No, I'm not talking about the physical ability to jump. I can do that just fine (to a certain extent) thank you very much. Nope, I'm talking about the ability to simply hit a single button vis-a-via a controller and watch as my on-screen avatar does the same thing. Only, it doesn't happen that way.
I don't know why I fail so hard at jumping in video games, but I do. My husband got his first real taste of just how hard I fail while watching me play Darksiders. If you've played the game you know there is A LOT of lava and A LOT of crevices to jump over to avoid such lava. If you haven't, well...trust me, there is. It wouldn't be hell on earth without so much hot lava I suppose, but it's terribly inconvenient to those who are jump challenged. It got so bad the other day that my husband had tears rolling down his cheeks as he watched me fail again...and again...and again. I finally looked at him and said, "Yeah, I know. Not only did War lose all his powers but apparently he also got really really dumb and clumsy". This sent us both into uncontrollable fits of laughter. After all, I really like to get into the mindset of my characters when I play (it's fun to take on that role bit more personally - a topic for another post I suppose) but the thought of a clumsy, slow, somewhat stupid War was just too much for me to contain. Honestly, War should just be able to part the lava like the red sea but there wouldn't be much challenge in that.
My problem with jumping goes back as far as I can remember actually. Lord knows how I made it through Mario in my youth. I remember playing the game Threads of Fate for Playstation. I was so excited as it was billed and RPG and those don't get so demanding with the jumping. But what it turned out to be was a modified adventure platform. And if you know anything about Platforms, they are going to ask you to jump. The game was designed to be played through as one of two main characters; either Mint or Rue. Mint was a magic user and Rue was more physical. Once you played through with one of them the object was then to go back through and play as the other since they had different story lines. Needless to say, I was so frustrated after playing through with Mint I never went back and played with Rue. It's kinda like half reading a novel or reading through a book and skipping out on certain parts that pertained to one of the characters. It made me sad really to never get the whole story.
If you've played World of Warcraft you know there's no real jumping involved here either. Of course there was ONE area you needed to perfect the jump and I failed at it. If you're old school... you'll remember that you need to jump over a crevice off the chain in Black Rock Spire to get to Upper Black Rock Spire. It wasn't hard. You just needed to jump over a small crevice. Needless to say I held up my group every single time. Good thing I was the main group's healer or they probably would have left my sorry ass standing on the ledge every time. Old school and still don't remember? I'm not surprised...after all, to almost everyone else in the universe this was a non-issue.
It's not a spatial thing. I can see just fine where I need to jump and I KNOW when I need to hit the button to jump. It somehow just seems to fail. I'm not talking about time sensitive jumping that needs to be done correctly and quickly either. I'm talking about the "standing at the edge of the precipice staring down and you simply need to 'jump' to get over it- take your time- no pressure" sort of jumping. I stand there. I see I need to jump. I move forward while hitting the button. SPLOOSH.... "Ahhh...LAVA! FIRE! IT BURNS". And not only does this happen once, but it will happen again and again and again. I quite honestly don't know how my husband contains himself. If I were watching such video game incompetence I don't think I could keep myself from ripping the controller out of the hands of the idiot who keeps screwing up something so simple so that the game can move forward and I can watch more than the same spastic failure over and over and over again.
My "condition" will not stop me from playing. After all, the need to jump in almost all video games is like the need for breathing. I think at my age I'm never going to get any better at it. I could seek jump therapy. Maybe I could go back to "jump boot camp" or something and force myself to play jump intense games. Or maybe, I can continue to laugh until I cry and just keep trying while I'm playing because there's nothing else I can do. After all, it's true; white girls can't jump (at least not this one).
