Preemptive Retaliation

So by the looks of things, I’m destined to write something about Zelda maybe every three years or so. And in writing about Zelda I end up not writing about Zelda and do something else instead. So here we go.

Tears of the Kingdom was an absolute joy to play. The highs were high, the lows were not that low, and I found myself obsessively playing it over two months. That’s two months of late nights as I justified another ten minutes of playing for “one more thing”, only to be distracted during that task and embarking on another almost immediately. I didn’t want it to end, and so endeavored to do as much as possible – find every shrine, explore the sky and depths, pimp myself out with all the fashion opportunities. With games like this I tend to start to suffer from burnout, that I’m completing it for the sake of completing it, but there was so much to do here, so much variety that whenever I felt bored I could switch to a new goal and try something different.

Plus, revisiting Hyrule was a joy in itself. Enough time had passed (both in-game and out) that I could revisit areas of fondness and see how people were doing, what they were up to. After the tutorial, the game tells you that there are four places where strange happenings are goings on, and you should maybe go up here and try this one first, and my initial reaction was “NOPE, I want to go to Tarrey Town and see how that place is holding up”. As such I went the opposite side of the map and ended up missing a lot of key story and side-quest content until much later. Which only gave me more reason to revisit all those places again to sort that out.

I finished the game last night (and, as an ongoing theme for me, I was quite unwell at the time), and it was just perfect. A chef’s kiss of game.

Though now I’m at a bit of a loss on what to do.

The game came out two months ago, and since then I have played it almost every day. On completing it, I racked up 130 hours of play time. One hundred and thirty hours. Almost five and half days of playing this game. Oh man, why did I have to write that down.

I wrote before about playing Elden Ring and not writing during that time, and how that time was automatically a waste. I don’t want this post to have the same vibe, but we’re verging on a whole Joe Never Learns His Lessons thing, and maybe I have to repeat that to myself until I finally get it. Rub my nose in my mess. That’s fived and half days! Jesus Christ.

I can’t beat myself up for it though. At least, I shouldn’t. I was chatting to Thomas about TV shows, and how I tend to get recommended a lot of films and movies where I say “Oh, I’ll add it to my list” and proceed to completely forget about them. “I don’t have time for films and TV these days,” I said in a voicenote, as I made my kids breakfast and thought over the long lists of tasks and chores that needed doing. Thomas left a four minute long voicenote in reply that started with, “My friend, you just spent one hundred and thirty hours on a videogame.”

And that’s how I choose to spend my time. Playing videogames is my hobby. It’s something I enjoy doing, both socially and in private. What Thomas neglected to remember is that he had just finished watching a TV series that he didn’t enjoy. He didn’t enjoy anything about it, but he still watched it.

I realised a the end of that sentence there that I was getting defensive. Of course I like the things I like, and spend time on them! Other people like the things they like and spend time on them too! You just don’t get me, mum! I’m getting defensive because I know that’s a long time to be obsessed by a game with, and a lot of that time could have been spent more productively on other things. It wouldn’t have killed me to not play the game for an evening and do other things (something that I promise that I did do). What if I had spent all that time writing instead? Or learning the ukulele? I’d have a lot more words than I do now. And maybe I could sing Over the Rainbow.

Well now I’ve finished the game, and I’m determined to take a break before the next one. It’d be an injustice really – going back to back with a game like Tears of the Kingdom – so I need a rest. A reset. I suppose I could spend some of that time writing, or attacking my To Watch list.

I should spend some of it writing.