24th January
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we’ve been playing. This week, Victoria tries her hardest to impress her husband with Far Cry trivia; Marie discovers that leaving things alone for five years can result in a nice surprise; Kelsey bites off more than they can chew; Connor has a strange run-in at the gym; and Bertie sounds like he’s losing his marbles.
And if you’re looking for something else to read, or a reminder of what you once wrote, there’s a whole What We’ve Been Playing archive to delve into.
Far Cry 3, PS5
My husband and I started watching Better Call Saul recently (late to the party, I know). After watching the first handful of episodes and morphing into that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme for all the Breaking Bad cameos, there was still one face I couldn’t quite place: the Salamanca drug cartel’s Nacho Varga. There was something about him that was so familiar, but I couldn’t think of any other shows I had seen the actor in. It was bugging me. And then, it hit me. He’s only ruddy Vaas from Far Cry 3!!
I excitedly turned to my husband. “I know where I know him from!” I cried triumphantly, before hurriedly googling Vaas to show him. “That’s great…” my husband smiled in polite acknowledgement, turning his attention right back to Better Call Saul. But, I wasn’t done. “No seriously,” I prodded him, “Michael Mando is so good in Far Cry. Well, his character is terrible but he is so good. Vaas is easily one of the best baddies out there.”
“Uh-huh,” came my husband’s nonchalant reply. This lack of enthusiasm and appreciation from the man I have vowed to love and care for in sickness and in health, for the rest of our days, did not sit well with me. So I came up with a plan. “I will show you how good he is,” I proclaimed.
And that’s how I find myself replaying Far Cry 3.
-Victoria
Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Nintendo 3DS
I dusted off my 3DS XL last weekend and while I had forgotten some of the games I owned for it, I could never forget Animal Crossing: New Leaf. My home was in a state when I logged back in and the majority of the ground was covered in weeds, but not everything had been worsened by time.
I had left Bells in my account at the Post Office, with my last save file marked as 2021, and the Bells hadn’t idly sat there for the last five years. I’d earned 99,999 Bells in interest by ignoring my game entirely!
There’s something nice about returning to an old game to find a shiny reward waiting for you.
–Marie
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nintendo Switch 2
The 3.0 update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons has seen me finally return to the game, only to find that I couldn’t even access the updated content because my measly island – which I unfortunately reset a few months ago assuming no more updates were coming – was not yet three stars.
So, my evenings this week have seen me time-traveling back and forth without a single hint of shame in an attempt to get a three-star island. Then, rather than visiting the Resort Hotel that I reinstalled the game for, I spent my time terraforming. I hate terraforming with a passion, but once you have a vision for your New Horizons island, there’s no going back. I’ll probably be at this for the next month. Wish me luck.
–Kelsey
Old School RuneScape, PC and Mobile
My saga playing Old School RuneScape continues. This time, with a twist of slight public humiliation. That or paranoia.
I have downloaded the game on my phone so I can take it on the go and do basic repetitive content during dead minutes commuting or walking around the shops. It turns out, Old School RuneScape is a pretty solid choice during workouts, especially if you’re on the treadmill.
Except! Except when someone takes the treadmill next to you and peeks at what you’re playing. Some lady – no shade to her I’m sure she’s a very normal and well adjusted person – looked over briefly at what was on my phone and saw RuneScape. I saw her do this. She didn’t say anything, but I saw that she saw.
She, clearly able to power-walk for longer than the five minutes she was there, got off the treadmill. Maybe she was just warming up or warming down, maybe she wasn’t feeling the treadmill. Or maybe she saw my unkempt hair and tight shirt, my big ol’ beard and RuneScape playing on the phone and thought: nah.
Or perhaps she saw I was grinding mining in Motherlode Mine in prospectors instead of Varrock Armour 4, and was disgusted in my lack of optimisation.
Either way, I’m level 77 mining now.
–Connor
TR-49, PC
Watch on YouTube
I can’t remember if I came up with this thought or if I stole it from someone else, and that I’m even suggesting the latter probably means that I did, in fact, pinch it. But something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently – and it’s a pertinent topic given the general rampage of gen-AI – is recognising thought in things. Human thought.
Konstantinos Dimopoulos! That’s who said it. He’s a game designer and “urbanist”, which is the best job title, and I spoke to him a year or so back for an article about making maps, which was really an article about creating game worlds. He advises game-makers about city design, both in terms of making them feel realistic and in playing well. There’s a whole science to it. But the thing that struck me when we talked was how every aspect of a city was designed or thought about by someone, that it didn’t just come to be. Someone had leant against their fancy architectural drawing table, twiddling on some tweed, and thought about how we’d experience something. And that in turn meant that whenever I went in the world, wherever I sat or walked, there would be layers of thought around me. Ooh it gives me shivers thinking about it.
TR-49 is like this, Inkle’s new game. There’s an obvious thematic link there because the strange archival computer you use in the game was designed by characters who left their imprint upon it, and their story is an important part of the point of the game. But there’s a hidden link, too, in the game’s code. It’s this idea that a developer has walked my path through the game before me, or at least considered I might walk it, and therefore has put things there for me to enjoy. Everything I find in the game, then, every little clue and fragment of an archive, has been placed by someone for a specific reason – to elicit a reaction, to impart a clue, to tell a story. What the reason is, I have to work out – I’ve made it a little game for myself. A game within a game. Guess what the creator meant. Try it, you might be pleasantly surprised.
-Bertie
