My first experience with La-Mulana was walking one screen over from the start screen and seeing a bird.

"Oh, I'll jump over and hit it with my whip", I thought. I proceeded to execute the most awkward jump in the history of jumps.

"Oh, you can't change direction mid-air. This isn't Mario", I realized, as my character proceeded on a path that was definitely not conducive to whipping anything. But I had already triggered the bird's pinpoint laser tracking system, causing it to levitate gently and then launch across the screen at me like a guided missile.

The mid-air impact from the bird knocked me the game equivalent of 20 feet backward in a parabolic arc. I landed back on the previous screen. At this point I realized I had no way to heal myself. Also the bird had respawned.

But a few hours into the game, once you've gotten some of the subweapons and a health upgrade and figured out a couple puzzles, and gotten used to the goofy control system, it gets way more fun. Then the hard part becomes putting the clues together to solve the puzzles. And some of the puzzles are pretty absurd. At one point I had a notebook with a page half-filled. It's pretty awesome.