Breaking the Cycle: One Man’s Struggle to Play Different Video Games

It’s nearly March, which means it’s soon to be the second busiest season for video game releases after the pre-Christmas explosion. All over the world copies of The Last Guardian and Titanfall 2 begin their retirement, abandoned on shelves destined to gather dust ad infinitum and for a few weeks in January there is nothing.

Well, not nothing, there was Nioh and Yakuza 0 which people pretend to like just to stop their fingers from atrophying but mainly there’s naff all till around the end of February.

There was also Resident Evil 7, which was genuinely brilliant, but this only serves to undermine my premise further.

Then boom. The release hose is set to ultra-fuck-off mode and we get about five high profile releases in a row. This year the line-up is no exception:

– For Honor
– Halo Wars 2
– Sniper Elite 4
– Ghost Recon Wildlands
– Horizon Zero Dawn
– Mass Effect: Andromeda

I would play each of the above with varying levels of enthusiasm. There’s also some shit about a guy called Link and Nintendo launching a whole new console but I don’t know anything about that because I am an adult and Zelda is atrocious shite*.

They are all my-kind of game; “Shooty Shooty-Bang Bang Save the Day with your Attractive, Seemingly Invincible Hero of God-like Skill Simulator 2017”.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, I would like to stress at this stage.

I am, however, haunted by a spectre. A spectre that follows me around judging me for only playing that very specific type of game when there are hundreds, if not thousands of alternatives.

‘How about a nice puzzle game?’ you might reasonably ask. I fucked off Portal after about 10 minutes because it was too hard (still wear my Companion Cube tie to work though because I’m a massive fraud).

Or an MMO? I hear Eve Online has gone full Skynet and is now self-aware.

And what the actual fuck is a MOBA?

I watched 45 seconds of a video of someone playing Hearthstone and nearly vomited with rage, as if Pokemon cards didn’t absolutely smash that formula 20 years ago. I considered buying Diablo 3 but I remembered the original scared the living daylights out of me when I was 9 so I sacked that off. Civilisation 6 looks more like the world’s most complicated version of Microsoft Excel than an actual game so that wasn’t going to happen either.

Clearly the issue is with me, I’m just not in the right mindset to play these sorts of games. I have limited time and as such I tend to delve into the game that offers the most immediate gratification with the minimal required effort. It’s like a drug; I switch on, I kill the fuck out of some burly dudes, I feel good about myself, I go to bed.

There’s more to gaming than this surely, there has to be.

So I’ve thought about how to break the cycle, to change the game; quite literally. I’ve come up with a few suggestions:

1. I’ve prohibited myself from buying any new games of this ilk. I’m going cold turkey on generic action adventure games.**

2. I’ve started reading up on new games from somewhere other than the Amazon pre-orders page.

3. I’ve bought all of the Fast & Furious movies on DVD in the vain hope it might make me excited about racing games.

4. I’m going to practice not being a total bastard so I can play any Telltale game without just wanting everyone to die.

If anyone out there in Video Gameland has any suggestions, I am all ears. I’ve already vowed to play more indie games this year which should help educate my palate so to build on this I’m going to throw off the shackles of ‘Generic Action Game 65’ and embrace the wider video game world.

Wish me luck.

*EDITOR’S NOTE: This was a joke. Please do not DDoS.
**This does not include Mass Effect Andromeda, nothing will stand in the way of me playing that game for 48 hours straight.