Tag Archives: gaming

How Do You Game in 2022?

My pro­gres­sion into gam­ing was pret­ty straight­for­ward. I start­ed with a VIC 20, fol­lowed by a Com­modore 64, then an Apple IIGS, got a SEGA Gen­e­sis for Christ­mas junior year, then off to col­lege with a Hewlett Packard Pavil­lion. My PlaySta­tion 1 got me through grad school and a PS2 got me through years of under­em­ploy­ment. I dropped my Sony loy­al­ty, get­ting an Xbox 360 when we bought our first house. I upgrad­ed to a Forza Xbox One when I went to Ford. We added a PlaySta­tion 4 Pro a few Christ­mases ago, then to an Xbox Series X last spring. My youngest got a Nin­ten­do Switch some­where along the way, too. This Christ­mas we added a PlaySta­tion 5 and an Ocu­lus Quest 2.

It’s at once embar­rass­ing and over­whelm­ing to try to man­age four gam­ing sys­tems simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and eval­u­ate which games make sense for which plat­form. I’ve tried to sim­pli­fy things with Xbox Game Pass Ulti­mate as part of the Series X pur­chase. That’s been help­ful from a dis­cov­ery and every day play stand­point for count­less titles that would­n’t have been worth $60 or more to prove disappointing. 

Where things get trick­i­er is know­ing which Switch titles are actu­al­ly good for a 2nd grad­er. He’s a good read­er, but some of the games ask a lot of the play­er. Addi­tion­al­ly, try­ing to stay on top of PlaySta­tion exclu­sives may be a chal­lenge. I’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly been an EA devo­tee, so sto­ry-ori­ent­ed games are a bit of a blind spot for me. I’ve pur­chased so many games I nev­er had a hope of fin­ish­ing once we had kids. I did­n’t do a great job man­ag­ing across plat­forms on the last gen con­soles we had pri­mar­i­ly because friends had PlaySta­tion and the prospect of play­ing togeth­er online in the pan­dem­ic was attrac­tive. It has hap­pened maybe a hand­ful of times.

Final­ly, Ocu­lus Quest 2 is new ter­ri­to­ry alto­geth­er. I’ve been gen­er­al­ly bear­ish on VR with the excep­tion of some indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions. What I’ve seen in the last week are some pret­ty sim­ple games that are fine, if not espe­cial­ly immer­sive and fun. Look­ing at this list from the Verge, it looks like there are few com­pelling options for a sports-for­ward kid.

What’s com­ing in 2022 that’s worth look­ing out for?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

I don’t real­ly know how it hap­pened. I guess I just got sick of the Phillies being so great in MLB 2K10 that I had to set it aside and find some­thing else to play. Need­less to say, a few quick games of Team Death­match and I was hooked on Call of Duty all over again.

Then I come across this video over at Giant Bomb. Sure, it turns out that it’s fake, but it makes me wish all the more that some pub­lish­er would just get the guts to go to a sub­scrip­tion mod­el or straight up DLC already. I’m sick and tired of buy­ing games that are more or less iden­ti­cal to the pre­vi­ous year with the excep­tion of a ros­ter move or a new logo or a new map. I’m will­ing to pay good mon­ey for some­thing I won’t regret sell­ing off a year lat­er when it’s worth zilch. Charge me say $40 to buy the new game with­out all the pack­ag­ing. The Earth would be bet­ter off with­out all that noise anyway.

Unless some­one fig­ures out how to charge less for games out­right, which seems unlike­ly, there are prob­a­bly some well known fran­chis­es that I’ll nev­er buy again. I’m look­ing at you, Madden.

Left 4 Dead Opening Cinematic

It’s been a slow year for new video games for me. I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 at mid­night, then bare­ly played it. I bought Mad­den 2009 and love it, but I’m rarely in the right frame of mind to be active­ly chal­lenged by it.

Now there are some deci­sions to make. I’m look­ing for­ward to Gears of War 2, but am unsure about titles like Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. Both seem to be up my alley; I like third-per­son shoot­ers just fine, espe­cial­ly with the hor­ror twist to keep it inter­est­ing. My main gripe is that it’s not as obvi­ous as last year’s crop of out­stand­ing games that are fun to pick up and play whenever.

What games are you look­ing for­ward to as the hol­i­days near? Chris, if you’re read­ing this, help me out!