Editor's note: Evan teams up with Bitmob intern (and compulsive gamer) Jasmine Maleficent Rea to talk crappy levels in awesome games for a new feature Evan is calling "Bitmob Splitscreen." I'm totally with Jasmine on the train level in Uncharted 2 -- the rote memorization it required drove me up the wall. -Brett

Bitmob Splitscreen is a one-on-one discussion conducted over e-mail on a single topic. For the first installment, intrepid Editorial Intern Jasmine Maleficent Rea and I sat down (at our computers) to discuss terrible levels in otherwise great games. Read on for dickery, a dearth of sweet jumps, and some shocking confessions.

Jasmine Maleficent Rea: The ultimate replay-killer for me is the Skull Forest dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I decided to give the game another shot recently, with the intention of just toughing it out when I made it to the Dark World forest. No surprise that one grab from a Wallmaster was all it took for me to abandon the game again. "Never again," she says with wavering resolve.

Evan Killham: Do you have trouble with the Wall-/Floormasters in other Zelda games? If not, what makes these ones so much bigger bastards?

JMR: Honestly, I've not been enamored enough with another Zelda game to stick with it. That's my terrible secret. My stance on these cheap game tactics is firm, however. Anything that can unexpectedly relocate you to the beginning of a level is a cheap and outdated tactic. Levels should be complex enough without the forced repetition. Unfortunately, this is something Shigeru Miyamoto seems to have issues giving up, as Mario games to this day have dungeons that force you back if you don't take the exact right path.

Wallmaster is triply obnoxious because he falls whenever you pause for more than a second. Many enemies in that dungeon require some amount of pause when you're fighting them.

EK: Enemies and obstacles do tend to slow you down, and one time I really noticed that was in the first Jet Ski level from Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Going in, I assumed it was going to be a high-speed chase sort of situation, which is the only reason anyone ever gets onto a Jet Ski in a movie. Unfortunately, the level is full of enemies and exploding barrels, any of which can kill you pretty quickly. So I found that the only safe way through was to go very, very slowly and shoot the barrels and bad guys one by one at a distance, then zip to the next area and stop and do it all over again. It should have been faster and more exciting, but it played out like a really lame remake of Minesweeper.

JMR: Do you think that the goal of the level was to fit in with the stop-and-pop style of the rest of the game, or was it simply poor design? Also, have you cracked open Uncharted 2 and experienced the infamous train level?

EK: I'm not sure if that was the goal of the level... I spent awhile trying to figure out if there was a way to go through it any faster than I was, but I couldn't find one. This either means that there is no such way or I just sucked at the game. So it's possible they were playing with conventions, except that there was that pretty standard on-rails truck level a bit earlier. I'm leaning more towards poor design. Unless I just suck, which I'm willing to consider.

And yes, I have played through Uncharted 2. I thought the train level was maybe a bit too long, but it didn't rankle me as much as the Jet Ski stuff because it didn't fundamentally change the nature of trains. The bottom line for me on this one is that Jet Skis exist in action contexts because of their ability to go really fast and go over sweet jumps, and Uncharted squandered all of that potential. What were your issues with the train level?

JMR: Like Yahtzee, I've developed a strong dislike for Quick Time Events. There aren't many of them throughout Uncharted 2, but the thing I hate more than "Hit A to dodge a boulder" is a quick time boss fight. The train had its drawbacks -- from an inability to see high-powered enemies shooting from the windows beneath you to the helicopters -- but the QTE boss at the end of the line kept me up for hours longer than I would have liked and is the main reason I'll never touch that blasted game again.

If only I learned my lesson... I've played through Resident Evil 4 50-plus times at this point, and I'm able to do so in under 4 hours. Last count was around 3:45 or so. The QTE fights with Jack Krauser are unnecessary, ridiculously long, and highlight the damage this "Press X to Not Die" mechanic is doing to gaming in general.

EK: Hey, we got two out of that one. What else do you have?

