Fortnite
I’ve played Fortnite for a full year. It remains perfect for my parenting lifestyle. There is nothing in the act of playing that I am denied not playing as much as my friends. The game is stupid, absurd, and capitalist. I love having 3 friends and eliminating Goku, Superman, and Rick Sanchez in quick succession. I love seeing a full team of furries and knowing that our goose is fully COOKED.
There’s a mode where you don’t have to build anything. You just have to make tiny decisions with your 3 friends and maybe those decisions payoff. The game changes every week. I wrote this last year. I can’t not talk about the game that I was excited to play on a daily basis for an entire year. Here’s to more “That guy’s back, let’s go get him.”
The Witch’s Isle
If I am going to mention the most popular game on Earth, I am also going to mention this tiny adventure game you’ve never heard of. It features stunningly beautiful pixel art. It takes about 3 hours. It has a looping time system with people with schedules. There is one delightfully fiendish adventure game puzzle within it. It will inspire you to scream “What” at a traversable location. It is pleasant and small and 3 dollars. It is worth it.
SUPER MARIO WONDER
A writing trick I learned in college is if you are writing about yourself, mention what beverage you were drinking. I would take that point to heart, but at this point in my life I only drink water and black coffee. As this story goes on you can imagine which I was or was not drinking.
Friends keep asking me, “When are you (a father) going to introduce [My Child’s Name] to video games?” This always causes my head to drift 45 degrees away from them. I consider the question. I answer, “I’m not.” Or “Maybe later.” I’m a terrible Magic 8 Ball that way.
I am looking forward to enjoying media with my kid. I look forward to trying to cultivate a critical eye that makes them insufferable in normal company. Then they’ll reach their 30s and have finally figured out how to talk about something in a normal way. They hopefully won’t get caught in a hospital long-term waiting room playing the most-unremarkable RPG for a the Sony PSP when a nurse asks them, “What are you playing?” They hopefully won’t mentally panic. “I have a Gamefly subscription and have been systematically renting every piece of Japanese garbage possible released in the last 10 years regardless of quality.”
That’s the answer me in the future wants to give me of the past. Instead I mumbled until they started talking about Grand Theft Auto which is a much better topic we can all agree.
The question of My Child and video games doesn’t leave my head even when my friends aren’t around to ask about it. I found myself on the Ginza Line earlier this year. The walls above the windows bare of paper advertisements. There was luckily video advertisements above the door. It showed in rapid succession a father and child playing Super Mario Wonder. They wore different clothes, the time of day changed, the joy together never left them. Heck, in one their wife/mom joined for a three player session.
My throat froze. “That-that would be nice,” I thought. As of this writing I still haven’t bought Super Mario Wonder. A week after watching that advertisement I realized I didn’t see the Switch behind the TV. I had had to move it there to make room for the PS5. I hadn’t turned it on in months. I turned to Lady Rude, “Did you notice the Switch fell down?” She hadn’t either. I picked it up and dusted it off. My child must have knocked it off while playing.
I didn’t turn it on. It wasn’t even plugged in. I still haven’t turned it on. I’m not sure when the last time I had turned it on. Maybe Lady Rude had played Doubutsu no Mori at some point and been disgusted with her own negligence that she turned it off.
“When are you going to introduce your kid to video games?”
NEXT: When you know deeply that everything someone has said has been a lie.
Hinge Problems 
Leave a comment