The Adventures of Cookie & Cream, cont.

There is a moment, midway through one of Cookie & Cream’s Music World stages, where a seven-key piano blocks the paths of both characters. When Cookie presses a button, a short melody of four notes is played. To proceed, the player must replicate the melody on the piano.

The challenge is threefold. Even if a visual cue denoted which keys must be pressed in which order, hopping from key to key without accidentally brushing an extra note would be difficult. The second layer of challenge is the Simon-esque memory requirement. The order of the keys must be instantly committed to memory to replicate it; only one attempt may be made. A mistake brings about a new melody, eliminating the progression through brute force trial-and-error and necessitating immediate memorization. The last layer is pitch recognition. The player must be able to transliterate the audial notes to the piano keys to which they correspond and replicate the melody perfectly.

The synthesis of three obstacles symptomizes an unwillingness to settle and a brave readiness to stray from generic conventions (a music puzzle in a platforming game) that is defines Cookie & Cream’s epoch and is too rare today. The only skill required to advance through most contemporary games is the ability to move a reticle over a moving target. To paraphrase Yahtzee of The Escapist, a first-person shooter is a point-and-click puzzle game where the solution to every puzzle is "Use Gun On Dude." The other end of the gaming spectrum, cell phone games, is worse: progression there is often gated behind pay walls.

I find myself playing games less and less often. I usually chalk this up to simply outrgrowing them. But after revisiting Cookie & Cream this weekend, I think it’s games that are outgrowing me. Their interests keep getting older and more “mature,” a games industry euphemism for “violent and sexualized,” and I'm still here, skipping cartoon rabbits over giant pianos.