Frustrating, or just boring at low enough skill levels?

[aoanla]

Bennett, I think, wants Getting Over It to be a game about succeeding at a task by soldiering on despite setbacks which are supposed to make you rage, tilt, throw your mouse at the wall, etc.

I don't think I've ever been particularly frustrated by any loss of progress in this game - Getting Over It is pretty fair, in that the only thing you lose is position on the mountain, and you need repetition to improve anyway. There are massively more frustrating games in existence - because they take more than just easily-regained progress from you (earned items, time in being forced to rewatch cutscenes which were boring the 2nd time around, let alone the 10th, and so on).

What, on the other hand, I do find myself struggling with is... boredom. [To take a metaphor from a later bit of Bennett's VO which is often quoted, and I haven't gotten to yet: This isn't [b]bitterness[/b], it's just tasteless, because I've been chewing it so long that all the taste has come out of it.]

There's a limited amount of VO content which is trigged whenever you make whatever the game considers a "significant setback". Almost 8 hours into my first and only run up the mountain, I've easily exhausted everything Bennett has to read to me, all the music he wants to play me. And, because I'm not making any progress (I've been stuck on the devil's chimney for approaching 2 hours now, having been stuck getting *up* to the devil's chimney for the previous hour or so), I can't count on Bennett passing on any more of his insights into how modern games are just giving people empty success, rather than making them work for things, like people did back in the old days, when they had to walk uphill, both ways, for work.

So, for the past 3 hours, I'd guess, Getting Over It has been a very silent experience for me, and an exceptionally repetitive - not because I've lost progress, but because I don't make any - one. This isn't frustrating... but it is boring.

I'd argue that this is a very different experience to that of the people who managed to complete the game in less than half my time (even the median skill people would have had time to complete it twice, given the expected speed up on their second run, in the time I've taken to get 25% done), and I'm wondering if Bennett ever considered it in his design?


tl;dr: starting over isn't harder than starting off (because you learn by repetition), but running out of comments from Bennett is pretty boring after several hours.

[Names]

I agree, there is not enough failure triggered comments/quotes/music for beginners to be entertained.

I too found myself climbing in silence first couple times.
I missed his comforting voice and music cheering me up when i failed.
But after some thought, maybe it is a good thing after all.
Think about it, if you are failing a jump like 100 times in a row, maybe if he didn't leave you, you would be sick of him, so he leaves you for a while until you progress further past that aweful hurdle where he can rejoin you and congradulate you, even if not directly, just by being there just when you suceeded.

Now if he was talking non stop, his progression monologue wouldnt be as meaningful don't you think?
So by leaving you maybe he just wanted you to miss him and be happier when the right time comes ;)

As for being stuck in the chimney, first time i'm pretty sure it took an hour or 3 to get past it as well. Pretty sure it wasn't even the same night that i started so i'm not even sure XD
Don't feel bad. You are not in the minority just yet ;)

tl;dr there's clearly less failure comments than average expected failures for a first time player, but maybe it's intentional and actually better that way.