Gaming Diary–Week 20
Today is a simple one: just what I managed to play over last weekend. I get a email every week from Playstation Network and in each email they give me the number of trophies (in-game achievements) that I’ve earned and how mcuh time (in hours) I’ve put into online gaming on the PSN Network. I bring this up because every since I joined PSN way back in 2006 with the Playstation 3 (even though I didn’t really play online until 2007 for the most part), I’ve racked up an impressive (or ridiculous, depending on your outlook for online gaming) over 16,000 hours of online play. That equates to roughly 667 days (or roughly 1.8 years) of online play. Now, understand that this is over 13 years of being connected online and also playing games like Mass Effect Andromeda or Assassin’s Creed Origins for over 100 hours while being connected to EA’s servers or Ubisoft’s servers even though I’m playing the game in single player mode. My total actual online play (where I play with/against other humans) is probably about half that number. And that’s just two “generations” of game systems–imagine what my gaming life is like through all systems.
Still, I bring it up because it puts into perspective how much time I’m putting into games. Imagine if I’d put that much time into my writing or my schoolwork; I’d have at least one novel finished, possibly more. So, seeing that number has been an inspiration to me–not to do less gaming, but rather to do more strategic gaming and to put as much time and effort into the things that I really want to make myself just as successful in real life as I am in my “gaming” life.
Assassin’s Creed Origins
I put more time into this game than I had intended, but I was able to finish off a major storyline in the game and then a related secondary storyline. One of the reasons that I put so much time into it was that the enemies in the game managed to kill me due to an unforeseen occurrence in the scenerio (the rebels that were supposed to aid me by causing a distraction died way too quickly and I was caught out alone against an entire garrison of enemies). Well, I couldn’t let that stand and, when the game reloaded, went through the process of (laboriously) taking down the (many) enemies of the base one-by-one. Took about 2.5 hours all told, but as the cliche goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. I cleared the base of all targets by any means necessary. Now that 2.5 hours was in addition to the time I’d already spent completing the Main Quest of taking down the “Crocodile” (a major enemy in the game), but it was still worth it and I’m currently in between missions for the next major story arc of the game.
Rise of the Tomb Raider 20th Anniversary Edition
This is a game I got for Christmas. While I wasn’t really entranced with the “Reboot” of Lara Croft’s adventures with the less than stellar (& overly praised Tomb Raider game from a few years ago), I’ve found this one to be a much more refined and stellar game. Had this one been the “reboot,” I might have been less dismissive of the need for a reboot because so far, this one is far more like the original Tomb Raider games that the crappy reboot even though this share’s that games basic design philosophy and graphical skin. There’s just something about this game that compels me to move forward, where the Tomb Raider reboot game from 2013 did everything to push me away and made me want to gag every time I played it.
This session consisted of me completing all of the challenges in the first two areas of the game (except for one that I don’t have the right arrow skill for and will have to return to when I do). I then did my first “Challenge Tomb” (which is an optional tomb that I can explore and figure out how to complete for extra rewards and experience). I’m early in the game–the game internal tracking says I’ve completed 12% so far), but if the rest of the game is like this first bit, I think I might like it quite a bit more than the Tomb Raider reboot that I absolutely destested and still don’t feel is a worthy game in the TR universe. I’ll keep playing and let you all know if I still feel this way as I go through the rest of the game.
Well, that’s it for now. I did play a few other games, but I didn’t put near the amount of time in to any of them as I did these two, so I hope you enjoyed this post! 
