I might not play well with others but I know how to keep myself entertained

In the event that any of you are even slightly interested in video games and are looking for a new game to play (or just someone else to share your love of a game) look no further for I am here.

Just to start off, I’m not a huge multiplayer game person. As I stated in the title, I don’t play well with others, as evidenced by my experiences playing Fortnite with my 11 year old nephew which I will share with you now. While it’s not a game that I would play for myself, I do find it a nice way to spend time with my nephew when we can’t actually see each other.

Also I think he likes being better than me at something. He’s years off from being taller than me, and I doubt he’ll ever be able to match my levels of sass, wit and sarcasm, but fortnite, that’s where he has me beat.

On a few occasions we’re joined by friends of his, and sometimes we’re joined by the younger siblings of people he knows only in passing. It is on these latter occasions that I and Matt are reminded why I play games by myself. There’s been a few times when I have called Matt over to witness the verbal destruction.

There was this one kid last week who was a right pain in the ass. Typical for a kid who sounded about eight and like he was losing his voice from being a demon all day. The main word he said was “Oi!” and he didn’t seem to understand anything about tactical advantage or eliminating the threat before tending to the wounded. I’m not saying I expect great things from an eight year old, but if you’re going to be a level 132 on fortnite you better have picked up something along the way.

Suffice it to say, my nephew was getting sick of it, his friend was getting sick of it and I only have patience for kids that are related to me or are my friend’s offspring. So I confused him with big words and then when we went to a free-for-all mode, killed him every chance I could. He then threatened to get his dad to tell me off because I kept killing him. So I told him I’d get my dad to fight his dad (because clearly that’s where were at). He tried to insult me a few more times, threw out far more curse words than I ever expected until my dearest nephew said to him, “You don’t want to try and roast my aunt because you’ll regret it.”

Bless that annoying gremlin, he is my favourite nephew. And yes as his dad (my oldest brother) has taught him to point out, he’s my only nephew but that doesn’t mean he won’t continue to be my favourite. Also I’m glad to know that he enjoy my sass when it’s not directed at him.

So by the end of the session I had successfully sassed out multiple small children, “built” a tower to protect myself (much to my nephew’s surprise and delight) and been completely and utterly confused by the smack talk of the younger generation.

I tell someone to ‘suck it’ and I’m weird, my nephew says he’s gonna go “sweat” on some kid and that’s totally normal?

Now, that I’ve put enough back story that no one asked for, onto my thoughts on video games that again no one asked for.

Witcher 3: It had to be on the list because would this be a game recommendation list if it wasn’t? I really enjoy this game for a number of reasons. There’s a lot of open world exploring, side missions and so. much. rich. back story. Of course for anyone who has read the books or played the previous Witcher games some of this isn’t necessarily new information. However for me this was my first introduction to the Witcher franchise and it was amazing. I’ll be honest, I haven’t finished it yet. I keep coming back to it whenever I get the urge and generally spend my spare time for a whole week playing it, but I always get caught up in the side quests and wanting to collect everything I possibly can.
Trophies. I need all the trophies.
The downloadable content is worth getting but needs to be downloaded before you start or there’s a few glitches that make it impossible to complete some of he missions.
Geralt’s sass is pretty great and it was great to be able to watch The Witcher on my laptop while playing Witcher on the TV. Double Geralt. That’s where I’m at.

Kingdom Hearts series remastered: This series. Nostalgia central. I’d heard a lot about this series when I was growing up but didn’t actually start playing it until the games were remastered for PS3 when I was in highschool. I also mainly got it because it had Stitch.

I can do a Stitch voice like nobodies business.
The other thing I really love about this series is that it gives us a chance to explore all those cities, towns and jungles that we grew up seeing in movies and wished we could be a part of. You get to fight alongside your favourite Disney characters. There’s also a lot of deeper meaning to the nobodies but that’s a bit much to go into in this particular post. I’m actually far more obsessed than this measly paragraph lets on but we’ll come back to my love of Kingdom Hearts later I’m sure.

Bioshock series: This first person shooter has a pretty interesting back story as well as well as some great plot twists. Whenever Matt plays a particular map in COD Zombies I get the biggest urge to play Bioshock. I don’t know why. The first game freaked me out something ridiculous the first two times I played. Not sure the first time really counted because I got probably 1/5 into the game and stopped playing after the Splicers got too freaky. The second time I played it I had The Golden Girls playing on my laptop to the side and I’d only play it during the day. I played it recently and the only protection I had was the cats, both of whom were asleep three meters away from me and really no comfort at all but it was fine because it wasn’t anywhere near as scary. Reality being scarier or something like that.

Tomb Raider; Rise of the and Shadow of the: Who doesn’t love a good strong heroine? Misogynists.
Bad joke? Maybe. I’ll find out when my mum tells me to get rid of it. She’s the cheapest but best PR rep I could ask for. Now back to Lara Croft. She’s strong. She’s gorgeous. She’s Indiana Jones with better tools and insane adventures. The games combine a lot of history and legend with supernatural and I love that. I also love how Lara Croft has changed the way women are portrayed in video games since the first instalment. Sure she’s always been considered a sex symbol, but a sex symbol that can kick ass.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Another strong heroine with a great backstory and a plot twist you don’t see coming. Or you do. Doesn’t make it less great. This game has a lot of open world exploring and side quests that you could get lost in. I spent maybe sixty more hours on this game than I would have if I had just been following the main quests. But seriously, where’s the fun in that? What kept me going back to the main quests was the main story line. I needed to find out who Aloy’s mother was just as much as she did and boy did the journey leave me shook.

