https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/screens/2009-08-13/this-weeks-waste-of-time/

This Week's Waste of Time

By James Renovitch, August 13, 2009, 11:12am, Picture in Picture

If last week's festival of inappropriateness didn't get your brain boiling then how about something a bit more meta? Oh yeah, "meta," the prefix that makes anything you're talking about an undergrad thesis. So, really, I'm taking the "waste of time" descriptor to a whole new level. You'll believe me when you play these games.

First off is another game from Anthony Lavelle. (You may remember another game of his called Shift [Here's my blog post if you don't remember (Aren't brackets in quotes so meta [So John Barth (Sorry, but everyone has a thesis.).]?).].) It's called Upgrade Complete and the objective is to earn enough points/money to upgrade and unlock everything from extra weapons to a cooler looking copyright logo (see picture at right). The game itself is dull, but the reward of spending your time upgrading every possible item and unlocking every achievement (spoiler alert) is a super-awesome screen that dubs you the best winner the game creator has ever seen and wishes you "Congratulations forever!" I think there's some commentary about gaming becoming a vehicle for bragging rights rather than being fun. Meta things usually make some sort of statement, right?

Similarly, there's John Cooney's Achievement Unlocked that rewards players for doing everything from simply moving to dying. Cooney's new game, This is the Only Level, is as meta as it sounds but it's actually relatively fun. You play an elephant with some serious ups who navigates the same level over and over again. Thankfully, each time there's a slight twist. Beware the insufferable music.

The mother of all meta games is the helpfully titled You Have to Burn the Rope. I'm not going to spoil the surprise of that one, but luckily the game should take you mere seconds to complete. Make sure you have your headphones on so you can listen to the song from Reachground during the credits that retells the epic story of your conquest. You can hear more Reachground songs, but nothing lives up to the meta song about a meta game.

It's complicated.

Enjoy.