Locked door, I hate you.

I hate the way you are resistant to knives, to guns, to sledgehammers, to rocket-propelled grenades, to weapons that rewrite the very laws of physics, to dark unearthly magic, to punches that can knock a man’s head clean off.

I hate the way I could kick or smash you down in real life, with this puny human body of mine. But I cannot in the grand, escapist fantasy of a videogame.

I hate the way you are so often an easy shortcut for developers unable or unwilling to devise more satisfying obstacles and challenges.

I hate the way you so often lead to nowhere, how you are nothing more than decoration for a wall.

I hate the way I’m expected to give up trying to open you when I see the words “this door has been locked from the other side” or “this door opens elsewhere”, as though they’re a command from God himself.

I hate the way you always make that click-click, or clunk or uh-uh noise when I try to open you: the very sound of failure.

I hate the way your key or switch is always so far away.

I hate the way the fate of the world so often hinges upon opening you.

I hate the way the letter ‘E’ has worn off my keyboard because I’ve tried to open you so many times, in so many games.

I hate the way you’ve added hundreds, perhaps thousands of unnecessary extra hours to my lifetime of gaming.

I hate the way you’ve annoyed me so much that I’ve just written 200 words whining pathetically about you.

If you didn’t exist, locked door, videogames as we know them would be radically different.

Locked door, I hate you.