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SEPTEMBER 03 . 07
Rotate2 .. PLAY ME!
There’s something about puzzle games that stimulates the part of the brain usually reserved for methamphetamines. If you’ve ever played Tetris or Bejeweled then you know the drill – with your logical functions mesmerized by the geometric patterns on the screen, the simple gameplay slowly builds to a frenzy, and when it finally overwhelms you you’re compelled to hit the restart button just one more time. You keep playing late into the night in a hypnotic, joyless state until finally collapsing from sheer exhaustion. Alas, there is no sleep, since closing your eyes only reveals more falling bricks, or those cursed, multicolored gems.
The soul crushing power of even the best puzzle games is enormous. So imagine the damage they could do in the wrong hands. Rotate2 gives you just the slightest bit of mental stimulation, the tiniest sliver of encouragement to continue playing, and then abandons you there. Alone. To die.
The game itself is simple enough – rotate sections of pipe to connect them until all of the ends are closed. The first level was a little practice demo, but the second was a bit more complex. I thought I solved it fairly quickly, but the game told me my “IQ score” was only 50, so apparently standards were high. On the next level I concentrated and managed to score a 75, then on level 4, 100. Statistically average! I was improving! I was also treated to a little screenshot from a Betty Boop cartoon with the number 100 superimposed on it to commemorate my achievement.
The next level netted me an IQ of 125, though, and I began to see a pattern. The game just awards you 25 more IQ points every time you beat a level. It wasn’t actually measuring my intelligence at all. And when my IQ was around 425 I began to notice another disturbing trend. The levels really weren’t getting any harder.
This is the point at which any sane person would just quit playing. I was invested, though. The timer was set at 5 minutes, which is realistically about three times longer than anyone could possibly need, so the game wasn’t going to quit on its own. But there was a new, increasingly bizarre Betty Boop graphic every 4 levels, and every once in a while if I finished a stage particularly swiftly the game would award me with a code that I could enter in a “bonus room” to reveal some random painting from the renaissance era.
There’s a forced 5 second wait between levels, but if the game designers think this is going to lure us into clicking one of the Google ads nestled on the page, they’ve greatly underestimated the vast boredom-resisting powers of anyone playing their game. I began to wonder if this would ever end. The arrangement of pipes on each level wasn’t particularly artistic, and could theoretically be randomized to continue infinitely. What about Betty, though? You can’t randomize Betty! There must be some finite number of Betty Boop cartoon stills with my score unceremoniously inserted into them. I pictured her on a lavish palace balcony, waiting for me with a bottle of champagne to reward me for my sheer perseverance when it was all over. And what about that bonus room? Anything could be in there. Next time I put a code in, those renaissance people could be naked, for all I knew. Could that be the purpose of all this? Boobies?
1000 points came and went, but at 1100 I had my answer. There was no Betty Boop graphic. The 5 second countdown clicked by, the “continue” button popped up, the game continued unchanged, but now even Betty had abandoned me.
I continued to play, but deep down inside I had to come to terms with it. There was no end stage. There was no increasing difficulty. There would be no victory, and no defeat. All that was left to do was to let the timer run out. So I sat at my computer for a full five minutes (I did complete the level except for a single tile, so the game would know that I beat it, it didn’t beat me) and secretly hoped for some kind of big “The End” or “You Lose” screen to give my experience some sense of finality.
All I got was a message that “the game stayed unsolved” and was bumped back 25 IQ points. I was still around 1325, genius level like eight times over, but something about getting stupider right at the end didn’t sit right with me, so I breezed through the level again quickly, intending to just walk away. My speed earned me one more trip to the bonus room, which I thought was fitting enough, but what I found there surprised me.
Goodbye, Rotate2, and I hope you never darken my door again. I know your last gift wasn’t intended as any kind of victory celebration or final reward, but at this point, I’ll take it.
-Matt
Think you've played a game this bad or worse? E-mail me and tell me about it!
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