I spent my whole life playing video games, and I assume I will do that till I die 200 years from now. Nonetheless, each season of life brings a different way to gaming.
Sitting in my 41st year, I admit that the glorious binge-gaming is gone. Looking back, the most remarkable binge-gaming seasons of my life are:
- 1994: losing entire nights of sleep playing SimCity 2000, and then zombie walking to high school;
- 1996: spending days improving the lap on F1 Gp2 on the 486 , with my sister’s boyfriend. Needless to say, they broke up, but we kept racing.
- 2000: addicted to online Rainbow Six Rogue Spear. The age of clan wars, of yelling against campers, noobs, and cheaters. When my university studies suffered a major setback for the joy of my parents.
- 2004: lan parties in my friend’s basement, playing Warhammer 40k Dawn of War, Ghost Recon, Warcraft. Getting drunk most of the time.
- 2008: 48 Hours non-stop every weekend playing Pes with my housemate, along with 200 cigarettes, cheap beers, and constant complaining about the speed of Croatia’s left back Jarni, or Babangida, or over exploiting of high lofted passes.
- 2020: taking advantage of the covid lockdown, to spend hours playing online with friends. We did The Division, Ghost Recon Wildlands on PS4 and then we shifted to Arma 3 on PC. All great games.
I did not know what to expect as a daddy, but I knew that online gaming might have been banned for a while and that I had to switch to single-player games with headphones. Not a big deal, I had a huge list of games in my PS4 collection that I did not play before.
Then I had to figure out how to squeeze a gaming session into my daily routine, considering that I have a full-time job, a lovely dog, a rock band, a wife and a newborn baby. The answer came by itself: at around 10 pm my wife is too tired after an intense mum routine and she goes to sleep, leaving the baby to me. It takes a while to put a baby to sleep, and it’s impossible to do so with a pad in your hands. But when the sleeping mission is accomplished, the gaming session begins. And that is that, at least a couple of hours of gaming all for me!
The first game I started in September (the baby is born September 2nd) is Metal Gear Solid V, The Phantom Pain. I knew it was a huge game, and it was never the right time to approach it. Today is December 6th, and I gathered around 40 hours of playing, and I’m only at 24% of the game. Crazy stuff, how big is this game? I’m playing only the story missions, and I am currently at the 28th mission, and very few side missions and base development.
I always knew that Kojima is another league, but the quality of this game is incredible and I did not find many recent games that bear comparison. As an example, last year I completed the storyline of “Days Gone” which had big potential, but the gameplay and mechanics were poor. I’m wondering if the developers of Days Gone dedicated enough time to learning from Kojima games.
MGS 5 starts slow, with the massive number of options in the background. I understand that the integration with the online gameplay is pretty good, but I did not try. Some of the game mechanics are still a mistery to me after 40 hours: what is the purpose of the horse? What is the use of the animals captured? Some mechanics are incredibly rewarding, like the sniper support of Quiet, the air and helicopter support. From a stealth game, I would not expect the option to destroy everything with a bombardment, but it’s good fun.
So, whether you are a daddy or not, you should play Metal Gear Solid V, you will see an higher level of game development which is sadly very rare in today’s gaming industry.
After MGS I have in scope The last of us part II, No men’s sky, Death Stranding… enough for another year of gaming!
Too Old For That 