I blame *gestures at everything* for why I don’t blog about gaming in this gaming blog. I’ve gained weight, I’m struggling to stay focused at work and I barely sleep. And in the middle of all of that, I continue to buy video games that I don’t have the time nor energy to play. Le sigh.
I’m going to try to get back into this blog this year because it generally makes me happy when I write and talk about video games. I just need to make it a thing in my daily routine. So here’s hoping.
I just bought Civilization VI on the Nintendo Switch. Say goodbye to my productivity/battery-life.
It seems like everyone is gaming these days. Just try and find a Nintendo Switch, good luck. I get it though, we have all this time on our hands and gaming is a great way to socialize with each other. Even if you’re not playing an online multiplayer game, there’s a sense of community because you’re playing a game that others have played. There are resources out there for you to seek out, videos to watch to learn tips & tricks, livestreams of people speeed-running the game. You’re not alone in playing a game. There’s a whole industry and community of people behind those buttons you’re clicking. And there’s a comfort in that.
I’m not super into online gaming. It’s not a thing I’ve really been about. I’m a solo gamer who likes to do my own thing. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but the main one is that I’m very idiosyncratic with my gameplay and I’ll play something for 3 minutes and decide I’m not in that mood and move on to something else. I don’t want to have to deal with another person and possibly hurting their feelings because my brain is weird and operates in its own distinct way.
I hope all of you are staying safe and surviving the quarantine. Be sure to practice safe social distancing. It does work, it does matter, and we are seeing progress.
Here’s what I’ve been playing:
A hodge-podge of RPGs and crafting simulators. That’s just been the mood. Happy Gaming.
I’m late to the party, but the good thing is that there’s plenty of food to devour. That’s how I feel having been gifted a console (PS4) so late into it’s life-cycle. We already know that the PS5 (PSV?) has been announced for December 2020. So why now?
There are a ton of advantages with jumping into a console so late in it’s life-cycle. Here are just a few of them:
Those are just a few of the reasons to jump into a gaming console at the end of it’s life. You just save a ton of money and have a lot of media to consume.
There are certainly trade-offs, as the number of games that are being released for the older generation start to taper off as release of the latest approaches. But for me, this isn’t really a deal-breaker. I did this with the Xbox 360 and here I am at the tail end of Sony’s Playstation 4.
Also explains my absence from this blog. I’ve been busy playing Red Dead Redemption II, Death Stranding, & God of War. I’ll be posting some first impressions soon.
I’m getting some solid vibes, this show might actually be good.
That being said. I’ll leave you with this.
They knew what they were doing. We asked a question. They answered.
🙂
Games as services is not something I am quite fond of, but it seems to be the future. Lately it seems, all you have to do is to blink and you’ll discover a game developer announcing an exclusive launcher for their flagship games.
Whether it’s Rockstar with their announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 or Ubisoft with the latest Assassin’s Creed. If you want to buy a game, you have to install their launcher and live inside of their ecosystem. And we know that they’re going to offer all kinds of lootboxes (surprise-mechanics) and additional DLC that are exclusive to their platform.
I hate that I currently have 7 launcher/platforms on my PC:
And Google Stadia is around the corner (I am eagerly awaiting this to fail).
The only shining bit of light I can see is how Microsoft has approached this trend of games as a service with their Xbox Game Pass.
For about $6/month I can have unlimited access to a gallery of games that I am able to immediately download to my PC. I’m not streaming them, so I do not have to fuss with latency or connection speeds. And I’m not paying full price for a game I will lose interest with or does not run well on my aging graphics card (GTX 950).
I wanted to play the new Obsidian game, Outer Worlds, but I also didn’t want to drop $60, so I started my free trial and I have to say, I’m quite pleased with this decision and I’m going to keep my subscription active.
The only small annoyance I have is that the Xbox Game Pass app from the Windows Store is a bit sluggish at times, but it’s also a beta app that will likely receive more updates as the service develops. It’s still only a few months into this being available for PC, so I’m not too worried. It’s a very small thing.
If you’re looking for a convenient way to play games on your PC at a fairly affordable cost, you should take advantage of the $1 first month trial and see if it’s right for you.
Returning to a game you haven’t picked up in months can be a frustrating experience. Outside of feeling disconnected from the narrative of whatever game you’re attempting to hop back inside of, you have also likely forgotten a number of other aspects of the game: controls, attack patterns of bosses, and where you are in the game (literally, somewhere on a giant map unsure of your next step).
I wish more video games took a page from television serials and provided a “Previously on…” kind of recap. Dragon Quest XI, which I’m currently playing does just this and it’s a brilliant addition to an already stand-out game. I am glad the developers recognized that in a game that is potentially 120+ hours long, that it might be useful to have a short recap while your game is loading, explaining that your character was last on this island battling this evil demon and your next goal is to find maguffin A so you can restore order to the blah blah blah.
What often happens to me when I return to an older game is that I start a brand new save, so that I can re-familiarize myself with the game’s narrative/controls and then once I feel like I’ve recalled enough of the game, I will hop back into my older save which has more progress.
I do also wish that outside of a “Previously on…” type of feature, that more games would allow you to replay the introduction/tutorial because that would basically solve the problem of not knowing how to play the game after so many months (or even years) of inactivity.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Glass Cannon 