Gaming Under Relative Adversity

The holidays are a time to spend with you loved ones, the ones nearest and dearest to your heart – PS4, XB1, 3DS, PC etc – whatever your poison. Every year, I have grand designs to use my little free time to put in some serious gaming, particularly of the RPG variety. However, year after year, I have my quality time invaded upon by; you guessed it – my relatives. No, I don’t care about what you did for the past year and no uncle Paul, I don’t want to hear about your colonoscopy while I’m eating. I don’t see these people all year but somehow I’m obligated to spend all my free time behind them. It’s at this time of year more than any other that I have a renewed appreciation for handheld and mobile gaming. So, the question is what games can I play whilst fending off these people?

I spend a lot of time in car trips. This time must be well spent. The first thing to do is make up an excuse as to why I can’t drive. I work in a hospital, so last year I had my friends in the ER put on a cast around my ankle and I faked having a tendon injury. In addition to not having to drive, it also meant that I got food brought to me and never had to move. You thought you were hardcore? Ha! You have much to learn young grasshopper. The problem was that I was less mobile and hence, I was an easy target. Even the slowest oldest relative could catch up with me. This year, I’m going with the “I lost my driver’s license “defense. Not as creative, but still effective. It’s really hard to play games that require precision and timing during a car ride. That rules out any Mario, Donkey Kong or Rayman – which are all on my backlog. Action RPGs are also out of the question for similar reasons. So, this means that there will be no Tales of Hearts R for me on these car trips. The options are basically turn-based RPGs and the episodic games from Tell tale games. For those car trips, I’m going to lean towards the RPGs because I don’t have to contend with many interruptions during the trip and I can really lose myself in the world. Somehow, I have not managed to play Persona 4 Golden on the Vita, so that’s gonna keep me company. Sadly though, neither Sony nor Nintendo have opted to have replaceable batteries on their current handhelds. This was one of the main things that drew me to the PSP last generation. It’s a very sad omission at this time. While the Vita charges, the 3DS gets played and for that, I’m going to finish play Bravely Default, a game that I greatly enjoyed this generation. Even from the 20 hours I have put in, I really recommend it. Fighting and strategy games are also useful options, but currently, there aren’t any on my “to Play” list.

The journey in the safe confines of my car is the easy part. Once I’m within the belly of the beast, the situation gets a lot more complicated. Pulling out a handheld in the company of my relatives is a tricky issue. While I personally love the looks of disapproval and the isolation that accompanies it, the subsequent conversations with my parents are not as entertaining. I may as well be whipping out genatalia when I take out a handheld. This is the “stealth portion” of this particular game I’m playing. Thankfully, we live in an age where we are all attached to our phones with the dependency of a coma patient to a life support machine. This provides useful camouflage for the oppressed gamer. So, the stealthy choice with the fewest consequences is that of mobile gaming. Of course, any game that requires furious tapping will raise suspicions, so that limits the choices a bit. This is where the TellTale games come in. They are light on gameplay and have subtitles. I can even stick a Bluetooth headset in one ear and enjoy the audio while pretending to listen to whatever the hell people are trying to bore me with. A carefully angled phone on my lap will let me follow the on-screen action. Another great option for iphone users is Broken Age. Adventure games are great because you can ponder that puzzle that has you stuck while looking all pensive. You relatives think you are listening attentively to what they are saying when you are actually pondering the logic of combining rubber chickens with pulleys. For the more hardcore, Square have published some of the early Final Fantasy games on mobile platforms, but the prices are not very encouraging.

So, that’s basically how I plan to subvert the feeble attempts of my relatives to spend quality time with me. Any suggestions that you can leave me with would be most welcome, especially in the “stealth section” of the mission. If you think I should just suck it up and act my age, then my response is “Shut up! You’re not my dad/mom!” How would YOU deal with the “Relative Adversity”? Happy holidays everyone, and happy gaming.