Sort-of-lockdown, week… six hundred? Ish? Time is still behaving erratically, though some things are getting back to a vague approximation of normality; I had a haircut last week, so look slightly less silly. In general, though, we’re still REMAINing INDOORS, working from home and not going out. Much.

The terribly exciting exception to the above is that we’ve met up with friends a couple of times, at suitable social distances, with individual packets of crisps rather than shared bowls of nibbles. Thinking about board games that minimise physical interaction (avoiding handling the same dice, cards etc. as far as possible), Narrativia’s influence naturally pointed to Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. One person wrangles the infection deck, another moves the players around the board, a third places the pretty little cubes down indicating yet another catastrophic outbreak – it’s pretty well suited to the situation. In an ideal world we would have observed from a balcony while the pieces were moved around with roulette rakes, but I haven’t managed to recreate an entire Operations Room (yet), so we had to settle for sitting as far apart as possible, and managed to finish the game.

Pandemic Legacy is a bit different for a boardgame. Each time you play you make changes to the game (the “Legacy” part of the title) – put stickers on the board or cards, add new rules and components, rip up old cards and such. You can therefore only play the full campaign through the once, which might seem a bit of an extravagance for a £40+ game, but then it’s taken our group a couple of years to play the 18 (IIRC) rounds to finish it, where some games of a similar cost we might only have played a couple of times over a similar period beforehand. The standard version of Pandemic is a really solid game, and the Legacy elements definitely enhance it – no spoilers, but there are a couple of twists in both story and mechanics that force you to adapt your tactics. If you have a regular group, and have tried and enjoyed the standard game I’d definitely recommend it. That said, after finishing Season 1 we’re probably not going to rush straight into Season 2, we’re a little Pandemic-ed out. And in the game, aaah! That said, they’ve just released a trailer for Season 0, a prequel set during the Cold War, and just from the fact that it includes passports with the ability to stick disguises on your character I have to say I’m tempted…

Away from boardgames it’s mostly been The Usual. War Thunder continues to expand its range of countries and vehicles, Italian ships most recently; I tend to play along until Tier II or III when the grind starts to really kick in. Destiny 2 is a comfortable old blanket of DAKKA!, though as I start to get near the caps on the current season it might take a bit of a back seat until the new expansion. I’ve also been playing a fair bit of Slay the Spire, I was quite chuffed at having beaten the game with each of the four characters, thought I was getting a bit of a handle on things, and then read a couple of articles about the insane challenges that you can start to unlock and realised how much more there is to the game. The random nature of the game can be hugely frustrating when you find certain cards or relics that would work fantastically with a particular build and then don’t find the other components to flesh it out, but on the flipside when things come together it’s absolutely joyous. Also highly recommended!

Lockdown, year 28. Or week 8. The New Normal is becoming… pretty normal, really, though I know I’m very fortunate in being able to work remotely without major difficulties. It looks as though things will be easing over the next few weeks with more schools, shops and the like opening, and of course vehicle-based landmark-visiting eyesight tests are now compulsory.

Far more excitingly I found a bit of gaming mojo (down the back of the sofa cushions, what with having more time for hoovering and stuff). The Guardian Games of Destiny 2 were terribly grindy, I got the machine gun from that event, but subsequent community events (complete NINE! MEEEEELEON! pylon-charging thingies, then an interminable number of shotgun kills) have been less than inspiring, so that’s on the back-burner for a while. I did fire up Red Dead Redemption 2 for the first time in six months or so, but didn’t really get anywhere. It seems like something where you really need to commit and immerse yourself in the world to get to grips with it, something that needs a lot of investment. It might well pay off later, but it I need a more instant hook at the moment to pull me in.

