Reviews and reflections

It's not one game. It's one of those dinky little gimmick games that tries to extract the maximum amount of ad watching for the brief day or so that you'll play it. You know the type, the most egregious among them being the ones with content that's completely different from the ads for their game that are found in other games, though my horrible little car game isn't like that (as far as I know; I try not to even pick these stupid things up.)

The one I play is called Traffic Jam, by developer Popcore, but it's not even close to the only one of its design. They're more or less copy-pasted, with different names describing some sort of traffic jam, car jam, parking lot jam, etc. You're swiping cars to make them drive as far as they can in one direction, with the goal of getting them out of the parking lot. Some stages have old lady pedestrians that end the stage if you hit them, or other gimmicks; Popcore's version has potholes that explode in a pattern, construction areas, gates that lower after three turns and raise again after three turns. It's fine as a puzzle game. It'd be better if they didn't have about ten versions of each kind of stage that repeat.

And here's the thing: I frequently fall into cycles of hopeless addiction. I don't know why! It's all cheaply put together, repetitive, clearly trying to profit off forcing ads into my eyes. It represents everything I hate about the current state of games, of the internet, of our society. And yet there's something in here that I don't know what exactly my brain is so convinced it's going to get out of the experience. It's going to be fulfilling, surely, if I just do another couple of stages. No, a couple more. One more. The next one is the stuff. Ah fuck, it's 4:30am, late to bed...but just another little stage or two.

Infuriating, is what it is. I'm doing the video game equivalent of making a meal out of McDonalds fries, and I hate it. And I don't want to play anymore, and I'm obsessed. Or, I was obsessed; I only tore myself away long enough to write this because its grip is finally loosening again.

Maybe I can go back to getting meaningful things done now.