I’ve been getting out of the habit of writing more here, but it’s not for lack of things to write about. Therefore, I’m taking a few minutes this morning to talk about some of the video games I’ve been playing lately.

Earlier this summer I got into Animal Crossing and was pretty much addicted to checking on my island for hours every day, doing whatever I could to maximize profits and complete my house. But as you can imagine, that got old after a while and I honestly haven’t touched it in a couple of weeks. I used to do daily quests in World of Warcraft all the time, but in Animal Crossing it all seemed pointless, as the only thing I would get out of my grinding is more money… that I didn’t need.

Next up I played through The Outer Worlds, a really cool open world game in space with a retro/old-west feel. It was incredibly fun (and challenging), and well worth the time spent on it. I really enjoyed the characters and story lines, and the choices you got to make. The combat system was fine, and I was good with playing it on an easier level to focus on the characters.

I then got really excited about the new Paper Mario: Origami King game. I knew it used to be more of an RPG, and from the screenshots it looks like an RPG-lite type of game. Despite being an amazingly beautiful game, with delightful characters and animations, the battle aspect of the game was so abysmal that I never completed it. Granted I got all the way to the final boss, before quitting in disgust, but it was a constant battle to keep enduring through mindless spinning puzzle battles that gave nothing but coins. There was zero skill development in your character and your companions were sometimes worse than worthless. My friend Wes did a write-up on it that pretty much is a mirror of my experience.

That left me with wanting something new to play, and I decided to go old-school (well kinda). I wanted another open world type game like Breath of the Wild or Outer Worlds (or even Fallen Jedi), and so I had my oldest bring over his discs of Red Dead Redemption. I’m a few hours into the first game and I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’ve only accidentally shot my horse once, so that’s a good thing. The controls are a little odd, with the same button doing a dozen different things depending on context, but once you get used to it, it seems to work well. I know that Rockstar Games does a good job with their titles, so I trust them on this being a good method.

Of course the story is somewhat dark, and you have to make a myriad of ethical choices throughout. For the most part I’m trying to play it as a redeemed criminal trying to do good in the world, which is I think what the story wants. However, it appears that I can certainly go off-book a bit to be a bit harsher and cruel. Overall though, I’m keeping it pretty straight to the intended outcome.

My son also brought over RDR2, which is a prequel to the first game, and I’m actually excited to see the backstory to this, as you’re thrown into a world and a situation that appears to have a lot of history to it. Needless to say this should give me enough to keep me occupied for a while, and it’s a fun distraction.