Life is Strange: I actually started playing this with a good friend and I’m pretty sure it was their fourth? play through by that point. I think that one of the really attractive aspects of this game is how the main character has the power to turn back time and change her decisions, therefore changing the outcome of each situation. I mean, who hasn’t wanted to immediately take back something they’ve said or thought that maybe if they did something just a few seconds earlier or later then a whole situation could’ve been avoided. I heard this kind of argument constantly when I was kid. Especially when it came to school drop off, “If we’d left the house when I said then we wouldn’t be stuck in this traffic.” Soon as we were old enough my brother and I were catching the bus. Then as soon as I was old enough I just drove myself to school.

Ark Survival Evolved: Ever wondered what it would be like to be eaten by a dinosaur? Look no further than Ark Survival. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to ride a pterodactyl? Ark Survival is the game for you. This game is not for the faint of heart. It is almost more realistic than I was necessarily expecting. The premise is that you are a human stranded on an island with, you guessed it, dinosaurs. Prehistoric creatures of all kind roam the beaches, forests, mountains. Have you ever been eaten by a Titanoboa? I have. So many times. I just wanted to get my stuff back. But no. This jerk of a snake was all like “nah mate, your lunch bag of belongings is mine now, so you get to start all over again,”

Also yes, you did read that correctly. When you get killed you only have a certain amount of time to go and find your body…with a brown lunch bag full of your belongings next to it. Or maybe the lunch bag appeared after your body disappeared….you know what, there was a brown paper bag on this island of prehistoric demon snakes and that’s what matters.

Also for anyone who was wondering even though I bet you weren’t. Yes. I did have a team of velociraptors named after the characters from Friends. If I had the game I would’ve loaded it up and taken a photo of them sitting in the giant pen I built to keep them safe. However, I loaned it to my nephew…which I’m thinking wasn’t the best idea considering how young he is…

Hey if I can watch my dad play Doom at 3am when I was four years old and suffer no ill side effects then I’m sure he’s fine. Before anyone makes a comment to themselves, my twisted mind was certainly not brought on by poor graphics and weird pig squealing in the dark of the night. Not everything is the parents fault.

Legends of Zelda; Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask: I’ve just finished playing Ocarina of Time of my old Nintendo 64 yesterday. It was loaned to me by a wonderful friend at work. I had previously been playing N64 games on my laptop via an emulator that I downloaded over a decade ago. Here’s to you Project 64. My brother Jesse actually found this for us after N64 game cartridges stopped being sold or rented at video stores. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants that nostalgia but can’t afford to spend a lot of money on something they’ll probably only use for a few weeks.

I know it’s probably not a popular opinion but I actually kind of prefer Majora’s Mask. I know. Blasphemous. Do not get me wrong. Ocarina of Time is and always will be amazing. I think it’s because Majora’s Mask was the first Legend of Zelda game that I played. The transformation whenever Link puts on a mask is still weirdly nightmarish for a kids game but I can just skip that so it’s fine.

Oh. And while we’re here I’d just like to say, Mido is a dick. If you don’t know or don’t remember who Mido is,

This punk. So he’s a total tool and then he goes and accuses us of killing the Great Deku Tree?! For starters. I did not force myself to overcome my fear of video game skull spiders to come back to these accusations. Secondly. What has Mido every done for the Kokiri? Did he stop Ganondorf? No. Did he save the Kokiri Forest? No. He was a jerk who had an unrequited crush on a Forest Sage and bullied a kid for being different. So no, I don’t feel bad for him in the end credits when he’s all sad because Saria and Link are gone.

God that felt good. That was like eighteen years of hatred for a minor character who was an ass for like five minutes. That’s right. I can hold a grudge. Like my nephew said, don’t try and roast me Mido, you’ll regret it.

There’s not a lot of first person shooter games in this list, I know. I do not mind killing virtual people, far less jail time than killing real people. I just like to know why I’m killing them. Indiscriminate murder is not what I got out of bed and plonked myself on the couch for. Witcher for example. Geralt is an enhanced coin for hire. He kills monsters. And sometimes the humans are the real monsters. So yeah, some days you kill the vampire because it’s killing innocent people. Other days you don’t kill the dragon because some dick villager went and killed it’s baby and got what he deserved. And then the rest of the time you kill the 8 year old because he won’t stop saying “Oi, oi, oi, res, res, oi you spastics, res me, oi, oi, stop killing me, my dad said to stop.” This was a direct quote by the way.

Hope you’ve all found ways to cope with isolation and maybe I’ve given you a few ideas.

P.S. My dad, as a cop, has assured me that virtual murder is far less messy to clean up than real life murder. So if you’re getting a little antsy being cooped up with kids/spouses/family of any kind, please, reserve your violence for the things that keep respawning. You kill a real life person and it’s just the once. Virtual people keep coming back to life. No body no crime right?

I’m definitely going to get told off for this one.