In the world of video games, there will always be those that can be frustratingly difficult but still be considered fair and beatable. Perfect examples of such are Cuphead, any of the Dark Souls entries, or Ninja Gaiden.
While they make people want to scream or even break their controllers, they still taught the valuable lesson of learning to accept the numerous failures that come one's way and using them to improve. However, among all the challenging games that try to teach that, none have done it better than Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
Released in December 2017, it attracted the attention of many with its unusual gameplay that involves moving a man stuck in a cauldron using only a hammer. There are no action buttons within the game, and progression depends entirely on how you direct the mouse or controller stick to position to simulate physical force, which allows for movement.
Trying to get the man in the cauldron to get him to where you want can be incredibly frustrating because of this, as even the slightest mishap or miscalculation can cause him to go in awkward directions. Controlling the hammer also feels terribly imprecise, making the movement scheme hard to master.
Now, this isn't a problem at the start of Getting Over It, as the level design at the beginning is simple enough to help give you a feel for how you can deal with the awkward controls. But when you progress deeper into the game, that's when it starts being a problem.
The goal is to reach the top of the map, which contains numerous obstacles that require a lot of precise maneuvering and platforming. The higher you go, the more difficult it gets, and even one mistake can cause a player to lose so much progression. Couple that with the awkward control scheme, and it's a setup for one of the worst experiences.
It's so bad that there are instances wherein players careen off the screen due to a mistimed jump, plunging all the way back to the very start of the journey and causing them to lose their minds. Such a design has, unfortunately, resulted in Getting Over It being granted the title of one of the games with the worst runbacks, and many have given up on beating it.
As close as I was to quitting like the others, what kept me going was learning about the entire game's purpose. Bennett Foddy, the creator of Getting Over It, intentionally made it brutally difficult, as it's meant to force players to focus on the raging emotion that comes from their failures and how they would go about handling it.
From there, I took every mistake as the game's way of testing me, and I wanted to make sure that I was able to pass every single one. There will be many setbacks, and they will certainly make anyone angry, but calming down and continuing to learn while pushing forward is the only way to overcome them.
It is an amazing lesson that players can carry over to any other challenging game, and Getting Over It, as incredibly frustrating as it may be, did a very good job in teaching it. In fact, aside from personal growth, it's also great for improving one's mechanical skills, as beating the game with its awkward control scheme takes a tremendous amount of effort. If you can finish Getting Over It, even after experiencing countless anger-inducing failures but never giving up, then there's no obstacle you can't overcome.
Even if it's considered one of the worst games to exist, the way it tests one's resolve and ability to overcome emotions that obstruct achieving victory is truly unmatched. So, if there's a hard game that's not letting you beat it at all, consider playing Getting Over It, and then you'll understand what difficulty really means while learning the best thing to do to overcome what you previously couldn't.
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