Intermission: Gish (part 3)

I promise to try not to bitch about this game any more after this post. I'll try my darnedest.


I've been thinking hard about what really, really pisses me off about Gish. I've been trying to nail down the one thing that makes me think it's so excrementally bad. Good news is I think I may have found it. Bad news is there's more than one.

#1. Gratuitously frustrating gameplay

I've come to the conclusion that Gish was designed to be as frustrating and difficult as possible, especially in the later stages.

If you cock up one small thing, best case scenario is you have to slowly get back into the starting point to try it again, like in that church stage where you need to gather enough momenteum and hit the right movement keys at the right time for the right length of time to pass, otherwise you'll just miss it, and then you have to crawl all the way up to start again.

And of course, worst case scenario is starting the level from scratch, and let me tell you, fighting your way through the same section of level for the seventh time in a row doesn't make me any less likely to go to my nearest Ammunation and let loose inside my local mall with a fully automatic firearm.

The very last level requires you to punt a block up two or three levels. I tried this, and it's really, really hard. The physics and the certain states of compression Gish needs to be in for it to be punted a certain height make it nearly impossible, and most of it's got to do with pure chance.

All of that wouldn't be that bad, except you have this psycho Gish clone that will give you a maximum of two chances to screw that up before you have to restart the level.

I'd hate to see anybody do the game on normal difficulty (if you lose all your lives it's back to the begining of the stage, X-1, not the level). Or the state of the local post office afterwards.

#2. Brutal and evil dickmoves

A "dickmove" can be described (in gaming terms) rather easily.

Hypothetical situation - say your character has just undergone a very hard level, where he had to traverse from rickety platform to rickety platform, most of which were already crumbling before he even stepped on them.

A dickmove in this situation would be where the final platform, the one after the rickety, cumbling ones that looks anything but, gives way and the character dies.

THAT is a dickmove. And Gish is full of them. Some of them are small, some are reasonably large, and all are evil one way or another.

For example, in one of the 7 Planes of Hehenna levels (level 5, I believe) you have to grab onto the back of a big block in order to get past a tight corridor of spikes. Spikes kill you very fast and you stick to them, even if you don't have sticky mode on.

Anyway, you have to click to the back of this block, while trying not to get too high or two low for fear of latching onto some rust and death flavoured spikes. Then, you have to very carefully move from one block to another that's quite a respectable distance apart in the space of about two seconds, otherwise it's back to square one.

So, once you do get onto the other block and eventually to the platform at the end, said platform starts getting pulled up and a bunch of walking mouths get quite literally dumped on top of you.

Another example is one of the church levels (the hardest by far, but they are the last so it's understandable) where you're forced to gain a considerable amount of momentum (holding down the down arrow key) and plummet down one shaft (on Heavy and Slippery modes), then very quickly change gears two times (coming around the corner, you hold down whichever arrow key seems logical (left for left curves, right for right curves) and then take off Heavy and hold up, and as you reach for the top, turn on Sticky so it gives you that little bit extra traction to try to reach the very top bit) all before doing it again.

At least three more times.
[Of course there is a hidden secret to bypass all but one tunnel, and it's under the stairs - the ones that keep rising and falling.]

Then, once you get to the end of the course (in this room with half the floor on a slant), you think "thank god, now time for something reasonably relaxing to ease me into the next level".

Except you won't think that, because you'll get to "thank go-" before the walls dissapear and thousands of diabolical walking mouths come pouring out, devouring your poor, confused, and above all, exhausted blob of tar while you presumably rage quit.

Turns out you're supposed to leap up and Sticky onto the rising block the very second you hit the ground. Not that they tell you that.

Then there are the little things. The pebbles they throw at your window in between the big rocks like that. But, while still pebbles, they make an awful racket and eventually leave that window all scratched to hell, and the stones make it look like a swiss cheese maker has gone to town on it.

#3. The "Airship" campaign

Saying this "campaign" is mean kind of like saying Hitler was a bit wacky.

I have a particular grudge against this "campaign". It's more brutal and evil than the main story, something I thought quite literally impossible. I don't know what designed it, but obviously whatever it is is an amalgimation of the most evil people in the history of the human race with a little Lucifer mixed in.

