As more states start to reopen their businesses and new cases start to spike again, it’s important to remember that staying home and going out in public is best done only when necessary—and best done in a mask. But I’m not here to talk about social distancing and how important masks are. I’m still staying home and I’m trying all sorts of stay-at-home activities. I’ve been sitting on the sofa and watching TV shows. I’ve been sitting on the sofa watching movies. I’ve been sitting on the sofa listening to podcasts. But now I’m here to talk about something completely different.
Sitting on the sofa and playing video games.
I’m going to be upfront about this and it may make you turn away now. If you do, I’ll understand. But I’m not going to talk about Animal Crossing. I’ve got no problem with it, it just doesn’t seem like my kind of game. I’m an old pro at this and I’ve pretty much gotten it figured out what kinds of games are going to appeal to me and what kinds of games are going to leave me a bit bored. Animal Crossing seems like a cutesy version of The Sims, which could be fun, but as no one has been able to tell me how to defeat the final boss, I’ve decided to skip it. I know lots of people have played it and love it and have spent hundreds of hours on it already, so if you think it’s something you’ll enjoy, there’s lots of evidence saying that you should go for it. Hell, even I’m still thinking about it. I just haven’t gotten it yet.
So, no Animal Crossing. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of other games you can pick up on any console and have a great time. I recently played Uncharted: Lost Legacy (really fun game if you’re a fan of the Uncharted series), Pokemon Sword, Mario Kart 8, Super Mario Odyssey, and some others as well. Final Fantasy 7 Remake came out recently, which I haven’t gotten to yet. The Last of Us 2, same story. But I want to focus on games that are giving me a vicarious outlet for the things I’m missing in regular life right now.
FIFA 20
Mo Salah, cutting inside as one does.
I am a huge soccer fan. I mainly watch the English Premier League, but I will also occasionally check out other leagues. And even though, as I’m writing this, the Premier League has just returned (and the Bundesliga before it), it’s not quite the same thing as seeing matches with full crowds of 45,000 people singing You’ll Never Walk Alone over the Anfield pitch. So during the quarantine, I dove back into my FIFA Career Mode and took control of Liverpool. I scouted young prospects, I played match after match, I stunted on Everton and Manchester United season after season. As real Liverpool closes in on their first league title in 30 years, I’ve already brought it home four times and won the World Cup (with England, no less). Even though football is back, it leaves me with real concerns over player safety and while it does serve as a momentary distraction from the world at large, it doesn’t exactly give me that escape I’m looking for. But in the game, there’s no pandemic. There are no safety concerns. Sure, there are no butterflies in your stomach as your team marches on in important matches. There’s no jumping out of your seat when player does something brilliant and beautiful. But, I do get to live out the fantasy of being both a manager of a top club and being a player as well, which is something you can’t get from a Football Manager type game or just by watching the real thing. And there’s real value in that; real enjoyment to be had. It doesn’t have to be FIFA, of course. If you’re a sports fan of any kind and your team isn’t playing right now, taking the reins of your own club is a wonderful way to pass the extra time on your hands.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Outlaws gonna outlaw. Trust me, this is the least of the crimes you’ll be committing as Arthur Morgan.
Speaking of taking the reins, in this game, you can do that, literally, with a horse. Or many horses, however you want to play it. RDR2 came out in 2018 and I’ve pretty much been playing it since. My first time through, I was so addicted to the story that I didn’t take enough time to sit back and enjoy the world they created in mind-boggling detail. If you’ve read any of the press on it from back then, you’ll know that the horses actually take shits when they need to or how people react differently to you whether you’re freshly bathed or caked in the dried blood of your enemies. But what they can’t really tell you is how wonderful it can be to immerse yourself in the world, or how relaxing it can be to just take some time and fish, or how satisfying it can feel to knife a Klan member right in the chest. Much like Rockstar’s other open world giant, Grand Theft Auto, RDR2 gives you a world in which you can do or be almost anything. I’m one of those weirdos that likes to be the good guy—which, admittedly, can be difficult when you’re Arthur Morgan, the number two in a gang of cutthroat outlaws—so I did a white hat playthrough, maxing the honor meter within the game’s karma system. Help people out when they ask, don’t rob so many folks, and definitely keep the murderous rampages to a minimum; it’s not too hard to stay on the right side of morality (though the right side of the law is much more difficult). Everything in Red Dead 2 is deliberate. When you fire a single action gun, the next action you take is cocking the gun again for the next shot. It makes think about your loadouts, it makes you consider your choices, and the game feels so real. The people in the towns feel like people, not just NPCs programmed to make a place look busy. In one random event, I was trotting along the street on my horse and heard a robbery going down in an alleyway. I jumped off my horse and ran into the alley to intervene. But it was nighttime, so it was dark, and in my moment of hesitation, the perpetrator had committed one murder and was keen for another. I stopped him, permanently, of course, but I was left with this emptiness; I didn’t feel like the hero. I felt bad. Here were two NPCs, a couple, and because I couldn’t act quickly enough, they were irrevocably split and the husband would never have a moment of happiness that wouldn’t be tinged with the sadness of lasting violence. That’s the power of this game. They weren’t characters, they didn’t impact the story, but everything about the game feels so real and deep that being unable to save this poor woman left a mark on me. This time around, I’m taking more time to enjoy the world, but if you’ve never played it before, the story is beautiful and ugly and heartwarming and heartbreaking and everything in between. It is a masterpiece of gaming and a masterpiece of storytelling. If you want to learn more, there are numerous video game publications that can give you in-depth reviews. So I’ll leave you just with this: Red Dead Redemption 2 is simply the best game I have ever played.
