![]() ![]() I’ve always loved games - I’ve been obsessed ever since I got a Game Boy Color when I turned 10 years old - but now they aren’t so much fun diversions as they are a handful of places I can go when I can’t really go anywhere else. It would be difficult to overstate what a huge chunk of my own brain space video games occupy right now. Of course we want to feel like the right combination of buttons and strategies will result in victory, whether that looks like a well-tended digital farm or the tidy conquering of a fictional nation. ![]() In a time that makes truly no sense, the surge in gaming does. Just realized in 25 years there’s gonna be an American Girl doll who lived through the coronavirus pandemic and her $86 accessories will be a little Nintendo Switch, a tiny thing of Clorox wipes and fake bread that she learned to bake herself from a YouTube video.- Caroline Moss March 21, 2020 It’s not limited to the Switch, or even to specialized consoles - plenty of people have rediscovered The Sims on their computers, for one, while others are doubling down on iOS and Android apps for their phones. I’ve seen this sentiment echoed across the internet ever since the spread of the novel coronavirus took hold in the US and resulted in a vast swath of people self-isolating indoors. “I think one of the reasons I like this game right now,” Aude texted us, “is that you get to explore this big, vast, natural landscape. I missed her so much in that moment, even though we’d been video chatting near constantly I missed our life. Her boyfriend sent our group chat a picture of Aude, toothbrush hanging out of the side of her mouth, hands clutched around the red-and-blue controls. My best friend Aude, who historically has totally ignored video games (and lightly bullied me and our shared gamer friends about our habits), commandeered her boyfriend’s new Switch during the start of quarantine in order to play Breath of the Wild, the sprawling open-world Zelda game. What they all definitely have is boredom, fear, and an implacable need, in this moment, for comfort. They might have pleasant, vague memories of Pokémon or Neopets. They might have played the odd phone game. These friends aren’t that into video games, or at least they haven’t been in years. In this vein, since the beginning of March at least half a dozen friends have asked me if they should get a video game system. “There’s this warm feeling when you’re like, ‘Oh right, that’s where you warp,’ or ‘Oh right, that’s the trick to get through this board.’” “I think there is a comfort in going back to a game that’s sort of safe and nostalgic,” Jeff said. ![]() That changed when the quarantine order came down. “Ever since we’ve lived in New York City,” Eric said, “neither Jeff nor myself has really touched a controller, nor had a console in our house.” They’d played video games on and off throughout their childhood, but gaming really wasn’t a big part of their upbringing beyond brief dalliances with games like Tetris and Super Mario, and separate forays into Grand Theft Auto in college. The duo, who operate a comedy/hip-hop podcasting empire under the name ItsTheReal, told me that when they realized they’d be stuck in their apartment for a long time, they bought an old-school Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console, preloaded with 30 classic games. It’s an immersive experience, lasting only a few hours, so it’s for FromSoftware fans and fans of retro action games.Jeff and Eric Rosenthal, brothers in their mid-30s who live in New York City, have been playing a whole lot of Super Mario lately. Few games have induced the amount of anxiety I had for finances as Armored Core did, and I love it. Armored Core grip exists for a reason, and it’s not because the game is forgiving. The story requires piecing together disparate pieces and discovering a thoughtful narrative about how corporate control reduces lives into assets.Ī difficulty curve exists, not only for the type of game it is but also for its age. Combat is as brutal as customization is deep, and players feel like a grunt whose life means little. The most impressive thing about the original Armored Core is that it feels like a modern FromSoftware game in many ways. The series even has the Moonlight Greatsword, solidifying it as a true FromSoftware great. Failure can feel excruciating, but victory is even more satisfying-a statement that applies to so many FromSoftware games. Combat relies on split-second decisions that require players to be alert to win. Being able to customize hundreds of mech builds feels personal, and masterful optimization is a reward in and of itself. I say this about the entire franchise and also the first game.
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