We only have so much time, so much shelf space, so much money to spend on games. In a games industry-adjacent job where I’m finding myself with less and less time to dive into new games, I’m often firing up games I’ve already sunk a ton of time into. Recently, I’ve been mowing through a new save file of Super Mario Odyssey, a game so big and powerful it’s still shocking to me it was released in the same calendar year as all-timer Breath of the Wild.
Friday evening, I wrapped up an especially harrowing few weeks at work with wildly overpriced sushi and the PlayStation Store. I played Remedy’s Control at a preview event and again at a raytracing tech event at E3 and knew it was a game I’d want to complete, but look at September. Look at October. When am I going to set aside the time? Link’s Awakening is just around the corner, too, and I know I’ll drop everything to play that again for the first time in 25 years.
Sitting in my home office spilling ponzu on my jeans, I made a snap judgment about how I’d like to spend my limited time going into the busy season. I could play Control. I could. I could even beat Control, probably. Everything I know about it intrigues me. Shifting architecture, fragile reality, gun that do different shapes. Into it all. But no, no. Not this weekend. We have three folks playing Borderlands 3 right now for various reasons. I’ll let them speak for themselves, but lively Slack conversations combined with the slick marketing of the PlayStation Store welcome screen adorned with Full Catholicism Psycho convinced me I’d rather spend the weekend with Borderlands 3.
Into the wastes I went with FL4K. I love hunter classes. Pets are great. You can pet them in this game!
I played about 20 hours of Borderlands 2. The first 15 were joyous. The last five were spent trying to figure out if there was anything of substance beyond the looty grind. Not so much! Borderlands 3 left me the same kind of cold, but only three hours in this time. This game feels so, so old. Not the kind of old that saw me sink hours into Final Fantasy VIII Remastered a few weeks ago. The kind of old that makes me feel awfully silly for passing up a game that tries to do weird stuff. Maybe I’ll come back to Borderlands 3 after some of the technical kinks are worked out and I’ve beaten Control, but I want my Saturday and Sunday back.
Anyway! I totally messed up my weekend choosing the wrong game to play. You have any similar stories?
