When I played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I eventually did everything I could to avoid the Lynels, Centaur-like creatures that dotted Hyrule. I say “eventually” because I didn’t avoid them at first. At first, I was ready and willing to take on these difficult beasts with my dinky wooden sword, because…
Tag: playing video games
Do you play to play or play to beat?
When I say “I am a video game player,” what does that mean? Does it mean I play one game at a time, completing as much of it as possible before moving onto the next game? Does it mean I prefer to play multiple games at once and couldn’t care less about seeing how any…
Why Mass Effect?
This month, or more specifically, yesterday (November 20th), marks the twelfth anniversary of the release of Mass Effect in the United States. By no small coincidence, and despite The Outer Worlds sitting patiently in my PS4, I am currently knee-deep in yet another playthrough of the trilogy on my trusty if weezy Xbox 360. (Mass…
Knowing When to Start Over
(This post is a continuation of the thought processes that evolved out of Knowing When to Move On.) So you and your game have been on a break. You spent some time away, exploring other worlds, completing other tasks, getting to know other individuals. You had a good time in these new spaces, but now…
Playing Games Past Their Prime
I’m about to type something that might prove…irksome. Ahem. I don’t get Shadow of the Colossus. Oh, I heard that gasp! alright. But hear me out. I’ve only just started the game and have taken down a mere four colossi. It took me three of them to really understand the controls and tactics of the…
Gaming Motives (Part 2)
This article continues from Gaming Motives (Part 1). To read what initially inspired this train of thought, please head to What Rhino Said for the post “Do you remember why you started playing video games?” Having a gaming partner didn’t fundamentally change the way I played games – I remained a die-hard solo player. But…
Gaming Motives (Part 1)
“Do you remember why you started playing video games?” It’s a simple question. Or is it? When a blog post with this title by Creative Rhino popped up in my feed, I was immediately intrigued, because I like it when folks tackle broad, open-ended questions about gaming. Posts like that tend to be intelligent, tough,…
Where to Start? A Question of Playing Games Series.
At the fast rate video games are changing these days to the slow (becoming slower) wait between sequels, it’s a wonder that developers are able to keep us coming back for more fun with whatever set of characters to which we’ve become attached. Consider the Uncharted series. There was a mere two-year span between the…
Deleting the Fluff; Playing with Passion
If I was placed under duress to name one amazing aspect of modern gaming, (because there are many) it would be accessibility. Simply put, one need not stray far from common technologies to access video games. They are available through consoles, desktops, laptops, streaming devices (i.e. Roku), tablets, and phones. And perhaps most importantly, a…
A Different Kind of Frustrating
This past weekend, I had the rare opportunity to spend a whopping three hours with video games! Not three hours broken into ten-minute segments. Not one hour in the morning, one hour in the afternoon, and one hour in the evening. But three consecutive hours, all in the stretch of a discretely lovely afternoon. It…
VIRTUAL BASTION 