I'm not playing much released this year (and that's unusual for me)

This year has been a weird one for me and gaming. I had a period where I wasn't enjoying games much, which is unusual for me, and in general I've played less than I have in recent years. That's not a bad thing per se, and probably has to do with life normalizing somewhat for me after the pandemic and its after-effects.

But while I'm fine with spending less time gaming one unusual thing I've noticed is that recently I'm almost exclusively playing games that are pretty old. Earlier in the year I played a fair number of more recent titles, some of which I liked (such as Ultros) and some of which I liked less (Skull and Bones) but I haven't really touched much recent in months, and my few attempts like with the new Senua game I bounced off of pretty hard (though I intend to go back.) The only exception is Zenless Zone Zero, a game that I have come to actively despise. So that's not great.

Part of this has to do with my getting really into the Yakuza series. I've sunk well over 100 hours into that series so far this year and currently I'm up to Yakuza 5 and mostly enjoying that, though it can be slow. Part of it has to do with the games released this year, many of which just don't appeal to me. I am looking forward to the new Zelda and will likely play that, and I'm also going to play the heck out of Astrobot and expect to love it, but otherwise there isn't much that's pulling me in. I thought I would love FF VII Rebirth, and I played about 20 hours of that before falling off and was enjoying it (though not as much as I expected) so I should get back to it, but for some reason I can't bring myself to right now.

I think a lot of this has to do with how complicated so many modern games have gotten. One thing I've been loving about the Yakuza games is that even though there's a ton of stuff to do, most of it is relatively simple. There are driving and hunting minigames in Yakuza 5 that have fairly involved storylines, but the minigames themselves are so easy to pick up and play. Of course there are lots of simple modern games too, and I've had fun with some of them, but I look at some of the bigger releases and I know it will take hours to learn the controls and with everything else going on it just seems exhausting.

Another element is how live service focused so much of gaming has become. And the games that aren't live service are often Soulsbornes. Neither of those models is super appealing to me.

But that's not everything and I ultimately don't have a great reason why I haven't been playing current games. It might just be the specific releases this year appeal to me less and I'll go right back to my old patterns in the future. It might be with less time I'm just focusing on fewer games and my "I should play some recent stuff" impulses have gotten pushed out the door.

I don't know that I have a point here. That's part of what I like about blogging. I don't need a point. It's more of just an observation. I'm not "done" with modern gaming or anything. Tears of the Kingdom is one of my favorite games of all time. I really liked Super Mario Bros Wonder. Spider-Man 2 was very good. Those are all last year games, but it's not like I'm a different person today than I was then.

But the stuff I'm looking forward to the most tends to be retro re-releases (can' wait for that Marvel v Capcom collection) or throwback games like Zelda and, to a lesser degree, Astrobot. I'm craving simplicity and manageable lengths right now. I want comfort gaming and a lot of that stuff, for me, is older.