Iād always figured that the reason I couldnāt play all the games I wanted to was because of two full-time jobs and, you know, all that life stuff: visiting family, shopping, socialising, eating out, parentsā evenings, and so on, ad nauseam. Well, we canāt do any of that life stuff, at least not right now, but guess what? Turns out Iām still not playing all the games I want to.
Up until this point, I think Iāve been coping quite well with lockdown. Iām already pretty disciplined at working from home, have a comfortable home office already set up, and ā thankfully ā half-decent WiFi. I have a partner and son I only want to kill about 33 per cent of the time ā trust me, thatās pretty low in our house ā and itās afforded us the unintended bonus of spending 24/7 of the last few months with our terminally-ill pup, Wesker (heās still hanging on in there).
Yet, despite the extra time afforded to me since lockdown, my prohibitively long to-be-played list remains prohibitively long. Itās not that I havenāt been playing games; Iām still on Apex Legends three or four times a week and regularly play games for review purposes. But just like all the other grand plans I had when lockdown first fell ā decorating, finishing that book Iāve been writing for a decade, learning to cook, sorting out our rank garden (which weāre fortunate to have, I know) ā instead of powering through Horizon Zero Dawn or Breath Of The Wild, Iāve found myself boomeranging to my old favourites as if theyāre booty calls with a boyfriend I canāt quite be bothered to break up with.

I gave myself a bit of a hard time about it at first, too. How is it possible to complain that you donāt have enough time to give new games a try when youāre playing Uncharted 4 again, or Share Playing a palās first attempt at Dishonored? My brother has burned through about five or six full singleplayer campaigns. Me? Iām fucking about with games Iāve already played countless times before.
Itās not even that these games are particularly wholesome, either. Dishonored is a game about a plague rampaging through the world, disproportionately affecting the poor and needy as an elitist upper class sit idly by, watching it happen (itās a little on the nose, to be honest). Both Apex and Uncharted offer mindless, needless murder but, while theyāre admittedly excellent stress relievers, Iāve already played them to death. So while I could argue that the hour or so each day I spend dashing around āYuccaVeeā, my Animal CrossingĀ island, is super sugary and wonderful for my mental wellbeing, the others are ā at least on paper anyway ā very definitely not. And yet these are the games I return to again and again.
Theyāre familiar places to me. These are backdrops I know as well as my own bedroom, places that I know and love, and have explored with gleeful abandon. I remember their secrets and their shortcuts, the good stuff and the bad. My first visit to the craggy shores of Dishonoredās Dunwall way back in 2012 came in the middle of a personal crisis, and despite its gloomy, grey skies and sick, impoverished people, it was a virtual escape tunnel. A place I could temporarily suspend my own unhappy existence and live someone elseās for a bit. Youād think returning to a game played at such a time would serve only to subliminally remind me of my misery, but, strangely, theyāre not grim memories. It reminds me that things were utter shit, yes, but also that those shit times did get better. It reminds me that this too shall pass.

Itās comfort gaming, isnāt it? The equivalent of your nanās bread and butter pudding. Your mumās special roast potatoes. Games that, for a myriad of reasons, soothe your soul. And while many games like Animal Crossing offer wholesome and routine busywork, it turns out some comfort games donāt even have to have a particularly calming conceit; they just need to be well-known to you. Whether itās tearing up the streets of Los Santos, wandering through your blocktastic paradise, or watching Joel make that decision, our favourite games are special because we know them inside out.
Thatās why I keep returning to these old favourites. Iām playing these games because theyāre well-worn and familiar and right now, nothing else in my world is remotely well-worn or familiar. Everything beyond my console seems impossibly grim and disturbing with no respite in sight, but within it are worlds and characters and places that are predictable to me. This is why Iāve rebounded to second-, third-, fourth-playthroughs; I donāt need the stress of unreliable narrators or unexpected plot twists when the world is already of unreliable narrators and unexpected fucking plot twists right now. I just want to be lost in the relative safety of a virtual world in the hope that when I eventually do return to our own reality, things wonāt feel so hopeless.
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