Level 1: Adventures of a new, old gamer

Introductory Cutscene

I am quite decidedly not a gamer. I’m old, so I grew up in the 8 and 16 Bit era. When we were little, my brother and I had a Sega Master System, we then inherited our Uncle’s Megadrive. I only ever remember buying a handful of games for it, and renting a few more from our local video shop but I was too preoccupied, when we were there, to look at the games, as movies sucked me in more and more.

Diablo: the last series of games
I spent significant time on.

I think that what kept me from getting more into gaming, beyond a handful of PC games, mostly the Diablo series, was the fact that while they were a fun enough distraction, I never got sucked into them. Yes, they had basic stories, but I never felt invested in them, they were never emotional experiences in the way that cinema was at its best. My movie habit was becoming ever more dominant in terms of time and money, so I never had the requisite setup cost for a console, never mind the comparatively extremely expensive games, when I could just go to the cinema for my escape into other worlds. I fell off gaming almost entirely after the 16 bit era. I did play Guitar Hero. Once. I’m distinctly lacking in musical talent, but I never understood the point of pretending to play a guitar when, if that was something I really wanted to do, I could go out and buy one (probably for less than the console, at least initially) and just learn the real thing. This is, to be fair, probably thinking that’s somewhat reflective of my ASD, which tends towards making me see things in quite black and white ways...but that’s beside the point.

I also played a few classic 16 Bit games when my younger brother had them on his X Box. All told, it’s been the better part of a quarter of a century since I invested substantial time in a console game. 

All this said, for the last few years I have been aware of the move towards more immersive storytelling in gaming, and I keep hearing about games as narrative and as engaging, character driven, emotional storytelling. That interests me. I’ve often talked about how I feel, for lack of a better term, basic as a film critic. My first draw to cinema has never been visual or metaphorical. Don’t mistake me, I love and respect those things, and I can understand them, read them and break them down until the cows come home. BUT, my interest in doing that is almost always grounded first in story and in character. If you can’t hook me into an interesting story, if you can’t make me care about your characters then chances are I’m not going to care how beautiful your film is, or what you’re saying at a metaphorical level. If you fail in your first duty, I struggle to care about what surrounds it. With games now apparently evolved to the point that they can give people these experiences that I so deeply love in movies, I’m interested to see if that can work for me.

I asked a little advice and did some reading of my own. I knew that I would be choosing between two consoles, a Playstation 4 and a Nintendo Switch (a PS5 remains out of budget range, but PS4 still seems current enough to provide what I’m after, especially given the gap in my gaming experience). Looking at the libraries of games, it wasn’t a difficult choice. It seemed to me that the PS4, as well as having more games that appeared geared towards adults, placed greater emphasis on the sort of narrative and character components that I was looking to discover. That said, it also seemed to offer a good selection of what I’ll call pick up and play games: the sort of thing that might feel more familiar, even nostalgic, to me.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: One of the titles I'm getting for day one of my PS4 gaming.

In this series, I’m hoping to give you some sense of how I’m progressing as a new, old gamer. I have already got my first couple of games. Persona 5 Royal sounds intriguing, I’ve been getting into Japanese music and making the first inroads into learning the language since the pandemic started, and this game feels like an extension of the exploration I’ve been making in Japanese culture, as well as the storyline suggesting the possibility of getting heavily immersed in both narrative and a shifting character. Much more familiar to me at first glance is Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. The first game was also among the few I ever played on the original Playstation, but again this appears to have more going on narratively, as well as having the virtue of being something I imagine I can come into already having an idea about the mechanics of.

I will be picking up my PS4 Pro at the beginning of next week, along with another pair of games, again designed to split the system’s more immersive, story driven, side (The Last of Us Remastered) with something that I hope to pick up and play, that appeals to me on a more basic level: the fact I’ve been a fan of the character since I was four (Spider-Man). So, here I go, plunging into what I hope is going to be a rewarding new world. I know these games don’t run at 24FPS, but this is the only outlet I have, and I thought it would be interesting to write a sort of diary of my first substantial forays into what is an almost entirely new type of media for me. I hope we’ll all have fun on the journey.