Preemptive Retaliation

I know I talk about videogames a lot here, but I like them and they form a big part of my life. This website was initially supposed to be about my writing and all things associated with it… but that has fallen to the wayside since my sleeper indie hit is still sleeping (and should probably remain so, if the typos are anything to go by). So instead I write what I want to talk about, and it turns out I want to talk about videogames.

Anyway, I was thinking about how my brother gave me Zelda Breath of the Wild for Christmas this year. I didn’t ask for it, though I was thinking about it. I tend to do alright to myself, and so have an unhealthy habit of getting things that I want, for me. When Christmas rolls around this is inevitably frustrating for my family as they scramble to get me something I would like (and then repeat the process a scarce two weeks later for my birthday… I am suddenly glad of my daughter being born halfway through the year), and so for the past two years I made up an amazon wishlist. I don’t know if it’s presumptuous, or just a Santa list for the digital age, I just know that it solves a lot of problems and gets me things I would like.

Still, this year I didn’t ask for Zelda. I thought about it, really. I had such good memories making my way through Hyrule that I thought playing through again would be the perfect thing to do, and enough time had passed to enjoy it fresh. I asked for the new Mario game instead since it’s been lauded as the best thing ever, and I do love a good Mario game. When my brother handed me the game-shaped gift I was expecting to see Mario on the cover. Instead there was this beauty.

I don’t think I was too good at hiding my surprise, since my brother leaned forward and said, “I know that you weren’t looking for this one, but that was a mistake right?” He and my mum exchanged a glance and she continued, “Yeah, we thought it was strange that you didn’t want a Zelda game.” “So we got you this instead,” my brother finished, and honestly I was weirdly touched. I don’t think they knew that I had played it before, and they found it boggling that I hadn’t played this one or put it on a list. I was touched that they thought that through, and that they knew how much Zelda meant to me.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I had to have my mum sitting beside me when I completed the first boss in Ocarina of Time, and my brother had to complete the Shadow Temple for me since it was so terrifying. In fact, I received Ocarina of Time for Christmas after reading about it for weeks in magazines. That was twenty one years ago. I had two strategy guides, since one didn’t tell me how to defeat dark Link and the other had great illustrations that I drew and redrew over and over again. A few years later my brother got me the guide to Majora’s Mask, and a few years after that my mum put down her details so I could preorder Wind Waker.

I’ve started playing Breath of the Wild again in the past few days, and it’s with a tinge of regret. First of all, I had to turn off Master Mode because I was being destroyed at every encounter, but mostly it’s because I won’t be sharing the same experiences with them. My videogame victories are very private nowadays. I have them buried away in my PC or, thanks to the Switch, up close and personal with no audience.

What am I getting at here? Maybe it’s that I miss the social aspect of playing games. Mike and I used to play this way all the time. We’d crack jokes in VR, mess up in Helldivers, or he’d carry my drunken antics through Magicka. I wrote here that one of my favourite gaming experiences was streaming The Witness and talking it through with Mike. We were two people hanging out, playing a game together. I suppose as I get older there’s less time for that.

Oh. I wanted to make a post about Zelda again and how much I’m loving it, and instead I made myself sad.