izigame.me

Getting Over It made me invent a cocktail. It felt necessary after I cleared the game for the first time. 'Cleared' will have to do because I didn't beat or finish this in one shot. Anyway I made up a drink once I'd endured my first run, and video games don't generally drive me to creativity or the bottle. There's a peculiar atmosphere to your first win here, insupportably heavy air for belated success at yeeting a man in a pot up a rubbish tip. Grappling with feelings of relief, transcendence and embarrassment, I thought that mixing up some stuff I bought online would be an appropriately reflective celebration. Also my hands were still trembling and it seemed more socially acceptable than going out to buy some xannies.
Falling Over
Ginger not included
45mL rye whiskey
25mL Aperol
15mL pink grapefruit juice
15mL cranberry juice
15mL Cointreau triple sec
7.5mL Australian aromatised red wine with coffee (eg The Deported, or just whatever red and a dash of coffee)
2 dashes Boker's bitters (or whatever bitters you got)
Stir all ingredients with ice. Fine strain into your cauldronest double rocks glass (or a rocker) over a block of ice. Garnish with orange zest and a stick of liquorice root.
For the spritz version, top with prosecco, stir once and you've got Bubbling Over.
Spritzing Over It
From bottom to top this game buzzes with emotional charge. From the moment you learn that it exists, it's mobilising your irritation at indie auteurs (Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy? What, the QWOP guy's Orson Welles and my therapist now?). Here's a trailer full of soyfacing algorithm zombies who'd cram their limited edition Razer up their ass if they thought it'd make you like and subscribe. Pull your pants up and give me that mouse ffs it's just a game, and I want a go. Pretty soon you've got the delicate purity of the control down enough to realise it's mostly a mental state interpreter, dragging your pot man from the primal exhilaration of flight into a mire of spastic judders as you tense up and lose your touch. All you have to do is stay calm. The developer continues his techbro slam poetry in a subtly posh Australian accent. It is just possible that if you speedrun GIRP enough times the server costs will render him bankrupt. You fall from a part that isn't even hard, get back up and fall off it again while the old-time blues standard is still playing. The falling goes from frustrating to whatever to a chance to style on the sections you've mastered, then becomes terrifying again as you make too much new progress.
Somewhere along the line, two hours in or ten, a fall lands different. Smiling wryly to yourself back near the start, you know you can and will get to the top. Maybe it's personal at this point. Just to stick it right up the dev - just so you didn't pay up and give in. But as you scratch and hop your way closer, the air changes on you. There's something scarier than heights hidden in this smug indie meme game - it's really good, and it is so clever. The haughty difficulty makes the map familiar, and the immediacy of the control lets you soar across it with freedom. Every time you fall you take something down with you, progress that can't be erased with an autosave and a dull truism. Climbing in a spiral over the jumble of rocks and rubbish, past church bells towards an ethereal drone in the distance, you start to pick out the layers of sincerity and irony in a game that isn't just about games and internet culture after all. They're seams to drive pitons into, stuff to pile up and climb. Eventually, sweaty-handed and swathed in droning song, knowing that unless you commit to jumping hard and leaving this behind you'll miss and fall back to the final anchor, the banal comfort of the shopping trolley abandoned on the peak, you realise:
This is one of the most genuinely sublime moments in video gaming, and if I talk about it I'll sound insane.
Then you jump hard. And two days later you're back playing the meme pot game by QWOP guy, racing his narration.
Cheers