My entire tech career came about because of my love of PC Gaming. I won’t go into the history now but I’m mentioning it to emphasis how hard it’s been to cut gaming out to allow me to balance work, family, friends and PyBites.

I’ve been out of the loop on the latest games (How many freaking Call of Duty games are there now?!) thus my PC was completely out of date, as per my previous post.

What I didn’t realise was that by not allowing myself to game, I wasn’t allowing myself to relax.

Many of the books I read are non-fiction and can be considered heavier reading. I read them to learn, not necessarily for the relaxation that I get when reading fiction.

Oddly enough, it was the COVID quarantine that gave me the time to experiment with relaxing a bit more. Not going out on my Saturday nights for the past 3 months has freed up quite a bit of time and given me the opportunity to get back into gaming.

Bring on the games!

As a massive Warcraft fan, I’ve been fully invested in World of Warcraft since it was launched in 2004. My commitment has been waning over the past few years but I finally cancelled my subscription after Blizzard’s handling of specific situations made me realise they’re not, ethically, worth my time.

Combine this newfound freedom from WoW and my boost to free time with quarantine and the gaming world has been my oyster!

I’ve been playing around with games, old and new and having an absolute ball. The ones I’m currently diving into on Steam are:

  1. Dawn of Discovery: I had the urge to play this again after absolutely loving it when it first came out. Reliving the campaign has been amazing. I’m at a point now where the difficulty in resource management is high enough that I’m losing interest though. Not because it’s hard but rather it’s growing tiresome as I realise how much time will be required to set up the system.

  2. Planetary Annihilation: Back in the day, Total Annihilation was my game of choice. NOTHING has come close to beating the feeling I got playing that game! I bought Planetary Annihilation because it felt a little less “heavy” and much quicker than Supreme Commander. I wasn’t disappointed! It’s been a lot of fun jumping in and conquering one planet at a time, launching moons at enemies and just overall kicking ass.

  3. Grand Theft Auto V: I had to stop playing this game shortly after it was released when my son saw me playing it and asked my why I was shooting police cars. Whoops! I’ve now started playing it after they go to bed on weekend evenings. SO much fun! Brings back many memories from my love of GTA Vice City. I’m 30% through the campaign as of writing and am definitely not disappointed. Incredible graphics, a riveting storyline, beautiful voice acting and INSANE action - I can’t wait for the kids to go to bed so I can play!

  4. Two-Point Hospital: Another classic from my childhood has made a return. The old Theme Hospital game was a favourite for me and my brother. Two-Point Hospital takes the classic, improves the graphics, adds all of the features I remember we wish we had as kids, throws in a decent reason for building multiple hospitals and makes me laugh my ass off. The radio station + the nurse speaking over the P.A system has me in stitches all the time. “Patients are reminded to have a nice day… because it may be their last.” AMAZING.

More games to play and enjoy. I feel more motivated to push and win throughout the week knowing that I WILL get some down time for mindless fun come Saturday night. The best part is that I feel zero guilt doing it!