Opinions Vary: GIVE ME NEW GAME+, OR GIVE ME DEATH.

To smash the face of your enemies is the most grand of human experiences. To drink their blood from the crystal chalice of your superiority is to achieve the pinnacle of Darwinian success. It is with this irrefutable notion in mind that I postulate the following: every fucking video game should have New Game+. Every digi-polygon experience should allow those of us who have rose up through the darkness of a Level 1, Devoid of Equipment birth to return to those who felled us at the beginning of our journey with fury. We deserve to smash their teeth with our litany of new abilities. We deserve it, god fucking dammit. We earned it.

One of the glories of Skill Trees and Experience Points is that they allow for a tangible acknowledgement of your progression in the game. You are egregiously more powerful, accumulating Gun Turrets, and more Hit Points, and larger metal phallic sword-cocks to deal higher damages per the seconds with. Back in the dark ages of 1999, such features were largely relegated to Japanese role-playing games. These were games where you played roles. Most often than not, you were a whiny little bitch of a young adult who for one reason or another was granted the privilege of saving the world.

Time has passed.

Seasons have changed.

Now here in the year 20XX, Skill Trees and Experience Points are ubiquitous. As the Japanese roles-playing games have withered, other genres (almost all?) have taken these play mechanics into their corpus. Even titles like Far Crying Three have inherited the grinding momentum of the delicious androgynous little roles-playing treats. It makes perfect sense. For what does a bro playing Far Crying Three want more than to witness their masculinity bulging with empirical proof?

Nothing. Nothing at all. I speak from experience.

I swear to God nothing made me more hard during a little slice of December than deploying my death-dealing wizardy in Far Cry 3 with more and more aplomb. As I slit throats and loosed arrows and smashed skulls, my Bro Dude gained more and more abilities. By the end of the game, I was a khaki-pants wearing piece of shit who knew only destruction. Smash! Chug the blood for fallen! Pew, pew, pew! Eat the morsels from their loins. Ingest their life-spirit, become one with Ares.

However, what became of my Death-Dealing Thunder Bro has become of my characters all too often. At the pinnacle of my strength, at the very apex of my superiority, the game ended.

What.

The.

Good.

Fuck.

For what is the point of ascending the White Plains of Death, if I was incapable of returning from whence I came and annihilating those who spurned me seventy-nine hours earlier? There was no New Game+ (and don’t come at me with the fact that you can reset the base camps to reclaim them, you fuck), there was no means to enjoy my throat-slitting blood bath prowess. Same goes for Ken Levine’s Fringe: Infinity. Why should I play for fifteen hours, grinding up my vigors? Why should I max out Bucking Bronco and Douglas The Boom Boom (my shotgun), if I couldn’t employ them as I saw fit?

In short: what is the point of a grind, if by the time you have peaked, the game is over?

Not all games make this mistake. Motherfuckers like Borderlands 2 allow for you to restart the game with all your abilities in check. A title like Maya The Hottie Vault Hunter offers you this ability with enemy levels increased as well. Other games just let you run the fuck amok on foes with your new abilities. I find both adequate solutions. Whatever allows me to use the abilities I have spent hours acquiring for more than the final boss battle.

(As a brief aside, I find optional bosses to be a minimal but almost satisfactory compromise. To stand toes-to-knees with Emerald Weapon was both an honor and a challenge. After felling that errant fuck, I wore his heart as a carapace and fucked his Mom.)

YouknowwhatImsaying?

There is no drawback to my demand for a New Game+ A couple of nights ago I got into a debate with Ken Levine within my dreams regarding the implementation of my desired feature. Knowing that everything exists at some point in this wunder-full Multiverse, I cherish the thought that one of me actually got this honor. What Levine came at me with was the idea that a New Game+ essentially breaks the game.

I will tell you what I told that brilliant auteur piece of shit: good, who the fuck cares?

For, this is not the actual game we’re talking about. It is New Game Plus, a feature that is unlocked after wading through the brutal corpses of the actual game. If the game is broken and features nothing but easy death for your antagonists, what does it matter? I have already proven my mettle through the fires of the initial playthrough.

I earned this goddammit. I sat with my ass cheeks covered in dirty shat for hours, urging myself to kill just one more skag. Just one more. Just one more. For a little more experience. To unlock that glorious second turret for my commando. Why should I not be given the option to play through the game a second time?

I ain’t hurting anybody.

I already beat the game.

Anyone who doesn’t want to can just restart the game on regular difficulty.

Give me New Game+ or give me death.