Grid (2019)
Okay, it’s fast, but the trunk space is terrible.
I love cars. When I was a child, I had Matchbox cars in both hands almost at all times. When I was in college, I wrote for a small car blog and even got to attend a car show with a press pass. When I started this blog many years ago, it started as a driving blog. Of course, the reality of ever more congested roads, rush hour traffic, and potholed city streets made driving a less enjoyable proposition than it once was long before COVID-19 had us sheltered in place. But now, driving, even on the relatively empty roads, seems frivolous. Not only do I have no place to go, being a city-dweller, the streets still offer very little in the way of enjoyment. Since I’m not a teenager anymore, I do drive much more responsibly than I used to anyway (that’s not to say I don’t still fracture the occasional speed limit or clip the occasional apex), which means I have to go miles and miles outside the city in search of safe roads in which I can drive enthusiastically. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trading in my clutch and shifter any time soon, I’m just saying that the whole thing isn’t as fun as it used to be. Racing games became a much bigger part of my life as I got older. Years ago, it was Gran Turismo, until I felt cheated by Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and the full game—the fun had left the series and the whole thing felt like more of an exercise in how many JDM versions of Hondas they could shove into the game (included with previous gen graphics because they couldn’t be bothered to update them) than a joyful simulation. $100 later and I had not one, but two unfinished games that weren’t fun to play. I switched over to Forza on the XBox 360 until the idea of buying a console to play one game became unpalatable and a ridiculous waste of money. But I still wanted to drive, I missed racing games, and Mario Kart just wasn’t cutting it. I went years without a decent racing game. Enter Grid. A good balance between racing sim and arcade game, it lacks the features, car selection, track selection, and modifications of Forza and Gran Turismo, but the graphics are beautiful and the physics feel great. Instead of hopping in my car and putting the roof down for a quick trip to nowhere and then parking it again, I can get behind the wheel of a 911 GT4 or a Corvette LeMans car or a classic Mini Cooper touring car and drive as hard as I want without worrying about hitting any potholes or getting into an accident, or running afoul of the local constabulary. It’s not a perfect facsimile, sure, since a controller can never match the feel of a clutch under your left foot, the thrill of a perfect shift, or the feeling of the steering weighting up as you take a corner, and frankly, I’m not willing to invest in racing seat, wheel, and dedicated setup when I’m perfectly comfortable on my couch and sipping a soda between races. But it does make a pretty fun compromise. And since the time for me to become a professional race car driver has past, this is the closest I’m going to get until Gran Turismo 7 comes out on PS5 and hopefully doesn’t suck. For now, this is keeping me smiling.
Like I said, this is just the smallest snapshot of games you can play to pass the time. If you have a Nintendo Switch, for example, there are lots of smaller games that are cheaper to buy than the big studio games that are lots of fun and quite innovative. I’ve enjoyed my time with Donut County (a game in which you control a hole that gets bigger the more stuff you put into it) and What the Golf?, billed as a golf game for people who hate golf. But these are the games that give me that slice of life I’m denied by happily doing my part and staying quarantined.
So, until next time, stay home, stay safe, and stay tuned. You can always reach out to me on Twitter @aslamchoudhury if you want to discuss this or any of the other other blog posts I’ve put up.