Up late talking games & writing? You're...

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Games: I had originally intended to write about Avalon Code tonight, but before I get to that I have to discuss Trials HD. (Here’s my review, in case you're interested.)
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Anyway, never in a million years would I have predicted that I would have become as obsessed with this game as I have, but it's been dominating my life for the last few days.
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Reminding me a lot of an updated Excitebike early on, I knocked out the first few clusters of levels pretty quickly. I didn't get gold medals on all of them, but I did well enough to satisfy my own personal sense of achievement. Moving up, the Hard level was indeed hard. When I got to Extreme, I couldn't believe it.
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Now, I'm totally fine with games presenting challenge, but there are just certain lines that shouldn't be crossed. Certain places that a good game should never go. At some point, the developer needs to take a step back and say “you know what, this is just too much. Let's scale this down.”
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The Extreme levels require such an incredibly high level of finesse and precision that I'm sure an overwhelmingly large majority of people who download the game will never complete them.
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(And I can already hear the ‘core response: it's okay to have a level of difficulty that crushes most players!! I might agree under certain circumstances, but not in this case.)
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A big issue I have with the Extreme level is that the game’s challenge hinges on its physics. In general, I think the physics are spot-on and implemented extremely well, but these last few sections demand near-flawless execution. With the way physics engines are implemented in games these days, this equates to infinitely fidgety, over-sensitive situations that require an almost inhuman level of micro-adjusting to get through. Operating on a level this intense, videogame physics just get squirrely.
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In the Inferno II level (the game’s last) I was stuck on one particular set of jumps that took close to 2,500 attempts before I finally got a handle on them. I can't remember the last time, if ever, I spent that much time on getting past a barrier in a game. Honestly, I was getting stressed and agitated, and my wife was becoming concerned for my mental health.
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Why didn't I quit? It was probably a combination of sheer pigheadedness and determination on my part. That said, the developers clearly spent a lot of time and effort in crafting their game. Despite my annoyance, don't get me wrong—Trials HD is a great title that’s got a lot going for it, and it's easy to see all of the thought and craftsmanship that went into it. I guess I didn't want my fond memories of the early stages to be permanently tainted by the bitter taste of unconquered Extreme.
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In any event, that bleeding ulcer I cultivated finally paid off when I completed the last of the Extremes today. I was on the verge of delirium when something just clicked and I was able to tap into some unknown in a reserve and push through to that beautiful, beautiful finish line.
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Rather than a sense of victory or completion, what I mostly felt was just a sense of “thank god I don't have to do that again.” It's not really how I like to end most games, but considering that I ended it at all, I'll take it.
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