Let's Play DoveLems - 30: Abort, Retry, Fail

Channel:

roundthewheel

Subscribers:

2,170

Published on March 8, 2013 7:01:24 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXB5nn2VMNY

Game:

Lemmings (1991)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 39:37

1,858 views

31

More coherent thoughts on Maso 08, now that I've calmed down: if I were playing a shorter Lemmings pack, say with 10 or 20 levels, or a Lemmings game that was presented to me with the express intent of having such difficult levels, it would be perfectly reasonable. But DoveLems has, for all its difficulty (and trust me, it is MUCH harder than Lemmings and even Oh No! More Lemmings), so far had an astoundingly well-plotted difficulty curve, and thus it makes a level like this one seem very jarring as a result. There have been levels that punished the player in terms of demanding precision but none to this degree (except for The Gravity Zero, which I still contend is a worse level). Perhaps if more levels with that degree of precision begin to crop up in the near future, I'll know in retrospect that Maso 08 is one of those points where the game is markedly not fooling around anymore (as if it was before), but even the other Maso levels up to this point had gimmicks that were perhaps hard to see initally but then were easy to implement once discovered. I even saw the idea here faster than in some of the previous levels, but it was just so fucking hard to make it work right.

In the end I think the most damning thing I can say about that level is that it wasn't a puzzle, it was a project. Peeking at Dodochacalo's video wasn't so much about getting a solution as it was about just following the dad-gum instructions, painting by numbers. One of the best things about Lemmings is how it looks cool when you put it together and you feel proud of your work. It may be the intended solution, but you put it together yourself and it looks graceful and beautiful. Most levels feel something like setting up a bunch of dominoes in a cool pattern and then knocking them down, but this was more like putting together a ship in a bottle or a Swiss watch. Cool once it's done, but maybe more stressful than an entertainment activity should be.

I also didn't mean much of what I said in the last minute or two there. I was really, really, REALLY mad.

Levels / music:
Maso 06 - A Kind of Camel / The Simpsons (Arcade) - "Stage 1: Downtown Springfield"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8_dilGkD9c
Maso 07 - Is It a Pass-Pass Game? / Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody - "The Ground's Color Is Yellow"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxOtOWVV484
Maso 08 - A Z That Stands for Zemmings / Rocket Knight Adventures - "Stage 2-1"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ej83XtsMU

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