“No Fear” is an extremely stupid mantra; it’s even worse when applied to racing. And yet, this is the explanation provided to us scrawled on the rear tinted windows of modified cars that would cut us off on the road.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but fear is good. Fear is natural. Fear is the instinct that keeps us alive when danger threatens us. As per whichever famous race car driver said it first, fear is the instinct that keeps you from slamming into a wall at hundreds of kilometres per hour and dying, because that’s not how you win a race.
The phrase “No Fear” implies that some emotions are unnecessary baggage that need to be discarded on the way to victory when in fact the opposite is true. In order to succeed, you need to transcend your fears by confronting and embracing them, not by ignoring them.
Like people with addictions, this is something that you’ll never eradicate from your life, so every path towards success starts with acknowledging the fear in your life.*
As I’m not done complaining, the very worst thing about the phrase “No Fear” is the way it is used as a justification. If you have no fears and are pure ambition, what’s to stop you from doing everything you want to do without regard to others? While it’s called regicide in the Scottish play, for everyone else is simply called “being an asshole” (Yes, I’m talking about people who cut you off while driving).
For all these reasons and more, I was sure I was going to detest No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking. I was sure I was going to enjoy thinking up strings of similes to describe how poor it was like or as, but instead, I liked it. It’s a fun game. No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking is deceptively deep, offering options for tilt balancing and front and back steering, and offers lots of upgrades and courses to keep you busy.
Even so, the soundtrack is worth whatever time it takes to turn it off in the options, and the menu design feels like the UI interface for a highly-advanced Mountain Dew refreshment dispenser. But these detractions can’t take away the fact that the first mountain run in England is a blast; it catches the excitement of racing down a hill, your heavy breathing rhythmically punctuating the whirl of tires and the whirl of the breeze.
Unfortunately, the other tracks I’ve sampled in my short time with No Fear Downhill Mountain Racing aren’t true to the keyword “mountain” in the title. The Africa race course is disappointing, as is the one in San Francisco. “Extreme” or “not extreme”, parked cars shouldn’t be a factor to consider in mountain bike racing.
So, consider me a player who dared for more, letting my video game racing ambitions run wild only to be ultimately let down. But then, maybe it’s not right to be so ambitious, and yet at the same time play a video game that let me live a life with no fear.
* Simple version: Exhibit A – Batman, whose greatest fear is bats (his parents are already dead by this point). Since he embraced the thing that scared him the most, nothing else would ever scare him for the rest of his comic books and movies.
How far did I get in 45 minutes: was able to win the first track championship, and was able to check out the Africa and San Francisco tracks
The good: that first England track
The bad: my poor, battered ambitions
Will I play this again once this year is up: I was so sure it was going to be yes, but no. Driver, Gran Turismo and even Ridge Racer are better
Number of days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 11
Play-a-Daystation 