I am the 40 something gamer, and I believe there are a lot of you out there just like me. You’re gamers who only really play in the evenings and rarely discuss it out of the room for fear of stigma. You’re not 20 anymore are you, you don’t have the excuse of youth on your side. Your girlfriend or wife probably sees it as harmless enough but secretly thinks your time would be better spent making something or watching romantic comedies.
You started gaming when it was associated with kids and nerds. I’d wager your first gaming experience fell somewhere between a Commodore 64 and a Sega Megadrive. You’ve played games with no depth, you’ve experienced life offline and somewhere in your past you and a load of mates got together to play Mario Kart and got shitfaced. You are a gamer who has served his time on FIFA 98 or Sensible Soccer. You’ve known Lara Croft since she was born and you probably collected more coins on Mario than you do for your salary. You’ve loaded games from disks and cassette tapes and you’ve known what it is like to have wires attached to your controllers restricting how far you can sit from the TV. Hell you’ve even been known to sit up for nights on Streets of Rage simply bashing buttons.
Todays gaming world is very different from that of yesteryear. Everything is online and constantly updating and evolving. One minute you’re playing as Luke Skywalker on Hoth in tight clothing, the next minute they’ve banged you in the original Hoth suit and your game is changed without you ever having to set foot in a games store. Do games stores even exist these days? Are they a thing now that everything is online?
Games have become massive and as immersive as you’d imagine they could. You can now plough 150 hours into Fallout 4 or even longer on Skyrim. You have to learn about the worlds being created for you to appreciate a game, understanding lore and complex control systems. Everything is beautiful and every is big, but as a thirty something gamer you can’t afford to play a 50 hour game that goes nowhere. You don’t have time to experience all those different game modes because you have actual stuff to do like shopping or gardening or taking the other half out. Your gaming time is limited and it is precious and you do not want the complications that time consuming modern gaming brings. You want to stick in the game and play just like you used to.
That’s where I’m going to come in. You see I have had time on my machine and I am still a massive gamer. Entering my thirties has given me something I didn’t enjoy back in my gaming heyday and that is disposable income. I’m able to play most of the games I want to. I’m lucky.
Therefore I intend to share this luck with you. I’m going to try and review every game in my collection to let you know if it’s any good. There’s loads of places you can get a review from, but when you read it here you’ll know it’s been written by someone like you. You know I understand the complexity involved in existing as a 40 something gamer and that I want to help you make the right choices with your hard earned gaming time.
Please feel free to comment with any gaming stories or games you’d like me to review and I’ll do what I can to comply.