Several days back, at the EVO 2015 fighting game tournament, Capcom announced that its newest Street Fighter game, Street Fighter V (SFV), would essentially be released as a “complete” game with free (or mostly free) content becoming available down the road. So unlike with Street Fighter IV (SFIV) and its “Super” and “Ultra” upgraded versions on disc, Street Fighter V will be the only version of the game on disc, ever. Also unlike with SFIV, new SFV characters will be unlocked FREE, FREE, FREE to players through gameplay. Interestingly, in its statement Capcom noted:
If I was placed under duress to name one amazing aspect of modern gaming, (because there are many) it would be accessibility. Simply put, one need not stray far from common technologies to access video games. They are available through consoles, desktops, laptops, streaming devices (i.e. Roku), tablets, and phones. And perhaps most importantly, a good many available games are FREE. Well…make that “free,” at least in some cases.
When I first got a phone that was capable for playing games, I loaded it to the brim with free fodder like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. Same thing happened when I got my first tablet. Only with the tablet, I expanded my game gobbling to include paid titles as well as freemium games like The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff. And I was happy. I was happy to have nothing less than a plethora of quick and easy games right at my fingertips for any occasion: my morning commute, waiting for an Xbox One game to load, or trying to ignore a “fun” family conversation. If you had seen my tablet just a couple weeks ago, you would have seen a full page of game icons. Because even if I didn’t really like one of the free games I had shamelessly installed, I still liked having it around just in case I changed my mind or got really, really, really bored.
I said “a couple weeks ago” because as of today, that home screen looks completely different.
There have been more than a few disappointments out this year haven’t there? Game after game released to tremendous hype only to fall short of our collected expectations. It happened with Lightning Returns, it happened with Alien: Isolation, and especially so with Destiny. They are all good games in their own rights, but none were quite what many of us expected them to be. It’s made me wonder though, does everything I play need to be great? Can a game that’s just good be good enough?
Many of us have been there. You know that some gaming time is coming your way, be it an hour or seven, and you psych yourself up for it. You plan to jam through game after game after game! Defeating old bosses, facing new ones! Finishing that one game from your backlog that’s been bothering you, starting up that new game that you’ve been meaning to get to! You know that your gaming session is going to be EPIC!
But then that fateful hour arrives AND…you feel a little bit meh about the whole thing. Maybe you’re feeling distracted. Maybe you’re feeling tired. Maybe you just can’t get your head in the game ( no pun intended). Whatever the reason, you simply don’t feel like playing. Yet you know you just can’t let the time go by doing something else. You had it all planned out that you were going to use this time to game, and by golly, that’s what you’re going to do! Maybe all you need is a little push. Something less monumental than that heavy action shooter or 60-hour RPG to get your gaming gears greased and rolling. There are plenty of games out there that can be easily stopped and started, that don’t require a ton of brainpower off the bat, and that can serve as the perfect segues into more massive gaming showdowns. When I’m not quite in the mood to game despite having set aside time to do so, here are a few tactics I use to get the gaming juices flowing.