JMR: The most sinister of all plot devices: stranding a usually armed character without weapons. This was never done in a more bastardly fashion than in the original Tomb Raider.

I'm not a fan of weakening characters after you've busted your ass to make them as strong as they are. The Natla Mines level stands out for not only stripping Lara of her arsenal, but for combining every cheap platforming trick the programmers could think of with boss fights. I've never finished Tomb Raider because of this. I'm not sure if the level of dickery persists in Tomb Raider: Anniversary Edition.

EK: I like to call that "Metroid Syndrome." I guess this is where I admit that I've never played a Tomb Raider game, outside of a demo or two. How are you supposed to fight bosses without weapons?

JMR: I'm not that fond of Metroid, outside of the Prime series. Damn, I've admitted to being the worst kind of person today.

Anyway, you do eventually get your guns back. By guns, I mean the all-but-useless pistols. But those are only returned to Lara after going through the worst boulder- and lava-filled traps outside of the Atlantian levels.

From there you take your peashooters and tackle Natla's henchmen, who have the rest of your weapons.

EK: There are worse kinds of people, I'm sure. At least you haven't had to call off this discussion because you had a WoW raid scheduled.

So why do you think developers introduce such drastic changes in their games? Do you think it's more for the sake of variety, or do they think we want a challenge?

JMR: Haha, judging by our previous attempt to coordinate group time for Battlefield Heroes, a raid isn't likely to happen at this point. Besides, I am a master of using two different computers at the same time.

I think it is a bit of both. "Variety" can easily be a mask for a lack of ideas, in which any old thing gets shoved into place because the game has to be longer. It is a pity that challenge varies wildly from developer to developer, and I know there will be people who fight my stance on old Zelda, Mario, and Metroid mechanics, but it is time to push ahead and spice things up without adding infuriating elements for the sake of making a game harder.

EK: And one type of level that is often accused of getting thrown in to make a game harder is the "stealth level in the middle of the non-stealth game," like the one in the first Syphon Filter. It took everything that was cool about the game up to that point -- the shooting, the jumping, even Gabe's crazy-ass way of running -- and threw it out in favor of making you walk around slowly and study guard patrol patterns. I don't even remember what the context was for that level, but suddenly you were wearing a tuxedo and peeking around corners.

If you haven't played the game, this is all you need to know: This was the only level in the game in which you could not tase a guy from across the room until he caught on fire. And I really, really missed that.

JMR: XIII had similar issues as Syphon Filter, only that game had no idea what it wanted to be. How close was Syphon Filter's release to Metal Gear Solid's?

EK: Syphon Filter came out about five months later. I'm pretty sure there are stealth levels in most, if not all of the other Syphon Filter games.

JMR: Hmm...I was hoping the distance was great enough for Metal Gear's intense stealthiness to rub off. The level you described comes off a Metal Gear Solid level.

EK: I can see that, but it felt more like they wanted to "mix it up," not realizing that what we wanted to be doing was tasing people in the head from dozens of yards away. Actually, now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that they took the TASER out of the second game, but the horrible stealth remained. Admittedly, giving players an instant-kill weapon with unlimited range and ammo probably broke the game, but damn if it wasn't a lot of fun. Definitely more so than hiding behind pillars in an action game.

JMR: If it weren't for the stealth mission, I'd likely put Syphon Filter in now. I want my stealth missions in my stealth-oriented games thank you very much. I just realized I have a loose Syphon Filter disc floating around here that spontaneously appeared in my house one day.

EK: Yeah, every time I think about replaying it, I just remember that level and the game goes right back on the shelf.

But maybe we weren't giving Syphon Filter enough credit as a stealth game, since it appears to have infiltrated your house pretty successfully.

Thanks to Jasmine for her time -- and for having more interesting responses than I did.

Do you have anything to add? Is this the stupidest article format you've ever seen? Can you think of a better title? Let me know in the comments.