Instead I turned to new (to me) games, as a couple of sales brought them down from £50+ to more sensible prices. Firstly, Anthem (or Ha! Mass Effect: Andromeda Doesn’t Look So Bad Now, Does It? to use the full subtitle). I tried the demo a year ago and found it pretty underwhelming with annoying flight controls; 12 months on, it’s still pretty underwhelming but with decent (if not outstanding) flight controls. It passed the time; combat was fine, the story was fine, overall… fine. I’ve seen that Bioware are trying to go back and give it a major re-work, fingers crossed they can overhaul it into something better than fine. If nothing else it was something new and (slightly) different to Destiny 2, I would’ve probably kept ticking along in there, but then Epic Games announced a sale and my head was turned by Borderlands 3.

Borderlands 3 turns out to be a lot like Borderlands 2, but a bit shinier, and for the moment at least is just what I’m after. It’s got that instant hook (Shoot things! Get loot!) that works for a quick blast, but can also draw you in for longer sessions. The story seems like fairly generic MacGuffin-chasing fare, a bit patchy and with characters right on funny/annoying line, pretty standard for the series and does the job. Apart from anything else it’s nice to be playing a game you can pause, something of a rarity in these more multiplayer times. I’ll probably keep nudging my gear score up in Destiny 2 with the three pinnacle gear activities each week, and War Thunder has just received another update, but for a while at least it looks like Borderlands 3 will be the main reason to REMAIN INDOORS.

Lockdown, day… something? What even is a day in this purgatorial limbo of nothingness? A collection of hours (apparently) each as vague and insubstantial as another, melding and merging into a puddle of amorphous so-called ‘time’.

OK, things aren’t really that bad. To be honest, it’s not radically different to The Before Times now I’m fully set up for home working, for which there are pros and cons. The commute time of Walking Down The Stairs is a big plus, especially as it can be done in a dressing gown. It’s fairly peaceful most of the time, though on a warm day with the windows open the kids next door can be a bit noisy. Then again they seldom host VERY LOUD CONFERENCE CALLS without closing their office door, so, y’know, swings and roundabouts… The temptation to wander into the kitchen for a biscuit is strong, tempered slightly by the knowledge that the finite supplies of biscuits must be carefully preserved to avoid the Quest to the Shops. At least years of MMOing have prepared us for that arduous multi-step chain; first of all the queueing outside, like a server on launch day, then once you get in the hunt for ultra-rare crafting ingredients (a bag of flour), camping the respawn location while being particularly careful to remain outside the aggro radius of mobs (other shoppers). Online shopping has taken over from trying to get tickets to ComiCon/Glastonbury/other sought after concerts, staying up until midnight when delivery slots are released, more queueing again, having multiple browsers open and frantically alt-tabbing between them. We’ve managed to snag a few slots to get deliveries for elderly parents, which has been a relief; it’s not like there’s a danger of imminent starvation but it’s nice to have a fresh food alongside store cupboard staples and a few treats here and there.

To counteract those treats we’re going for walks much more frequently than The Before Times, we’re very fortunate to have some woods close by that allow for a good hour or so of socially distanced walking, and the weather has been rather pleasant for the most part. Beat Sabre on the Oculus Quest has also continued to be an excellent way of getting the heart pumping when confined to the house; I bought BoxVR, a boxing/fitness type of thing, back at the start of this whole business thinking I’d use that for a bit more of a structured workout, but the Quest version doesn’t support user-supplied music and the gameplay isn’t particularly engaging, especially with slightly flaky hit detection. Having tweaked Beat Sabre to allow for custom songs it’s far more fun furiously flailing to Radiohead, Salt n’ Pepper and System of a Down.

Extended confinement might seem like an ideal gaming opportunity, but days are just as full as they were before for the most part. Even when work wasn’t fully geared up for remote access it didn’t seem right to be plunging deeply into a game, so I tried to be at least vaguely productive during work hours. I had half a mind to try and get back into Red Dead Redemption 2 properly, but in the end things have been ticking along as they were before: bit of War Thunder here and there, and a fair bit of Destiny 2. The most recent event in the latter, the Guardian Games, is well encapsulated by Rock Paper Shotgun. To Do Lists on top of To Do Lists, it’s pretty much just a bunch of admin, but… I’m not entirely averse to a To Do List. It’s a wind-down at the end of a day, something I don’t have to think too deeply about. Games just aren’t really firing a passion any more for some reason. Still, even just for time-filling they’re a helpful way to REMAIN INDOORS and NOT THINK ABOUT THE EVENT. Stay safe out there, folks.

