Three months ago, after I turned 20, after I got a car, I started getting more involved in after-school activities and hanging out with friends, thus leading to me to spending less time at home.  Before this change in my daily routine, I usually spent my leisure time playing the hottest new game.  I successfully made it one month and a half without playing a game on my PS4.  I was actually turning on my console only for watching movies on Netflix and the occasional few songs on Guitar Hero III on my PS3.

Video games had become secondary to other things in my life.  This was a big change for me because prior to the beginning of the Spring semester I was still very much enveloped in the world of video gaming.  I guess it was time for a break, and it didn’t hurt that there were no game releases during those two months that really interested me.  So, what brought me back, you ask?  What convinced me after a two month dry-spell to return to my favorite pastime?  Well, this question has a two-part answer.

One of the reasons I was playing Guitar Hero III instead of jumping onto Destiny for a couple of matches was due to the fact that my Destiny raid-group was always online and I knew that if I played Destiny with them I would not be able to control the length of my gaming sessions.  My focus during those months was on controlling how long I played because I had other things that I had to do.  Another reason for my return was my signing-on to PSN one late afternoon mid-March.  I decided to join the party chat to say hello to my fellow gamers and I noticed that they had been playing this new game that came out, BloodBorne.  All of them were playing it and I looked up some gameplay footage and impulsively decided to purchase it.  Once again, gaming got its hooks in me.

BloodBorne was the perfect game to get me back into gaming, in my honest opinion.  It was a single-player campaign with the choice of multiplayer, yet still very single-player focused.  This meant that I could control my gaming sessions and still keep in contact with my friends.  The irony of BloodBorne’s ability to coerce me into dedicating my time to it was in the fact that I was actually better at playing the game than all of my friends.  There I was, about four days late to the party and I beat the first area and killed the first boss on my first life.  While this may seem unimpressive to the average person, in BloodBorne it is quite an achievement; while not worthy of a medal, let’s just say I was scolded for a few days by my friends for obviously surpassing an area that was quite time-consuming for them.

One moment of weakness and I was back to square one.  I guess it comes down to what I had discussed in a previous post last year; having a group to play with makes a big difference.  I probably wouldn’t have started playing video games for a while if I didn’t join any party chats, but its hard to resist wanting to feel like you’re part of a team.  I can’t describe it, but if you have ever picked up a controller and played a game where someone is relying on you and you are relying on them, it’s what makes repetitive games like Destiny worth it.  Doesn’t hurt to feel communal frustration too;  Bloodborne was a crazy hard game!!

Stay tuned for a Blitzkrieg of posts this week!  Feel free to comment and share this post!