Gaming

The bright side of coronavirus: goodbye video game backlog! – Reader’s Feature


The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild – time to explore (pic: Nintendo)

A reader tries to look at the positives of self-isolation, as he uses the current crisis to catch up with old games and old friends.

I’ve got two elderly parents that are in the most at-risk age group, and one of them has diabetes, so please don’t think that I do not take the coronavirus seriously or that I am trying to make light of the situation. But while desperately trying to find a positive to this terrible situation I have come up with just one: video games. Or rather, the fact that I now have the time to play them.

I’m currently working from home and self-isolating, and so I’ve both been stuck with nothing to do of a night. I couldn’t bear doing nothing but watch TV, so instead I’ve been doing the obvious thing and working through my video game backlog. Like many gamers I’ve got a huge list of games that either I haven’t started or I’ve never beaten.

I don’t think anyone’s interested in me making a list, especially as a lot of them are probably fairly obvious, but I’m currently playing through NieR:Automata, which I’d bought but never got round to as I wasn’t quite convinced it was my type of thing. It’s been amazing so far though and now I’ve got all the time in the world to do the multiple playthroughs.

Before that I finished off Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, which I had beaten previously but still had plenty of things to do in it. But now I’ve completed every mission and I think done everything except all the koroks. Maybe I’ll get back to them if this goes on for a very long time but after that I’ve got Dragon Age: Inquisition, which I never got round to at the time, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and Persona 5 lined up.

As you can see, I like role-playing games, but I don’t always have time for them and now I can catch up with them all and feel that this whole shut-in experience hasn’t been a complete misery.

The important point here, I feel, is that there can be a silver lining to every situation and that while I’m okay with it (as far as I know, this is quite the test) I know a lot of people just cannot handle being alone for long periods. That’s obviously going to be a big problem for them because there’s no way out of self-isolation that doesn’t risk you or people you love.

But video games not only offer you something stimulating to do, rather than just gluing your eyes to the gogglebox, but many of the games also have voice communication where you can chat to friends and family online and even play with them if they’re into games as well. So I’ve been playing plenty of Apex Legends in between my role-playing games.

Maybe I can even get other people into games if they’re not already, because I’ve already been playing with one person I never knew even had a console and I haven’t really seen properly for ages.

Who knows, perhaps the other unexpected side effect of all this is that people will start to look on video games in a more positive light and stop using them as a scapegoat for all of societies’ ills. Ah, who am I kidding, they’ll probably end up being blamed for starting the coronavirus…

By reader Brian

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. As always, email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk and follow us on Twitter.





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