One level will kill you if you don't press anything in the first second or two. To quote Yahtzee, "That's the sort of gameplay I'd expect from a f&#%ing ROM hack. Designed by Hitler."

Almost all of the levels are ruthless in difficulty. I'm shocked that it made it past playtesting.
Of course, there's nothing to say that it did.

The only level in that cesspit I've been able to pass is level 4, and I could only get that by finding it under "Start > Custom levels > Load level".

#4. Gish

Actually, no. Gish is kind of cool. He never speaks, even when he's being torn apart by a pack of ravenous mouths, and he's always mute when being taunted by bosses. In fact, the conversation before the final boss goes something like this:

Hera: Hello Dave Gish.
Gish: ...
Hera: I'm a psycho. I've been thinking about you ever since highschool.
Hera: MARRY ME! MAAAARRRRRRRRRYYY MEEEEEE! OR DIIIEEEEE!
Gish: ...
Hera: RAAAAARRRGH HERA SMASH

#5. The map editor

As frustrating and annoying to use as the real game.

First, you have to hit F1. Only in a forum post on the designer's website does it actually tell you. Because, you know, putting it in big letters up the top of the screen would be too easy for these guys.

Selecting tiles is also very fiddly. I think what you're supposed to do is click and drag the tile you want onto itself. if you click and drag it onto another tile, it'll replace it.

Why? I don't know. Pretty sure the designers don't know either.

And how exactly do I cycle through the list of availible tiles? Well, I have two sets (again, not sure why) and they're moved by two sets of different buttons.

Bonus points for anyone who guessed that they don't tell you what those buttons are.

They probably tell you in the forum post, but frankly, not packaging the controls with a text document was just bloody stupid.
Yeah, Gish doesn't come with a "manual" on all the controls. I always thought that was sort of important.

#6. Impossible platforming challanges

Ok, Gish developers - making me jump from bouncing suspended block to higher bouncing suspended block is nearly impossible. The physics engine makes it so.

That example is most prolific in the Airship "campaign", but it also rears it's hidiously deformed head in the main story campaign and it was hard enough there. But tying all the bouncing suspended blocks together? Thats just not funny.

Thats. Just. Not. Funny.

#7. Give me something - anything - that tells me what or how to do something

In Gish, there is a serious communication problem. The tutorial actually tells you how to do things pretty well, but you never see that again. What I would really like to know is what sort of strategies I need to defeat the boss.

Even somewhat cryptic clues would be nice, but that doesn't happen. Sometimes, you can justify making the challange greater by telling the player what to do. That way, the player already knows how the beast will die. All he needs to know now is what he's going to do to get to that point.

In Gish, you need to fogure it out for yourself. Sometimes, the simplicity of the map will make it sort of obvious, but there could be two or three ways to kill a said boss, and you'll spend a life or two (or more) investigating that option, and when it turns out to be false you spend another life or two (or more) trying another.

#8. Indie game = amazing, innovative game that's awesome, always

It's the rule of Indie games, isn't it? If there's some bright eyed young group of people, usually a designer, a artist and one other person who fills in for all the other roles where nessesary, often their game will be given lots of positive reviews and be hailed in some way as "innovative" or some other buzzword.

It will win awards, too. Lots of awards.

And after playing Gish and seeing how immensly frustrating, difficult and evil it is, it makes me seriously wonder whether the award givers and reviewers actually took time out to play the full game.

Maybe they were given a demo. The demo would probably include the first stage, and I'd say that's pretty easy. Yeah, it's cool and really nice and it has good graphics and a cool physics engine ect ect. Never mind the later levels, we're only looking skin deep here.

Or maybe it's just a case of "a brand new indie game design company just sprang up, let's make them feel really kick ass and awesome by giving them tons of accolades. We'll actually look at their games once they come in a box."


I think that's all of it. I think it's out of my system now.

Let me make this clear - Gish isn't bad. And I know that sounds counter intuitive, but hear me out;
It's extremely frustrating, difficult, and some parts are truely evil, whether by design or by accident, but the game itself isn't bad.

I would probably say to anyone who wants to play it, "Yeah, go for it, but keep an eye on your blood pressure and stay away from any loaded weapons."