My partner in 2015 was not a gamer and in fact, the digital revolution seemed to have passed by her completely. We both elected to spend leisure time outdoors but nevertheless, I wanted her to experience the joys of gaming. I’d always associated Nintendo with more fun and light-hearted gaming so I got a Nintendo Wii (in mint condition with all the accessories for £25). We played a lot of the fitness type games and made use of the Wii Fit but it wasn’t long before we realised you could bowl just as well sitting down so it lost its novelty. I only had about ten games for it.
Fast-forward to 2018 and a friend showed me his Nintendo Switch. I remembered how simple and fun Nintendo games were but the Switch and the games held their price well so I did a bit of research and decided to get a Nintendo Wii U. The Wii U was not successful so the console was cheap (I’d got a mint condition console for £50) and games were cheap. It is such an underrated console! It’s completely backwards compatible with all Wii games and peripherals. I love the novelty of the supplementary screen in the controller. Some games really take advantage of the screen as well; like Star Fox Zero, Splatoon and some of the Super Mario titles.
The consoles very easy to hack (and being cheap is low risk) so for £50 you can get access to the entire Wii and Wii U catalogue of games. It could be argued that games developers aren’t seeing revenue any more from the sale of used games but I would of course not recommend such a course of action.
I did have a mini-renaissance of PC gaming in early 2018. I discovered the superb website G2A.com (referral link) while I was searching for the cheapest Xbox Live membership online. I found European Truck Simulator 2 for £4 and because I was working in the commercial automotive industry at the time I thought I might as well find out what it’s like to drive a HGV – albeit in a simulation. I spent hours on ETS2 – it was almost meditative. In fact, it was playing that game that helped me discover meditation! Driving lorries around the UK sounds boring but there’s something very calming and yet equally satisfying about it. There’s quite a few people who stream ETS2 gameplay online (including the Scottish surrealist comedian Limmy) so that following indicates it’s not just a game for anoraks that fetishize trucks – although there’s probably still a fair amount of them.
I got so into the game, I actually acquired a racing wheel and an IR head tracker (similar to track IR). Combine these with a triple monitor setup and the experience was really immersive. Having now discovered Steam platform, I later got hold of Elite Dangerous and, again, the experience was immersive. I got quite a few PC games via G2A codes on Steam and have enjoyed PC gaming since. I tend to stick to the more simple puzzlers and platformers on the PC and I really enjoy exploring artistic games like Lumino City (where everything on screen was actually made using physical paper, cardboard and glue) and Brother – A Tale of Two Sons; as well as the more obscure games like Antichamber that torments your Euclidean notion of how the universe should work.
Some games really lend themselves well to a keyboard and mice – especially the more technical construction games like Kerbal Space Program (KSP) or Space Engineers. It’s so rewarding when you finally manage to build, launch and get a vessel into a stable orbit around the moon in KSP – or the Mun as they call it.
Turn-by-turn strategy games (like Catan) and God-view style games are best on the PC as well. I have to give a shout out to Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation because it’s probably the closest game to Total Annihilation that I adored so much in the 90s.
Again, you can see my catalogue of PC games on rawg.io