It comes to us all eventually. Most of us. Some. Ok, look, do it if you want to, alright?
Babies. I had to be convinced that they were a good idea. It took a long time, but now the baby is fab. Wish that I'd had one sooner. If only for the reason I'm going to be in a wheelchair when they're running around wanting to do stuff and all the kid's friends will be like, 'Why does your grandpa always pick you up from school?'
Like. Another pet hate, but a verbal habit I can't shake.
I often wonder what I did with all my time before the babe came along and suspect this is a pretty common feeling. Gaming is naturally bottom of the list of priorities. It's a hobby. I think I had come to believe that it was almost a right. A necessity, like electricity. Try telling my wife that - after she's finished laughing, her face will go all serious in the blink of an eye. 'No.'
Be told.
It took me a while to get used to it (not having infinite time for games, not the little one). I don't begrudge it (the time lost, not the little one), in fact. It has actually forced me to rationalise my gaming habit. Only to play what's important to me. To focus on one game rather than chopping and changing, never fully experiencing the game to it's full, wasting money on buying games that I play for an hour - and so on. Has stopped me from spending willfully on Steam sales 'just because it's cheap'. That's a real positive. It goes without saying of course that the main upside is that I have a small, fully functioning autonomous human being to look after and love, a superb replacement.
Pre-baby, I could feel the 'game library dilemma' getting close to a situation that I experienced with my PS1. Before my PS1 was chipped, I invested money (at the time the cost of a game a real consideration), time and enjoyment in a game. Post-chippage, I had a stack of 10 games for cheap (around £3 each) all at once, would play each one for half an hour and then move on, not really enjoying any of them, It was more related to volume of games and time, I think. It's at that point that I stopped bothering to play copied titles and considered which ones I could afford to buy and had much more fun out of them in the long run.
Whilst a baby has really stopped me, I noticed that Steam sales were leading to exactly the same situation. Why buy another game just because it's so cheap when I still have a few others on the go? One only needs to look at common comments about Steam libraries and 'back-catalogues', or use Steam APIs to stalk your friends to see that 2/3 of titles are often unplayed. Not cracked games - just the sheer volume and time required has relegated them to never even being downloaded. Not that Valve cares, of course. Their money trucks just keep rolling in and also includes a nice little piece about why Half-Life 3 will never be made, and once I heard it, I tend to agree with them. Incidentally, a new article about HL3 with an interview from a Valve staffer (allegedly) can be found here. There will be no HL3.
I recently bought Last of Us. Had been wanting to for a loooong time, ever since first hearing about it, but never got around to it. Last of Us 2 was announced just before Christmas, so thought I really ought to make the effort, so I dusted off my PS3, plugged a network cable in and had a look. It was 20 quid for what seemed like everything, DLC and what not. Turns out that I had not logged into PSN for 2 years or so. Slack, eh?
Downloaded LoU and began an install. Apparently, I didn't have enough disk space, so I deleted the 'big' game on my disk, Wipeout HD/Fury - still no space. Ok, deleted all games. Still not enough space. Right. Seeing as I'd not been online for a while, I deleted all save games, game info, the lot. Turns out I was still 700Mb short, as the firmware takes up *just enough* space to stop me installing my new game. Arse.
A short bit of investigation later reminded me that I was still running the HD that the PS3 came with on launch day in 2008 - a (useable) 37Gb. Great. Being somewhat of a geek, I at least didn't have to order a disk, so had a rummage and found a 2" 350Gb drive lying around that merely needed a format. Then the USB drive I put the firmware onto didn't work, so had to find another... aaaaaannd it finally booted. I had a fully updated PS3 and could check out my new game.
Well. Last of Us - what a treat! Not a massive fan of these type of games, as I tend to get bored by them, but in this case, the story was good enough to keep me interested. Better than good actually, it was excellent. Thoroughly enjoyed the play through (although sometimes the clunky movement got up my nose), and, am not ashamed to say it, teared up once or twice. Not many games can claim that. I wondered whether it was because I now had a child of my own that some scenes affected me and suspect so.
Of course, this revitalised PS3 playing has made me look at PS4s. Le sigh. They are ridiculously cheap now for what they are, but still - as I get older I'm starting to feel that 'this one hasn't packed up yet, so I don't need a new one'. But y'know. Western shopping instincts.
I really enjoyed the time on Last of Us, and it was a game that felt like it rewarded the focus, actually gave you a story back with all it's hopes (or lack thereof) and dreams of Ellie & Joel. Pausing to think that this world was all that she knew, not the world that we're all familiar with. What would my child be like in this situation? Would they become infected? How would I deal with it? Could I actually, look them in the eyes and shoot them in the head? Clearly nonsense, but an illustration of the power of the game's environment and story that you find yourself idly thinking about these things whilst making your way around a quieter section of a level. It allows you brain space, isn't a constant shoot and stress factory. In fact, one of my favourite parts of the game comes near the end - and I probably won't be giving anything away here since it's two years old - but as you get to Salt Lake City and see the small Giraffe family, calmly walking around having a graze. Beautiful. You can see the effort that the devs went to with this game - not to belittle the efforts that all developers give in crunch-time - and it really does show. The game timer showed around 20 hours, maybe a little less, spread over 6 weeks or so, and that was the only game that I played. Loved it.
Little ones sure do reduce your game time, but if I'm brutally honest, I think it's actually made me appreciate games more. That and having an hilarious little person running around doing funny shit.
