To game or not to game

I know last time I said that I would help in choosing out which game that you would like, but after some serious thought in this endeavor, I realized that it really is ‘To each his (or her) own’. What I mean to say is it is not possible for some one to tell you which game is the best or the one that you are going to enjoy the most, but I can certainly help you point out the right direction. So in this article, I will be suggesting certain factors to consider before you choose a game. Keep in mind that I am not talking about Free to Play games here, that is a topic for another time.

This is just a suggestion on how to choose what type of game you would want to play/buy, so it is not necessary to follow these points rigorously. Some points are straightforward, but some are generally never considered. So here are the factors –

1. Time (Do you want to play the game once or play a game with a lot of replay value?)
2. Genre (Stratergy, Third Person Shooter, RPG, Arcade, Indie…….)
3. Platform (Which screen do you use to play?)
4. Availability (Unfortunately, even in this digital age, not all games are available everywhere 😦 )
5. Cost (Duh!)

Long version – coming soon..

Lets play :)

I have played a lot of games. Board games, card games, charades, cricket, football and video games. Ever since the time we are born, we learn to play and enjoy first. It is part of our life. But as we grow, some of us change the games we play, or some others find a good hobby that they enjoy. But we keep playing the games and it has become a part of our life.

For me personally, I am a huge fan of video games. Since my childhood, I have always been fascinated by the world of video games, right from the endless hours spent on Mario trying to finish the game to sailing through the same Mario game on my laptop ;). I have always like the world of video games, where imagination is the only limitation. You can play as virtual person living and deciding how they should live. You can play as your favorite hero, saving lives and beating up the bad guys. Or you can just explore another world, where you can have an adventure in some deep dark cave or in a fortress on the clouds or even in outer space.

Mario

With that being said, I realize in this day and age, where the world has shrunk because of the technology available, we are bombarded with Choices and Choices of video games. Literally any device with a screen nowadays will have at least one game on it. If not, there is always a way to use that screen for video games.

Take the Television – it is one of the most essential part of our household. Back in the 90’s we used to have those 8 bit consoles which we hooked on to the TV sets to play our favorite games. Now with smart TVs, they sometimes have inbuilt games in them as well. We still have the immensely popular PlayStations and XBoxs to play games on TV and boy do the games look beautiful!!

Then we have our mobile phones. Before, we had Nokia phones and Snake and Bounce were the games to play and master. Now with smart phones – especially iphones and phones with android os – the choices are huge in number..

The point I am trying to make here is it has become hard to choose a good video game – for yourself. How do you know that a game is worth playing? Sure, if I read reviews and find out that people are praising the game, I would be tempted to try out the game or even buy it, but I have no guarantee that I will be able to Finish the same purchased game (even if I enjoyed it in the beginning or its demo). Its like eating only one slice of a whole pizza and then leaving the rest of the pizza in the fridge, never to eat it again. We do have a lot of free games nowadays, but in my experience, it takes a great deal of time and effort to enjoy these games and have a sense of accomplishment (Or if you are rich enough, pay money to save time and effort).

This argument is valid even when you are going to purchase a video game console, or a portable console or even to a certain extent, your next high end smart phone! Tell me, what is the point of purchasing the next flagship phone (the ones that are very expensive) in the market, when all you are going to do with the phone is just make some calls, whatsapp or watch videos? Such phones make sense to purchase only if you are going to make the most out of it – push the phone to its limits, make use of its quad core processor! One of the things that does use a smart phone’s capacity are games, detailed, colorful and fun. Otherwise there is a large range of phones in the market, which are quite capable and can do everything that is required from it and cost much lesser. This is my own opinion, so I may be wrong (in fact, I am wrong when I think about it) when I say it feels pointless to buy the best phone in the market and not play any games in it. It is after all, a very good phone.

I have thought long and hard on this topic and I came to the conclusion that it indeed quite hard to choose from a wide range of games (I suppose it is not much of a conclusion). But I feel that with my experience with a variety of games and the screens on which they are played, I can help in simplifying that choice. I intend put my skills to use and make an application that would help you choose based on what you want, not based on the old fashion approach of browsing games – see what many games have to offer and dig, try and see what game you would enjoy most.

Look forward to my future posts, where I will be talking about how we can go about choosing our games. Till then, keep playing 😉