With more time on my hands, I’ve been enjoying a resurgence in my gaming time. I’ve already talked about the huge amount of time I’ve sunk into Rocket League, but today I want to talk about how lockdown has rekindled my love of JRPGs.

Recently, I’ve been enjoying quite a few retro gaming videos on YouTube, and it’s helped to rekindle my desire to play older games, especially as I’m quite constricted currently in terms of my choice of gaming platforms.

Rocket League, the sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, has proven to be one of my favourite gaming experiences in a long time. I haven’t put so much time into an online multiplayer game since my Halo 3 days. So why is a game based around the concept of car soccer so addictive?

Despite having been stuck at home during the past year with COVID-19 restrictions in place, my gaming backlog stayed on pause. Simply because my gaming PC and PS4 are 12 000km away from me, which makes them quite hard to use! But as time passed on, I needed something to occupy my free time and help me to keep a sane mind. enter, the Nintendo Switch.

Throughout many years of gaming the one genre or style of game that has passed me by is the brutal style of gameplay that Demon souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne introduced over the last couple of years.

The first game I ever got on my first PC was SimCity 2000 and I soon lost count of the hours I would lose trying to make the perfect city. It was the perfect blend of simulation and fun.

You remember a while back when I wrote about my frustrations with Konami?

Ever since Pro Evolution Soccer 2 back on the PlayStation 2 I’ve been an avid supporter of the folks over at Konami when it comes to their stellar soccer series that always managed to capture the pure essence of soccer as a sport. Granted, it’s far from the glitz and glamour level that the FIFA series from EA Sports hits every year, but it really grabbed me in with it’s combination of gameplay and it’s Master League mode that set you in the role of a soccer club manager trying to take a team of amateurs and nurture them to the top of the world’s best leagues and competitions.

Trying to play too many games at the same time is the main reason I hardly ever finish any game in my substantial backlog. It’s also the reason that I got severely burned out on gaming a few years ago despite the fact that the last few years have seen a surge in the release of quality games. Unfortunately, the prospect of another 60 to 200 hour game, no matter how amazing it is, became something I dreaded rather than anticipated.

So hot on the heels of my last post about the viability of streaming for the games industry in which I remarked on the popularity of Twitch it has now been rumored that YouTube is looking to buy Twitch for a cool $1 billion.