Our board game group has been playing Pandemic: Legacy for the last 18 months or so. We were keeping up in “real” time for a while, playing one game-month per actual-month, but busy schedules make it difficult to get everyone together so we slowed down a bit. The current coronavirus outbreak and resulting lockdown somewhat ironically means we all have the time now, but not the opportunity to get together to finish it off; the prospect of spreading a virus while playing Pandemic would be a bit much even for Alanis Morisette.

Things are going to be quiet for a bit as work sorts out remote infrastructure, currently a bit overwhelmed by the demand. A few quiet months won’t be the worst thing in the world, apart from the health concerns (particularly for friends and family), shortages of essentials, nagging fears of complete societal breakdown and the rest of it. As many people have already observed “Ha! Us (gamers/introverts/geeks) have been practising social isolation for years!”, I’m pretty confident I can survive being cooped up a fair while. There’s no shortage of books, films, TV and games I’ve been meaning to catch up with. Charlie Brooker’s stuff-a-lanche of too much media was ten years ago, back when Netflix were mostly sending DVDs out in the post so you only had a backlog of a few films at a time, rather than a backlog of every film and television show ever produced in the history of time.

Then there are games, of course, with more choice than ever, and more persistence to keep you playing (or at least spending). Good old War Thunder rolls along, its most recent update adding Swedish vehicles to the mix, I still hop in for a few battles here and there; eight years is a pretty good innings. Black Desert Online has continued to be entertaining in a Sunday morning group for chaotic button-mashing combat, but has left me with no desire to try and dive in more deeply. The plot is utterly baffling, and the great slabs of time consuming game mechanisms hold little appeal even with little else to do. Beat Sabre on the Oculus Quest continues to be a lot of fun with custom songs, and a welcome source of exercise if leaving the house gets trickier. For the moment, though, Destiny 2 is sticking around as main game of choice.

I was fading a bit, and wasn’t sure if the new Season of the Worthy would perk my interest up; it introduces Warmind bunkers, which seem fairly similar to the obelisks of the Season of Dawn, something to chip away at without being terribly game-changing. The Trials of Osiris caused more excitement in the player base, returning from the original Destiny. As I understand it, you get to play seven PvP matches and get rewards of varying fabulousness based on the results. I don’t spend a huge amount of time in the Crucible, dipping in for the odd Iron Banner event here and there, but thought I might at least poke a nose into the Trials, see what was what. You need to form a team, though, so I’ll almost certainly be skipping them.

Destiny 2 activities generally come in three flavours. Solo, where you gad about on your own in story missions or on planets or what-not. Team activities with matchmaking, like strikes, forge ignitions, and gambit matches, where you can queue up solo and get chucked in with random strangers. Then there are team activities where you need to form a team first before you can take part, generally the hardest/most time consuming/end-game-iest stuff. I’m perfectly happy with the first two, bumbling around on my own or with random silently competent strangers – I believe there is in-game voice chat if you want, but I’m fine for heavy breathing and random background music thanks (and in the game, aahhhh). Matchmade activities are usually around 10-30 minutes long, a sensible chunk of time and not the end of the world if things do go a bit pear-shaped. I don’t mind missing out on raids and dungeons, and doubt I’ll miss much in the Trials of Osiris being a pretty average PvPer.

I briefly considered joining a clan to sign up for a team, and had a little look at the recruiting forum; seems like everyone demands you sign up for Discord, “hey, come and chat, we want to get to know you!” I’m a grumpy old git now, though, I’m not after any interaction past activating the Holy Grail galloping emote if anyone wants to come and clop a couple of coconut shells together (or I’ll do the clopping, I’m not fussy). There’s a few great little networks of folks from newsgroups, blogging and such over the years, but much of my gaming is a a getaway, social distancing both online and off. Why play solo in a multiplayer game? That old chestnut was kicked around often enough in the blag-u-spore back in the day, other players liven the world up as team-mates, opponents, buyers, sellers, and the rest of it, plenty of different ways to play.

