Path of Exile and the Infinity Gem of Punching

I recently spent half of my virtual money in Path of Exile, which isn't much, to buy a jewel that was supposed to give me amazing martial arts powers. A kind of Infinity Gem of Punching. The real cost? I can't equip weapons and shields (as a devoted unarmed fighter, I wouldn't have it any other way), or gloves (which is trickier). The problem is that this Infinity Gem needs pure stats to work well and not having things equipped in a few slots means a lot less stat-based power.

I hate the whole idea of stats on gear by the way. Like how does having Intelligence on shoes make any sense? Did my character write some kind of crib sheet for casting spells on the soles of their unicorn-skin boots? And strength makes even less sense. Are there some kind of pneumatic pistons in my pants that make me stronger? Shoes in RPGs should make you faster or jump higher, that's it. Pants should protect you from public embarrassment, that's it. I could see a belt making you stronger like a wide weight-lifting belt, or the belt of Hercules (I’ll allow mythological precedent). Maybe your helmet increases your perception. But if you want your wizard to be smarter, they can carry a book and some Spectacles of Reading Small Print.

I have a soulbound epic-tier pair of spectacles myself and they really are magic. They bend the very light of creation before it reaches my eyes, letting me see things that would otherwise be shrouded in the perpetual Mists of Unfocus. How many great champions have we lost when they couldn’t read a small-print road sign in those cursed mists, and stumbled unknowingly into the lair of some ill-defined tomb, cavern, or crypt, of terror, horror, or malice? They couldn’t even make out the cause of their end and wound up in graves carved with the smudged script of the ancient and blurry Fuzzy Ones.

Anyway, what did I do in Path of Exile? I threw more money after bad (they call money Orbs in Path of Exile) and bought a shiny necklace that doesn't just give me 100 points in one stat but all three (strength, dexterity, and intelligence). This goes against everything I believe in the previous paragraphs, but what can you do? I'm just a guy trying to make my way through the universe by punching people. I suppose I can think of my expensive jewelry like a magical-era smartphone. I can look up spell trivia to make me smarter, use a fitness tracker to make me stronger, and use some kind of ley-line-based GPS to give me directions to make me faster.

Okay. So, now I'm punching things with my favorite attack in Path of Exile, the Infernal Blow, which makes enemies explode if you punch them enough. "You don't know it, but you're already dead," I say as I walk away from a soon-to-be-dynamite-undead-cyborg wizard. This goes on for many happy levels until I realize that my favorite attack doesn't really scale to the endgame.

That's the thing about Path of Exile, it's a cool game in the early levels, but once you get to the infinite endgame, things go from slow-paced ARPG to Dark Souls Bullet Hell. Hundreds of mobs run at you at the same time, attacking you with abilities you can't even see. Your only hope is to nuke them before they get close. And there I am punching one guy so that he eventually explodes while a few hundred of his closest friends are debuffing, stunning, freezing, burning me. Some even have the gall to explode before I lay one knuckle on them. 

My only move is to switch from punching people until they explode to the attack everyone seems to use: Cyclone. It's literally just spinning with your hands stretched out like you're a kid on the playground. This is probably the game's most popular melee attack and the developers can't be bothered to give some kind of cool animation. Just stand there in a t-pose and spin, man! Spin! But, ok, at least I'm spinning with my fists. You can't see anything anyway, with all the graphics of everything attacking you at once, so what does it matter? But I know what I'm doing. Like that staff on my back in WOW, I can only ignore it for so long. It's not Kung Fu, it's barely martial arts. There's only so much disbelief I can suspend.

And why is this silly attack so popular? For a reason that boggles the mind. Simply, you can move while you attack. Surprisingly few melee abilities in this bullet hell game that's all about avoiding death in a million hats let you move and attack at the same time. No, you have to stand in place and throw your punches, or swing your axes, while a storm of shit comes at you. By lifting this silly restriction, they could revolutionize the game. Just let me run and punch people, man.

But I keep coming back to Path of Exile all the same, maybe once a year or so. I like all the customization and combos you can make. I’ve liked the idea of taking two powers or items and getting a new effect since Final Fantasy 6. From what I remember, you could equip two relics (?) on each character that did special things like let you use two weapons or attack four times. And sometimes they had fun interactions like if you equipped the two relics from the previous sentence your character would attack 8 times!

This is the essence of Path of Exile and it works for me because, at the end of the day, there’s only one thing I like more than punching things virtually, and that’s making up new superheroes. And if I can get cool costumes to go with their powers, I feel happy. Making more elaborate powers and backstories is how I get through the story-devoid grind-fests like Path of Exile.

Someday I’ll write about all the characters I created in City of Heroes. Though it wouldn’t make for a fun comic book. The first page would be a quick introduction of all the characters with giant walls of backstory text. The rest of the pages would be them punching, scrapping, blapping, controlling, tanking hundreds of copy-pasted bad guys in Atlas Park. Or maybe it would be spectacular.

One of my fondest non-martial arts game memories was the summer I spent downloading fan-made mods for Xcom 2. I created dozens of original superheroes and cribbed dozens more from comics and movies. I had X-men, Anime, and Edgar-Rice-Burroughs-themed teams. I even downloaded a lightsaber mod and created whole teams of Jedi and Sith Xcom operatives. I then happily sent them to their deaths in endless battles against the alien hordes. This experience was unique and it can probably be never recreated. With new patched versions of Xcom 2, not all the mods are compatible anymore. This gaming moment exists as a pinnacle of gaming achievement only in my memory. An epic journey during which I gathered the forces from the whole of the panfoamic everythingverse to fight a simple alien invasion.

I wish I could say that Path of Exile lets me create heroes in a similar way. But really, the characters all kind of look the same unless you buy microtransaction costumes. And those are all kind of the same, full of spikes, horns, and skulls. How about some loose martial arts robes for all of us out there who are spinning for the win?  

In the end, Path of Exile, like a lot of things these days, is a bit too serious, isn’t it? Games can’t be just games anymore. They are ecosystems. We have to have microtransactions, streamer engagement, fan conventions, more microtransactions that are really “supporter packs,” podcasts, reveals of the name of the next expansion, special event leagues, reveals of the patch notes, player moderators, reveals of the addendum to the patch notes, some more microtransactions, youtube how-to-videos, and even blogs.

That’s the so serious stuff that’s not even in the game. The game itself has to have unreachable locations and unbeatable bosses that require hundreds or thousands of hours of investment to even attempt. Never mind the spreadsheet gymnastics you have to master to understand the 5-dimensional math required to optimize your characters.  All so your spinning fists can do a couple more points of damage.

I just want to create cool characters to punch things. All this so-serious stuff is a distraction from achieving the glory I find in those little moments when I feel some small part of the spirit of Kung Fu or Karate has leaked into a video game. A punch, a kick, or a throw that showcases the mastery of the spleen-bursting, bone-cracking, lung-emptying transfer of energy. Maybe a perfect game exists out there that does this without all the seriousness of modern games. But it’s probably hidden behind the mists of streaming, micro-transactions, and social media engagement. The thing is, if I find it, my journey to Punchalla might end. And like mastery of any martial art in the world of the verité, the true path to Punchalla has as many steps as there are moments in a lifetime.

And now, Skyrim calls to me again with its silly outdated graphics. No Infinity Gem of Punching but punching a dragon could be fun. As much as I like to play games in character, sometimes I just want to see how far I can push the ridiculous. Can I make my character so overpowered they will be able to kill a dragon with one punch? It's tempting.