Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

 PC
Metascore
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  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
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  1. CD-Action
    Feb 8, 2018
    85
    The climbing mechanics are satisfying, the frustration you’ll have to endure on your road to mastery is sweet, and Foddy’s commentary is intelligent, but mouse controls are physically tiring and need getting used to. [01/2018, p.65]
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5.7

Mixed or average reviews- based on 122 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 53 out of 122
  2. Mixed: 28 out of 122
  3. Negative: 41 out of 122
  1. TitaniumDragon
    Dec 10, 2017
    4
    Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy is a game about climbing a mountain with deliberately extremely awkward controls. In the game, your avatarGetting Over It With Bennet Foddy is a game about climbing a mountain with deliberately extremely awkward controls. In the game, your avatar is a man in a big black cast-iron cooking pot with a sledgehammer. The only control you have is moving your mouse around to swing said sledgehammer. The head of the sledgehammer is used to push off of things, as well as to swing around things; it isn’t actually used to smash anything. You cannot walk or jump; all movement in the game is controlled on slinging yourself around with that sledgehammer.

    Naturally, this means that your goal is to climb a gigantic mountain of random objects, specifically designed to be extremely difficult to climb with this control method. Worse, there are no checkpoints; while your progress will be saved if you quit, the reality is that this is as much a curse as it is a blessing, because at many points in the game, it is possible for you to, with a single mistake, hurl yourself off the side of the mountain of garbage all the way back to the beginning – and even where you don’t do this, it is still often possible to hurl yourself back a significant distance.

    This is a game which uses difficulty for the purpose of comedy. The game is not only hard, it is deliberately and unrelentingly hard. Bennet Foddy – the man who made the game – said that it is a game designed for a specific kind of person. Namely, to hurt them. And this is really the case – this whole game is an exercise in masochism.

    The game is deliberately ugly – it looks terrible, just full of pre-bought assets, something that the game itself comments on. Because, you see, the real attraction here is Bennet Foddy himself, talking about the design of the game, games in general, the game that inspired this game (an old B-game called Sexy Climbing, which is itself another deliberately difficult game), ect. He has a pretty good voice, and says various encouraging quotes (or possibly maddening, if you are the frustratable sort) whenever you fall down.

    Naturally, you will be hearing a lot of these, as well as some old licensed music related to falling down or getting back up again (though, sadly, no Chumbawumba).

    I don’t think this is a game a lot of people would enjoy. Honestly, this game feels like it plays on our impulse to try and overcome some obstacle, no matter how ridiculous, for the sake of doing it. If you are very prone to such, you might spend many, many hours trying to master this game.

    If you aren’t, you are probably going to quickly lose interest, as that is really all there is here, and the game is, again, deliberately and unrelentingly difficult.

    The worst of it is, there’s very little sense of payoff; while you get more quotes, the further you get in, the more sparse they become, and the harder the game gets, making them grow even sparser. All you end up getting are the “encouraging” quotes.

    I ended up losing interest a few hours into the game; the sheer amount of repetition in climbing back up sections I’d already climbed began to bore me. I suspect that if you are an angrier person, this game might enrage you, but in the end, it is hard to get too invested in it.

    As a joke game, this is kind of amusing, but it is the sort of thing I don’t think most people will really appreciate paying for; as part of a Humble Bundle, I messed around with it for a bit, and thus I got it on Steam as well, but I can’t help but feel like I would have spent my time better doing just about anything else. Hard games can be fun - I enjoyed Super Meat Boy and The End is Nigh, as well as games like Super Hexagon - but the deliberate obtuseness of this game makes it hard to really love or even like. I didn't hate it, but it just left me feeling like I should have done something more productive with my time, or at least more fun.    … Full Review »
  2. leetl1
    Mar 14, 2019
    4
    This game broke me, and I will probably never be fixed. At least the game succeeded at it's goal.
  3. OberiousLocke
    Jan 2, 2018
    0
    Honestly, this isn't even coming from a place of salt about how hard the game is. If I wanted to get salty, I'd play through Dark Souls 3Honestly, this isn't even coming from a place of salt about how hard the game is. If I wanted to get salty, I'd play through Dark Souls 3 again.

    What puts me off is how insufferably pretentious the dude talking is. The following statement specifically.

    Going piece by piece;

    "When games were new, they wanted a lot from you."
    They never wanted a lot from us. The technology and methodology behind making them was unfathomably primitive compared to where we are now, just like today will be another 30 years from now. There is a reason that slippery controls, one-hit deaths and lives systems, among other things, have by-and-large gone the way of the dodo today. It doesn't make them more rewarding, just frustrating. They seem to be making a come back like culture sometimes does, thanks to the surge of Souls/Rogue-like genre, but I imagine soon enough we'll remember why they were left behind in the first place

    "Players played stoically..."
    Because we didn't have another option, that's just how **** was back then.
    "...Now everyone's turned off by that."
    Because we moved past the concepts that required that sort of thought ages ago, and for good reason. We realized the getting knocked back a mile in Castlevania, or Mega Mans slide-y controls were bad and we moved on or fixed that.

    "They want to burn through it quickly, a quick fix for the fickle"
    Generalizations are so much fun! Play through enough of Dragon Age: Inquisition to really enjoy it and tell me how quickly that went by.

    "Some tricks for the clicks of the feckless"
    feck-less: lacking initiative or strength of character; irresponsible. That's just flat out insulting, really. I could call the creator an artsy try-hard whose games consist of purposefully horrible controls just to get some yucks at people raging, and I'd be tons more accurate than that last part (Lets not forget QWOP, which Bennett Foddy can also be blamed for)

    Normally this is where I'd say I understood what he was going for here, but I honestly don't. Deliberately frustrating controls, mechanics and environments, combined with how horrendously pretentious the narrator, treating Getting Over It like it's some grand, defining statement on gaming when it's simply just another rage game and nothing more. Just like QWOP, just like Kaizo Mario, just like I Want To Be The Guy, and all the other less remembered rage games before it.    … Full Review »
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