Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I’ve just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story, and I need all of you to stop what you’re doing and listen. SATURDAY SANDBOX!!!
That is righ,t ladies and gentleman. Saturday Sandbox is back!!!!! And some might say it is back and is better than ever. By some I, of course, mean me, and possibly my mother, and maybe, like, two friends, but still! Multiple people possibly believe it is better than ever. Why is it better than ever, I hear you ask? Well, for one there will be less waffle going on. That is right. No more just going off on completely obscure tangents about nonsense. Just straight to the point content. Yep. Straight shooting. No hip-firing here, ladies and gents, just good old fashioned straight to the point without any delay.
Now, this is the first Saturday Sandbox in many, many months. Why the long gap, I hear you ask? Well, what happened was I have suddenly whisked away from the Gaming Respawn “office” and asked to head over to Russia where I had to talk with the new Russian president about some missing Cold War nuclear warheads. Nope… wait for a second, that is the plot to The Sum of all Fears. Okay, I wasn’t doing that. It doesn’t matter what I was or wasn’t doing, the important thing is everyone’s favourite weekly feature is back and better than ever! Wait, we’ve done this already, haven’t we? Yep, my bad. Let’s get moving on with this thing!
This week I want to go on a bit of a rant, if you will allow me. Well, actually, this is my piece, so I can say whatever I like! So, I am going on a bit of a rant, and there is nothing you can do about it! Well, apart from not reading on, which is not ideal, okay, okay, okay, compromise, there will be said rant happening, but I promise it’s a just reason. This reason? Digital games.
Some of you will straightaway dismiss this. Digital games are brilliant, you’ll be saying. They are convenient and are the best way to play a big release on launch day! Yes, both good reasons. But my main gripe with digital games outweighs all the positives or logic you can throw at me. This is Saturday Sandbox, after all, logic is not welcomed here. Well, logic wouldn’t want to be here, I’d imagine.
Digital games have created something I think we all look past in favour of their many positives: They have made us fickle beasts with zero patience. Let us try and cast our minds back to a time before digital games. It is 2002, we are playing the wonderful but quite difficult Silent Hill 2 on our PlayStation 2. We have been attempting to kill Pyramid Head for the best part of an hour, each time getting closer and closer to eventual success! Perseverance has certainly paid off, dear gamer, congratulations. Now, put your current mindset into that scenario. If you were stuck on a certain part of a game, would you persevere, or would you press the home button and quickly switch over to another game? This is my biggest gripe with digital games, they have made it too easy to give up and switch to something else.
Before this advantageous feature, the process of changing a game actually involved getting up from wherever you were playing from, ejecting the disc, choosing another game, putting that disc in and sitting back down. Now, I know this isn’t exactly a taxing thing to do, but I would hazard a guess that a few of us would have just carried on with that game rather than, you know, moving. With this perseverance (laziness), we would eventually (possibly) overcome whatever challenge we faced!
This is quite possibly just me having an issue with this, and this probably has more to do with my lack of desire of getting up off the sofa than my fading patience with tough parts in video games, but still, it’s valid, I think, possibly.
There is also another glaring issue with digital games. People with no willpower when it comes to buying things (ahem, me) are presented a never-ending digital library of temptation. How often are you bored and browse the online store of whatever console you have, see a game that you know you won’t ever play, don’t have the money for, but “it’s only a tenner, what’s the harm?” Me, about 10 times a month! Again, this is more of my lack of self-control than anything, bu…actually, this whole article is just one giant example of why I am a lazy fool with zero self-control. You know what, I take it all back, digital gaming is great.
If you enjoyed any of that nonsense, check back next week for some more Saturday Sandbox!