Course there are always single player games too; I finally got around to installing Slay the Spire and that’s rather enjoyable. As a deck-building dungeon-crawler it doesn’t seem terribly radical but it plays very well. Aside from graphics it seems like Slay the Spire should have been possible a long time ago; of course a deck-building card game idea doesn’t need a computer at all and seems like it should have been possible even longer ago, but (from a cursory Wikipedia search) doesn’t seem to pre-date Dominion. Was Monopoly the best we could for a hundred-odd years? Are we receptive to more complex board games thanks to computer games? Do the two feed off each other in a symbiotic relationship? Let’s just hope we can look back in 18 months and still be pondering such questions, rather than having rather more pressing concerns in a virus-ravaged wasteland than trying to come up with an innovative board game using different stockpiled pasta shapes as the pieces…

A new season of Destiny 2 is on the way. I’ve ticked off most of my goals for the Season of the Undying – gear cap hit, the season pass track finished, assorted weapons and bits of armour obtained – so it’s good timing, I haven’t had much motivation there for the last couple of weeks. I don’t know whether I’ve been conditioned by games, particularly MMOGs, or it’s deep psychology that’s always been there (see also: Everquest as Skinner Box and the old Operant Conditioning stuff), but when there’s a Number To Make Bigger (gear level, season level, whatever) then a Strike or Gambit or Crucible match is rip-roaring fun with lovely shiny loot and progress at the end of it, but once The Number is as big as it gets I can barely muster the enthusiasm to start any of those exact same activities in the first place. On a rational level I’m sure I’d enjoy them as much (I mean I think I enjoy them, get too far into deep introspection and you can hardly be sure of anything any more), but if a tree falls in a forest and it doesn’t Make A Number Bigger, does it really exist? Aaaaahhh! (No, not aaaahhh.)

While not suffering from existential crises I’ve been taking to the skies again in War Thunder after a fairly lengthy naval interlude. A new country has been added, China, with a new set of aircraft to unlock (and thus Numbers To Make Bigger). With the vehicles of War Thunder spanning the mid-1930s up to (at least) the 1980s (I haven’t been paying much attention to the higher tiers where the most recent vehicles are found) the era includes such straightforward and completely uncontroversial events as the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, formation of the People’s Republic of China, and so forth. Good job gamers are knowledgeable, reasonable and well-balanced types, so nobody went completely mental over particular flags or insignia (aside: some people went completely mental over particular flags or insignia). Funny how some of them were the same folk who previously insisted that politics must never interfere with games in any way, shape or form… Fortunately gamers also (genuinely) have the collective attention span of a gnat, so there was something else to be Absolutely Furious over within a week or two.

Going back to lower War Thunder tiers is always fun, when you open up new aircraft after a few battles rather than a few months, and the addition of new nations alleviates some of the guilt about picking on brand new players as there’s usually a fair sprinkling of more experienced folk around. I strongly suspect that, as with the French and Italian trees before, I’ll run out of steam around Tier III as things bog down and you need more and more Research Points to unlock new aircraft. It’s vitally important to Make A Number Bigger, but if the target number is Really, Really Big and you’re only Making A Number Very Slightly Bigger each match it’s also poor motivation. Tricky things, Numbers.

I also picked up Red Dead Redemption 2 when it released for PC; I was a big fan of the open-world type games that Grand Theft Auto III really kicked off, and though Grand Theft Auto V left me a bit cold in the end RDR2 was very well received so I thought I’d give it a crack. I’ve found it quite tough to get into, it’s a pretty slow introduction with occasional gun battles interspersed with lengthier spells of riding along and talking. It’s not bad as an extended tutorial covering riding, hunting and suchlike, but doesn’t lend itself terribly well to playing an odd chunk here or there with a few days between. Never mind the old 747 cockpit problem when returning to games after an extended absence, whether it’s my poor ageing brain or the scope of the game and number of systems within it, it’s like starting from scratch each time.

