Feeling locked up? Are you missing the feeling of the wind sweeping across your face? The experience of sitting in a restaurant gallivanting with your mates? Maybe you miss hanging with your dog park crew? If that’s the case let me tell you about a medium that can transport you around the world ,to places unknown from the comfort of your own home, while you sport your old undies and a bathrobe.
Nerds like me have been escaping the mundane world for decades through the power of Video Games. So let me pass down my knowledge to you, through something I’ve been practicing for years. After all, we’re experts on being locked away in a dark room with nowhere to be and noone to see.
It’s kind of our thing.
The Sims 4
PC, MacOS, PS4 & Xbox One
They’re saying self-isolation may cause the next baby boom, but if you’re forever alone, and can’t get out there to solidify your swipe rights you may need an alternative. Goodbye to drinks with the girls on a Friday night, as social distancing of two metres doesn’t fit between Hilary and a bottle of wine (am I right?).
What if I told you there’s still a way you enjoy a glass of Semillon Merlot with your mates? Well kind of? The Sims, the virtual play house of the 2000’s, will save you from insanity by ensuing insanity on all your friends, as you recreate your clique, living your dream of having house right next door to one another.
Sick of Regina’s bullshit? Put her in the pool, and remove the ladder. While she takes a dip, build a fence and watch her paddle around until there aren’t anymore bubbles. Live your 8-year-old fantasy by creating your primary school crush, and go Woohoo. Start a family with your boss and see if it will really jeopardise your working conditions. The options are endless as you make your Sims jump through hoops for your sick, sick enjoyment.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Nintendo Switch
Life sucks. Doing chores on your days off, keeping up to date on the gardening so it doesn’t become a jungle, or draining all your funds on AfterPay because ASOS were having a sale and you just had to buy 35 black tees. It’s hard, and nobody wants to have to deal with it, it’s just something we have to do to navigate our existence.
So why not do all those things in real life, and do it in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?! Just released this month, the latest installment to the Animal Crossing series takes you to your own deserted island. There you’ll once again get screwed over by your Raccoon Landlord, and make ideal chit-chat with your neighbours until they piss you off so much you start hitting them with a bug net, until they leave your town, but they have that crafting recipe you wanted and just fucked off with it, I WANT MY SHIRTS BACK GOLDIE!
If you don’t want to interact with the locals you can get lost for hours fishing to build up your own aquarium, gather materials across the island to build IKEA quality furniture, or design the drip to stunt on those snivelling anthropomorphic neighbours.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
PC, PS4, Xbox One & Nintendo Switch
Though the OCD nerd in me would say start with the first game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an experience that will take you to a dark and gloomy fantasy world of magic and mystery. If you’re compelled by myth, legends or just monsters, all round this is the game for you. If you’ve adored the physique of Henry Cavil as he gallivanted around with his massive weapon, and sword on Netflix at the beginning of 2020, you may be a little familiar with Geralt of Rivia. Geralt is a Witcher, a monster hunter specially trained in combat, tracking, alchemy and magic, and made stronger, faster and more resistant by defeating monsters and threats. You’ll travel around the continent while you face armies from Norse sounding lands, and declare battle as you search for heir to the throne, Ciri. It’s a little fantasy, it’s a little violent, it’s a little sexy but it’s a huge game with the freedom to travel and help out villagers at will. So, throw a coin to your Witcher and pick this game up!
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo Switch
If you want to get lost in a world that is constantly moving and changing, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BOTW) is it. Let me set the scene, you play as Link, an Elf boy who wakes up in an Ancient-Modern bathtub, to find out you’ve been asleep for a hundred years. He’s lost his memory, his gear and everything he knows about combat, yet must go out and defeat the embodiment of evil: Calamity Ganon. The huge selling point of BOTW is the freedom. You can jump out of the bath in your underwear, grab a tree branch and head for Ganon at the start of the game and see how you fair. Or you can spend hours trying to perfect the most delicious dish in the land. Or I heard their lives a mythical stallion in the mountains, when the sun reflects off the top of its peak go and tame the beast (no really that’s something you can do). All with the constant reminder that the princess has been holding back the forces of evil singlehandedly for a century and you’re chopping down trees to build a house. The story compliments the games mechanics, and you’ll fall in love with its cast of different characters. Seriously if you have a switch and don’t own this title, what are you doing man, like why’d you even buy the console?
Cooking Mama: Cookstar
PS4 & Nintendo Switch
Now this Is a big brain idea. You’ve got all this time to spare, you can’t leave your home and your partner is getting sick of you constantly making grilled cheese for lunch and warmed up frozen pizzas for dinner. So, pick up Cooking Mama: Cookstar and earn brownie points (pun intended). Although its release isn’t until March 31st, this is the sixth cooking mama in the series so we know exactly what’s gonna be involved. Cooking Mama uses motion controls to take the player through entire dishes from prep to product. For all my vegos out there, for the first time ever, Cooking Mama will be including vegetarian options, so Cow lovers rejoice. You’ll be chopping, frying, flaying, icing and presenting in no time. Yes, they aren’t actual recipes but you can use Cooking Mama’s intuitive controls as a guide when you decide that tonight’s the night to bake a meringue.
The Last of Us
PS4
I don’t want to alarm anyone but let’s just slide on our apocalypse hats and come to the conclusion that if things get worse outside our doors, we may be living through a zombie outbreak, and we have to be prepared. So why not swing past your local game store and pick up The Last of Us. All jokes aside, the Last of Us is a masterclass on story-driven video game experiences. You play as Joel, a survivor who lost his teenage daughter in the outbreak and finds himself with another survivor Ellie, who has been bitten by a ‘clicker’ (the fungus zombie hybrid of this world), but she has not turned.
They travel across a desolate and overgrown America following the rumour that someone may be able to study her and find a cure. It’s the perfect prep for how to scavenge and craft in a post-apocalyptic world. For example, I learnt that alcohol and a rag makes a Molotov cocktail, but that it also makes a Health Kit that will heal me back to full health, a totally real thing that applies to the real world.
During this time of hating the real world, gaming is the way to go folks. Hope this list sets you off on your journey.
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