This year's holiday season saw a fundamental shift in the way (and reasons) that I buy games. I bought a gaming console as a gift for a child. This Christmas, my girlfriend and I bought our 7-year old a Nintendo Switch (and also managed to get our hands on an SNES Classic). For the first time, I'm not buying games and consoles for myself anymore; I'm buying them for my proxy-child.
My game and console purchases aren't just for me anymore...
I guess I'm old now...
This also means that I now possess my first Nintendo console since 10-year-old me replaced my old NES with a Sega Genesis. My blog reviews have been almost exclusively dominated by PlayStation and PC games, but that will finally change in the coming months. I'm finally able to play Breath of the Wild! Expect reviews for games like Breath of the Wild and Mario: Odyssey in the coming months. I'm also kind of excited to try out some other titles that I wasn't able to play previously. Splatoon has piqued my interest, for example. And I'm sure the child will be interested in things like Pokemon, Pikmin, and Minecraft, which I might also try out if we have them.
It's going to be weird going back to playing Nintendo games. The design ethos of those games tend to be very different from the design philosophies of the games that I usually play. There will definitely be an adjustment period as I get used to playing old-school mascot platformers again. I haven't played one of those since Crash Bandicoot Warped -- unless you count Uncharted.
But the little one isn't the
only one with new games!
I'm also going to have to timeshare the console with the little one. She already borrows the PS4 every now and then, but not for very long. Every so often, I'll let her play some of the games that I'm playing (after I've backed my save up to the cloud, of course). She's had fun riding the horse around the environments of The Witcher III, driving through the wasteland of Mad Max, and mind-controlling orcs in Shadow of War. Her attention span is pretty short. She'll only play a game for about five minutes before setting down the controller and wandering off to do something else, at which point, I get to go back to playing. Which is weird to me, because when I was her age, I would sit for hours playing games whenever one was available. We'll see if the Switch holds her attention longer.
Anyway, it's going to be very different moving forward, as at least some of my gaming purchases will be for a young child, rather than for myself.
Oh, and the little one isn't the only one who got new games for the holidays. I got some new games, too!