I Want To Play Games
Confessions of an eSports and Gaming Newbie Part 2 — The Search for Incredible
The text conversation goes a little something like this:
Me: Happy Last Day of School!
Me: My gaming PC has arrived.
Me: I’m going to play games tonight!!
Me: Haircut on the 17th at 5
That last one wasn’t relevant to gaming, but part of the conversation none the less. The phone vibrated in my hand.
“You bought a gaming PC?” This time Micah, my know it all nephew, sounded incredulous. “Yes,” I said with a level of excitement in my voice appropriate for being seated in an open office area. “I told you I want to play games, now I can.” At this, he was quiet for a moment before asking, “What games are you going to play?” This was a good question.
When I got the notice from Amazon my 2017 ASUS Premium High-Performance Full HD laptop was delivered, I went online, giddy with excitement, to do some research. I searched for things like, “best games for new gamers,” “getting started with gaming,” “easy entry level games.” Several lists came up. I decided to make a cross-comparison sheet and list the games that came up on multiple lists and sounded interesting.
With my list in hand, I answered Micah. “Well,” I said, “I’ve come up with five that are recommended for new gamers and one that is popular, I think I should know how to play the popular game.” I listed the games out:
· Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
· Papers, Please
· The Stanley Parable
· Amnesia
· Gone Home
· Overwatch
As is the usual, he agreed with some of the choices on my list, saying “Gone Home is a good one,” and, “I’ve heard of Amnesia, if you like horror games, I’ll send you another one you might like.” I gasped just the slightest bit, “Horror games,” I asked? “Yes, Amnesia, is a horror game.”
Looking at my list and taking a closer look at the games descriptions, I was beginning to realized there was even more about gaming that I didn’t know. It seems like it was so much easier, back in my day, who am I, Grandma Moses? What I mean to say is, when you dropped your quarter in the machine to play Pac-Man, the goal was clear, eat the Ghost before they eat you and enjoy as much fruit and other savory snacks as you can to rack up as many points as you can.
Now I’m dealing with “Horror” games and action adventure, multi-player, strategy; it’s exhausting. Micah’s advice, “Get a STEAM account, let me know your name, for the top of the line triple A games you may want to think about buying the disks instead of taking up memory on your PC.”
What!? STEAM account, STEAM name, download versus buying disks? The last thing I want is to have more disks around my house. I still haven’t been able to part with my collection of CDs, thank you Columbia House. I thought one of the great benefits of PC gaming was being able to download games, no muss no fuss, now I have to think about size? I was not deterred.
“Okay, when are you going to come over so we can play?” It was a silly question of me to ask. College students, who work part-time, part of the time and have just finished their last day of classes before summer break don’t have time to play games with their elder aunts. Micah said as much. “Maybe this weekend,” he said. “I should have some time then.” Yep, suddenly I’m living the back end of that Cat Stevens song “Cats In The Cradle.”
I left the office and headed home to start my gaming adventure. I tore into the box, pulling the computer out, I plugged it in and, well, here I sit. You may have been wondering how I with all of my enthusiasm to get started gaming have the time to share this update on my progress. Well, the answer is easy. PCs, unlike my precious MAC, take, by my current count as I’m still waiting, at least an hour to set up. I keep getting messages, “Getting everything ready for you,” “Getting your update ready,” followed by “Getting your update ready 76%,” then, “Working on update 12%, Don’t turn off your PC This will take awhile, Your PC will restart several times.”
I got home at five fifteen. It’s now seven fifteen. I guess I’ll just catch up on Game of Thrones. At this rate, I can start from the beginning of the series and be all caught up on current events by the time this thing is ready. I guess, the “search for incredible,” takes time. Just a snarky aside, if it were a MAC, I’d have been playing games an hour and a half ago.
Hopefully, this weekend I will start game play that is once I figure out STEAM, my STEAM name and how to navigate the PC to play.
