Preemptive Retaliation

So, weirdly enough, I am playing Celeste again.

During the last Steam Summer Sale (which still gets me excited like it used despite not having the same magic) I saw it on sale for something ridiculous like three quid and I honestly couldn’t help myself. I think about Celeste at least once a month, when my mind wanders into the category of truly brilliant games. Earlier this year I was reminded of it further still, when I played the delightful N64 version.

I’m kind of between videogames at the moment since most of my evenings have been spent working on my novel, so the idea of revisiting a classic and dipping my toes back into it was perfect. I didn’t need to invest time in it. I didn’t need to let it absorb me. I could just replay it, complete it, remind myself just how good it is. Har har, famous last words etc. To give myself credit, it hasn’t become an obsession. I’m not thinking about the game all the time, I’m not looking up perfect builds or frequently checking the subreddit – but I love this game, and I’m having a hard time knowing when to quit.

For those unfamiliar, the game is a puzzle-platformer. You play as Madeline who has tasked herself with scaling the mountain Celeste and the game has you undertake that task through levels and events and suchwhat. Every level is made up of a collection of rooms where you have to figure out how to get Madeline from one end to the other, and then execute that through a series of tight, satisfying movements. Some rooms a optional challenges where you can find collectible strawberries that require a certain level of skill.

These levels also contain secrets. There is a crystal heart to collect which involves a more complicated puzzle, or maybe a meta puzzle, but there are also cassette tapes that, when collected, unlock an alternative level to the one you’re playing. So you have Level One, Level One B-Side, Level Two, Level Two B-Side and so on and so on. The B-Sides are harder versions of their levels, taking the mechanics of each level and dialling them up to eleven. They are tough, very tough, and take patience and skill and a lot of patience to get through.

To add to this, when you complete every level, and every B-Side, a little message tells you that you can now play the C-Sides – bonus levels on top of the hard ones you’ve already completed. These C-Sides are a gauntlet of difficult puzzles to solve and execute, and if B-Sides are dialled up to eleven these are dialled up to fifteen, or twenty. Or fucking a hundred, it feels like. They are the mechanics of each level distilled to its purest form and elongated into a rigorous test of skill.

So far I have completed four of them.

This is a mixed bag for me. For one thing, I feel as if I’m suffering from what I’ve dubbed my own personal Super Mario Sunshine syndrome. After I played Mario Odyssey and found myself obsessed with collecting every moon I revisited Sunshine and found that I couldn’t continue the game until I had collected every star, which very soon burnt me out and I couldn’t continue. I feel that way with Celeste sometimes – that I am pushing myself to the hardest challenges to such and extent that I will end up not liking my experience with the game.

On the other hand, playing this game is a form of meditation for me. I die a lot. I’ve written before about how I’m getting older, and how I enjoy games that are power fantasies and let me feel good about my actions, but Celeste isn’t like that. It’s failure, and repetition, and failure, and failure, and failure again. In a morbid twist I’m reminded of a quote between the IRA and Margaret Thatcher. In their attempts to assassinate her, the IRA remark that, in order to survive, Thatcher has to be lucky every single time. The IRA only has to be lucky once. That’s how it feels to play this game. It’s time, sometimes hours, hacking away at a problem over and over and over, and then there’s an instance where you get everything right. You get it right and you finish the room and then you move onto the next one, and then it starts over again.

Like I said, it’s like meditation. Franny and Zooey used to be one of my favourite books. In it they talk about the idea of internalising an idea, of repeating something over and over that it removes itself from consciousness. It becomes a rhythmic drumbeat of your soul. When I play this game I slip into mechanical movements. I plan and think on another level, and when I do this my other thoughts quiet. It’s not the same as doomscrolling. It’s not white noise, it’s quiet.

There’s a room that goes as follows: Right, A, Right X, R Left, let go then X Right-Up, X Left-Up, X Right – A, X Right, X Right, X Up, X Right, R Left, let go, then X Right A, X Right A, X Right A R, A Left X. Then X Up.

That took me thirty minutes to execute. It took me thirty minutes to find the series of actions that I needed to execute with my thumbs and forefingers.

That’s what Celeste is. My brain is occupied, my body is occupied. Meditation.

How far will I go though? Last time I played this game I quit halfway through the final level – realising that I wasn’t enjoying it anymore and it was time to move on to something less stressful. It somewhat soured my thoughts on the game since I was left with a perpetual loose thread, a bad taste of failure in my mouth. I’ve already said to myself that if it stops being fun I’ll stop doing it, but I also said to myself that I wouldn’t try to get any of the golden strawberries (completing a level without dying) and then I did, and I told myself I wouldn’t go chasing achievements, but then I kinda have done already…

There’s a thought here on overplaying games, or having too much of a good thing, or being unable to manage myself with moderation. But, man, Celeste is such a good game.