Posted by John Meyer

GamePlasma's John Meyer undertakes I Wanna Be The Guy in his latest column that will explore the world of free games. You can find the game URL at the end of the column. Also. if you have any free game suggestions, be sure to send John an email at JMeyer@GamePlasma.com.

I Wanna Be the Guy is quite possibly the hardest game I have ever played and easily one of the hardest games ever made. I've played Battletoads, Ghosts 'n Goblins, and many other difficult games, but none of those are comparable to the rage-inducing gameplay that I Wanna Be the Guy offers.

The entire plot behind IWBTG is that "The Kid" has set out on a quest to become "The Guy." The Kid must collect eight Units to open the path to the current Guy. Upon The Guy's defeat, The Kid will become the new Guy. The story is completely nonsensical and adds to the game's quirky nature. To top it off, the story is presented during a message at the title screen complete with broken English.

IWBTG is a shooter/platformer hybrid ala the Mega Man games. The player can jump, double jump, and shoot (although he'll be doing much more jumping than shooting.) The controls are easy, the game is not. IWBTG features simply fiendish level design. Not only are the levels laid out with an overwhelming amount of spikes, falling fruit, and annoying enemies, but there are many trick deaths. To top it all off, The Kid can only take a single hit from anything before exploding into a mess of red pixels.

One of the game's stand-out features is its cleverness and sense of humor. One of the ways the humor manifests itself is the trick deaths. The game will trick you time and time again with cheap, out of nowhere deaths, but they're constantly funny and clever. One example is the room where the game will suddenly spawn a Windows error message, making the player think their game has crashed. As the player moves their cursor to click the 'X' button, the error message will drop down and collide with The Kid, killing him instantly. These kinds of design features may put some people off but those who don't take the game very seriously will probably find them pretty funny.

The bosses are also clever. During your journey, you will encounter Dracula from Castlevania, Mike Tyson, and Mecha Birdo just to name a few. The Dracula fight is particularly hilarious because it parodies Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's famous introduction. Like the rest of the game, they're fiendishly hard but they're not as hard as the rest of the game's challenges.

With great challenge comes a great sense of pride and satisfaction from succeeding. Allowing players to instantly start back up again when they die instills an addictive quality in the game, keeping players going for "just one more try." Finally, after several hours of failed attempts, the sense of accomplishment that one receives upon clearing a section is immense. That's nothing to say of the accomplishment that is beating the entire game. Such a feat is enough to make players shout for joy and cry tears of happiness.

With everything I've said about how hard the game is, some of you may have gotten the impression that the game is impossible. It's not. In fact, it’s far from it. I'd go so far to say that anyone with enough patience can eventually beat the game. You will master the game's nuances and predict what the game will throw at you next. It may take weeks or even months, but you will beat the game if you keep at it.

Most of all the game is fun. It will constantly throw new tricks and challenges at you and as a result, there is a wide amount of variety. In fact, the desire to see what kind of cleverness the game has up its sleeve next is the greatest motivator to keep going in spite of all odds. IWBTG can be maddeningly frustrating at times, but it never takes itself seriously and as long as you stick with it and take the game for what it is--a sadistic and humorous game that loves to poke fun at itself and other games--you will almost assuredly have a good time with it.

If you're interested in checking I Wanna Be The Guy out, then head to http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/ where you can download it for free.