To Be Gaming Once Again

Despite games being such a foundational part of my life and being, they are an element of them that consistently gets swept away all too easily. When life gets busy, I tend to lose that time to get lost in games in the ways that made me fall in love with them in the first place. Saying this at age 23 is comical, and it’s not like I never get time to game - but I’m really talking about intentional gaming here.

Waking up early and sinking into a game with a morning coffee.

Finding a unique singleplayer narrative to indulge in some evening without it feeling like stolen time.

This is part of a much more systemic problem of time management, but as I write here I feel it’s a problem I have crawled out on top of this month. It was a monthly goal of mine in September to make more time for myself, and to get in touch with my hobbies again, and I’m very happy to write here that I have absolutely refound that lost touch, and have been brimming with excitement for the gameplay experiences I have begun having again, and the ones which soon approach.

Control Resonant, and the Return of the Infamous Power-Fantasy Sim

To really state how much the timing of Control Resonant’s release is of meaning to me, I have to bring you back to 2013 / 2014.

I was very much a spoiled kid when it came to getting the newest games and consoles. However, I would typically be limited to getting one console a year for Christmas, and a mistake I will forever rue in hindsight was my choice in 2013 to get a Wii U over a Playstation 4. I had many Nintendo-loving friends at the time, so it seemed like the most logical choice, but the wait between Christmas 2013, and Christmas 2014 was one that to this day still haunts me.

You don’t need me to tell you how much of a disappointing time it was in the year 2014 to be a Wii U owner, but there was one game in particular which rubbed salt in this year-long festering wound - Sucker Punch’s Infamous Second Son.

I hadn’t even played the previous Infamous games at this stage, but there was something entrancing to me about Infamous Second Son.

The visual effects of the conduit powers.

The silk smooth traversal animations.

The sheer aesthetic of shooting bolts of neon, and shards of glitching video effects across the smokey cityscape of Seattle.

This was the game that made me desperately crave a PS4, and it was a game I got lost in so joyously when I finally unboxed said PS4, Christmas of 2014.

In retrospect, Infamous Second Son’s open world is nothing crazy. Its rendition of Seattle is what I can only assume to be fairly faithful, which in turn means it’s very bleak. Alongside this are very generic and repetitive outposts, radio towers, and all the other collectibles to expect from this era of open world game.

Despite this, Infamous Second Son to this day is incredibly enjoyable to play, and complete. My reasoning for this is that when the traversal and combat mechanics are so fluid and flashy - the rest of the tedium gets easily overshadowed. When the monotonous open world game grind is not just about checking boxes on a map, but unlocking more fun and personalised powers for you to play with - suddenly the game being a repetitive sandbox is a very great thing.

While Infamous Second Son isn’t the only one of these types of games from this time, it is the one that certainly indulged me into the format, but that was a long, long time ago. It seems with the cultural rejection of the Ubisoft open world game design format, that these types of power fantasy games unfortunately got clipped in the process.

It’s for these reasons I was stoked for Control Resonant, and for the reasons listed above have been getting lost in it as of late. It has been a refreshing experience, not just returning to this genre of power fantasy game, but also getting back in touch with a gaming experience that resonated with me so much, so many years ago. Resonant has been so far delivering on all fronts and I will save my in depth thoughts in case I decide to write up a proper review - but know that it takes all these elements that made Infamous work, and medleys them with an entrancing liminal cosmic horror narrative aesthetic, and an immaculately unique world design that really flips the traditional open world formula in a way that still brings you everything you expect from it, but in a refreshingly new and differently paced way.

The Unbound Pandora’s Box of the Steam Deck, and Pokemon Fan Games

In a similar beat to the previous section, Pokemon is a huge source of nostalgia for me, and is one of the founding pillars of my love for gaming, RPGs, and personal game narratives.

As I’m sure you are aware, Pokemon has been on a gradual downfall for many years, and has yet to really deliver anything that has captured the essence of the older games. It seems that the more ambitious Game Freak attempts to get with making Pokemon a great 3D open world game - the more they lose sight of the nuance and personal elements that made Pokemon great in the first place.

Unique sprawling towns with so many NPCs and places to explore.

A difficulty that genuinely made you have to explore the world and come up with creative solutions using the Pokemon available to you.

A narrative that was fun to chase after and not be beating over the head with constantly.

The list goes on, but it has caused my gradual removal from the ongoings of Pokemon, and honestly it makes me very sad. I love Pokemon, and it’s been very strange to see new Pokemon from the newer games in passing, and not knowing their names, or anything about them. It’s like getting out of touch with a friend and seeing them years later, practically a stranger to you now.

I often replay older Pokemon games, but these never provided me with new experiences. It has been a long time since I’ve been exposed to the genuine wonder of exploring a Pokemon game for the first time, that potent affective experience of making bonds with your party as you explore an unfamiliar world, and its series of challenges. I’m not really sure why I never indulged in Pokemon fan games for this very reason. I was aware of their existence, and dabbled a little in the past playing Pokemon Zeta and Omicron, and in later years, Run and Bun for the masochistic side of me - but it wasn’t until this past month that I made the realisation that in setting up emulation on my Steam Deck, and picking up some genuinely beloved Pokemon fan games, that I could so easily return to that experience long lost on me, and finally explore a new region, with all the attention to detail and nuance that has been missing from newer official titles.

Sure enough, Pokemon Unbound has been delivering immensely so far. At the risk of repeating myself I will keep my overview of it brief, but know that that feeling of exploring a lived in world, that singular experience of making bonds with a new party as you face and overcome unknown challenges, that wonder of getting lost in new towns and villages, meeting the endless slew of NPCs that at times share fragments of their worlds with you? It’s all there. Alongside an array of quality of life adjustments and genuinely intuitive gameplay updates like side quests - this is exactly what I missed from the old games, now found again in these fan projects.

I would highly recommend Pokemon Unbound, and am honestly bursting with whimsy at the thoughts of how many other fan game experiences are now awaiting me. It’s a shame it’s something that has slipped away from Game Freak themselves, but honestly kudos to the fans making these wonderful games, because the attention to detail and heartfelt labour that has gone into them has not been lost on me.

Returning to Form, and October Plans

As detailed in my last post, I’m making an effort to not only get back in touch with my hobbies and passions, but also my creative habits. Behind the scenes, I have been making great strides in fixing up my D&D Obsidian Vault and world lore - and am hoping that in the future when it is in a more solid state, that I can start bringing some of the content over to this site so it can exist here for all of you to see.

Partly on account of me rewatching Nathan for You, finally checking out the Backrooms film, and now playing Control Resonant - liminal horror has been greatly on my mind. I will be making a great effort to indulge in spooky media for the month of October, but alongside this I would like to start writing a video essay of sorts on topics related to these. Don’t want to give away much, but it has been on the mind, and is something I may start working away at - so keep an eye if it’s something that interests you.

All in all, things have been on the gradual up and up for me, and it’s a rhythm I would love to maintain. Getting back in touch with my hobbies and passion has been bolstering my creative energy, and I hope that in keeping that energy up, that it will help me deliver more of it outwards to you.

I’m going to end this post here. Thanks as always for reading, and enjoy October folks and all the spooks it may bring.

Much love,

Aaron.