriatingly refuses to accept.

If your concentration breaks for a moment, he will too. Three hours into this silly game, and after I fell off a plank into the river, I stomped Nate dejectedly around the corner to discover the campsite where I had begun my journey that morning. Meanwhile, I had achieved nothing but found a ridiculous pusher hat, which in itself was an additional burden as I had to bend down and pick it up whenever it fell. Rarely has a game made me want to cry, but when I saw this campsite, I nearly gave up.

Imagine enduring setbacks like this for hours, then ending up in a warehouse with a lantern that Nate keeps dropping, leaving you in complete darkness unless you retreat to retrieve it. And then, halfway there, there under An elevator that you have to get up in one try, unless you want to spend long seconds staring at Nate’s upturned ass as he slowly descends to the bottom after his tumble. and thenthe exit is a spiraling path of sandy ledges, where Nate’s feet lose their ability to keep up. I’ve been stuck there for eons, with nothing but my thoughts, my growing frustration, and Nate to keep me company. Baby Steps reaches impressive new sadistic heights with each successive chapter.

So why keep playing? Aside from the absolute bloody mentality that I probably need to unpack with a therapist – I will no Let this game break me down – there are some things going on here. He’s exceptionally funny, not just in the obvious slapstick way (it’s a lot of fun watching Nate make his way into a mudslide) but in his improvised dialogue and ridiculous delivery. The developers behind this game also voice the characters, and every scene you find is a little joy among the hassles. An optional challenge in the desert is to try to get a cup made of ice up a desert cliff before it melts, and as Nate returns time and again to the ice cream van man with increasing desperation, the developers voicing them also begin to lose their grip.

And while this may sound like a lively game about laughing at a pathetic man’s downfall, it turns out it has more to say. As much as I hated Nate at times, to the point where I almost stopped playing so I wouldn’t have to look at his flabby ass anymore, I also started to feel for him. It’s a true one-man classification of loss, but it’s also what it is You try. Despite intense social anxiety, masculine insecurity, and obvious self-loathing, he puts one foot in front of the other, in a very literal game metaphor.

If you reach the end of the chapter wearing a hat, you’ll be able to play a depressing 8-bit-style minigame about Nate’s past life: his frustrated parents, his superior sister, and his non-existent sex life. As the hours passed, I got an idea of ​​how Nate ended up in the state he was in, and although I didn’t bond with him as directly as some players did, I began to feel motherly toward him, unwilling to abandon him after all.

This game also brought out the worst in me, as I violently cursed the pale man whenever one of his useless feet slipped from what I thought was a sure grip. But for all the disheartening moments, there are also times when you feel like crying in gratitude after finally persevering enough to get Nate to the next stage of his journey. Baby steps are silly, but they’re not stupid. In 30 years of gaming, I’ve never played anything like this. It made me think and feel surprisingly deeply about the game Fallout.

Seeing everything this game has to offer would require a level of masochism to which we would be unwise to aspire. After 10 hours or so, I just wanted to get to the end of it. That’s when I came across a huge spiral staircase extending up into the clouds. Right: A perilous trail our Australian guide calls Manbreaker. “You can’t. It’s too hard for you,” he says. “You’re going to be banging your head on this thing for the next five years… You’re going to collapse and walk up these damn stairs.”

“I swear I will never “Take these stairs,” Nate replies indignantly.

I look at the road. Winds upwards out of sight. I can already see several places where I’m guaranteed to slip and fall before I can stand up properly. I imagine the next few days of my life, hurling myself down this rock face, advancing gradually by the hour. I imagine the confused and worried faces of my partner and kids as they walk into the living room to see me, once again, playing Baby Steps and getting absolutely nowhere.

Damn him. I take the stairs.