There’s always been a learning curve with game controls – way back in the early 14th Century some games (particularly simulators) came with keyboard overlays to help out. Things have generally converged in the worlds of first- and third-person shooters, WASD on PC for movement, space for jumping, R tends to be reload, E or F usually some sort of interaction. Context sensitivity is a great thing allowing one or two keys to do a variety of things, though can result in the absurdity of the infamous “Press ‘F’ to pay respects”. Other keys vary more – crouch, for example, as in perhaps the greatest bit of video game comedy, Dara Ó Briain’s “Jump-Crouch-Touch” routine.

The basics of running, jumping and shooting are fine in RDR2, but other elements of interaction with the world are a bit variable with a very fine line between a friendly hello and a fist fight. I got into a friendly bout of target practise with a stranger, and after shooting a few bottles and jars I was trying to have a quick chat to see if he fancied another round but ended up shooting him in the leg instead, which understandably made him a bit cross. Another time my horse was grubby so I was trying to brush him down (and, ideally, give him sugar lumps, and ride him over fences; polish his hooves every single day, and take him to the horse dentist). I thought I’d equipped a horse brush after rummaging around assorted inventory settings and clicked to start brushing, but apparently there was no brush so I punched him instead, which understandably made him a bit cross. Melmoth has a theory that this could be a deliberate design choice to put you in the shoes of a grizzled mean stranger-shootin’ horse-punchin’ outlaw, which is plausible, or I might be a ham-fisted buffoon, which is perhaps a bit more plausible. It looks incredible, I was riding out of camp at night watching a thunderstorm rolling in, lightning strikes illuminating the valley, but it’s hard to really settle into the world when trying to figure out whether to rapidly tap ‘E’, or hold down ‘R’, or right click then ‘F’. I’m sure it’ll get there in the end, but fear my horse might have had enough by that point.

On the mobile gaming front I’ve had a couple of old favourites ticking along for a fair while now: Marvel Puzzle Quest for match-3-ing with added gacha-type collecting, and Wordscapes for Scrabble-ish vocabulary workouts. I had a hankering for something a bit different and remembered playing 2048 a while back, so grabbed 2048 Ultimate for a bit of number combining.

2048 is a simple concept, based on(/ripping off) Threes!; tiles valued 2 or 4 randomly appear on a 4×4 grid, you swipe in a direction to move them all around, and tiles of the same value combine to form a new tile of twice the value. You keep swiping until you get a tile of the titular 2048 or the board is completely full, though if you hit 2048 you can keep going for a total score of the value of all tiles on the board. Nice little self contained game, well suited to touch screens, doesn’t take too long or need particularly deep thought.

The main difference in 2048 Ultimate appears to be the ability to play on grid sizes from 3×3 to 8×8. Obviously the first thing to do is take everything TO THE MAX and play on the largest grid possible, so I kicked off an 8×8 game. A month later, it’s still going with no obvious signs that it’ll finish. Ever. The difference between a 4×4 and 8×8 grid doesn’t seem that much, a mere four extra squares per side; of course being a grid it’s a total of 64 rather than 16 squares, but that’s still not that much more, is it? Or is it? It is. Isn’t it? Or is it? Yes, it is.

Instead of carefully considering each move on a grid that size it’s more just furiously swiping everything towards one corner of the board. Speed of swipe is of the essence if for no other reason than the possibility of finishing a game before the heat death of the universe – I have a suspicion that the average number of moves to fill an 8×8 board works out as a ludicrous number, more seconds than have elapsed since the big bang or something, like the old grains of rice on a chess board doubled in each square. You can get into something of a trance-like state, mindlessly swiping away, though there are occasional bumps in the road when the swiping is a bit too furious and you shift everything in the wrong direction. There’s an Undo button, but it only reverts a single move which isn’t always enough if you don’t snap out of the swipe-trance quickly enough. That makes life a bit more interesting, sorting out non-optimal tile placements, but in general it’s quite a calming way of zoning out and passing a bit of time, gradually layering numbers like geological strata.