A few days ago, I gave up on outwardly promising surrealist RPG Nashbored an embarrassingly short way in, due to a wildly misjudged trap-dodging section (one part of which reset me back to the start of the banal puzzle if I failed to skip past any one of its five rows of patrolling doomblades - you know the sort). I mean, sure, whoever designed that challenge deserves to immediately step in particularly rancid dog poo whenever they leave their house, but on the other hand my swift abandonment of it speaks volumes about where games (and games and I) are at in 2019. It's so easy to give up now.

In the late 1980s, I faced kindred tortures at the hands of seminal Spectrum adventure Knight Lore, whose outrageous brutality would chill the blood of even the most vociferous git-gudder today. But I did not give up. I dashed myself against those craggy, mono-coloured rocks time and again.

Read more