Race the Ennui

On one hand I hate the retro game fad. I already went through the '90s once and once was enough, thanks, I've done my time, not interested. Go pixel yourselves. On the other hand, I'm always intrigued by little garage projects that try to do more with simple elements, even if it means letting myself get ripped off by blank polygons passed off as "stylized" artwork. So methought fine, five bucks for something that might give me a couple hours of entertainment, and I haven't played a racing game in so long, let's give Race the Sun a try. At least its catchy visual gimmick of racing west as the light dips toward the horizon makes it palatable enough at first.

Zoom-zoom, swish-swish... that's about it

Then it sat uninstalled in my collection for years because I remembered I hate racing games.

 

Hey! Hey, it's not just because I'm terrible at them! Sure, for a guy who's spent his whole life clicking I have remarkably poor reflexes and always did even as a teenager. Not the point! Race the Sun's fog barrier admits only two or three obstacles ahead in your field of vision and obstacles can often obscure each other, especially with its exceedingly fast pace. Thus much of my successfailure so far is based not only on reaction speed but also a need to memorize the algorithm's propensity to chain certain map elements after each other (horizontal barriers after long corridors for one obvious general gimmick) and that takes lots and lots of mindless repetition. And given this is a retro "hardcore" arcade game knocking you back to level 0 for every crash as a timesink... well, I got through two levels, that's pretty good, right? Sure. So I'll be uninstalling it now. Bye.

 

Interestingly though, I don't experience the same revulsion on getting war-decced three hours into a TBS campaign and having to start over.

No zoom, little swish, lots more about it

It took a few re-picks and even more re-rolls to secure victory with my latest Stellaris empire, but I managed to screw myself in a different direction every time. Pissing off stronger enemies, overdrawing on my early exploration budget, over-colonizing until I couldn't support their unproductive early stages, unbalanced consumer goods flow, name a pit and I've fallen in it. So it gives me something different to consider every restart: planets, spacelanes, obstacles, resources, everything. So how is that different from, say, Darkest Dungeon 2, which pulls the same restart through newbietown routine.
 

1) First off, a strategy map is more cerebral than a racetrack. More factors to consider allow for more interesting combos (even before the game starts) than wondering which of two powerups will spawn in the archway this time.

2) In a more practical sense of time investment for a pay-off of game content, one longer replay at twenty times the length still gives you more time before returning to start.

3) With any sort of algorithmic randomization there's always the gambling factor to consider. The more linear the game, the more a bad start is a game over, whereas more diverse factors keep you imagining everything else that could go right. (Assuming you have the imagination for it.)

4) How does sunk cost play into this? All those character/faction creation options in a TBS/RPG are expected to shine at some later point. Race the Sun with its loot magnet (or DD2 regardless of offering more features, given how enamored it is of wrecking your presets) doesn't make you work yourself up into anticipating payoff for your assuredly brilliant theorycrafting and/or roleplaying.

 

In any case, the genre wasting more of my time on a loss also makes me less averse to starting over. Gilding the lily's not always a bad thing.