Weekend unwinding with stress relief gaming
- Inna Kryvoruchko
- Jun 3, 2016
- 4 min read
The whole world can fall away on a weekends. It can satiate days of itchy thumbs, quell a busy work week barren of game time, and leave you ready to immerse yourself in distraction, something epic; a tour de force. The inevitable Monday morning consists of sleepless, heavy eyes, bloodshot and weepy, and the mind questions what happened to those hours. Undoubtedly you have whittled away precious time indulging in a pursuit so insular, demanding, and (potentially) aggravating ; hours spent knee-deep in a quest so time consuming that you enter a vacuum of unknowing. How did you get lost in the Steam Store on Friday and only escape on Monday? Finger wagging, toe tapping partners are always happy to remind you of this when you are in a deranged, jittery state, sobbing into the first coffee of the new week. But, you reason, weekends are too short for sleep…
Our two gaming experts are sharing their tips about the games that will help you relax, unwind, and prepare yourself for the work week to come.
Shane Hulgraine, Localisation Project Manager:
I can think of some ideal titles that I believe are a beautiful way to squander your hard earned time off.
Long haul experience: FIFA solo Campaign: If any game was designed to be played in a man cave it has got to be FIFA. What could be better than picking an obscure football club from the lower echelons of the worst league imaginable and see them crowned champions? Minutes turn into hours, hours dwindle into chunks of the day (afternoons evaporate never to be seen again) and it is common to find oneself on the wrong side of midnight, unsure why you are still playing, brimming with caffeine, and having ingested enough chocolate Hob Nobs to floor a diabetic. These kind of tournaments are slow burners and not for the impatient.
Pulse racing experience: The Last Of Us / GTA: Choose to unwind by revelling in heightened states of terror and frenzied rampages through urban decadence. Headshots are key in both but a good, stealthy knifing does wonders to revitalise faith in your abilities. Both offer strong, engaging and often tense, story lines that (if the gameplay doesn’t) will keep you on the edge of your seat until it’s time to get back to the grind.
*Warning: indefensible road rage and a despairing need to assemble shivs are by-products of this kind of marathon.*
Indie / quick fix experience: The Swapper, The Cave, Limbo, episodic adventure games… For the gamer with less time to blow. There is little learning curve needed to take on titles like these and their scaled down appearance, and smart intuitive controls, make them endearingly addictive. The gameplay is relative unchallenging but leaves you with the feeling that you have cracked a puzzle, met and overcome story columns. The mission objectives too rarely stray off course – leaving a lot of the weekend unclaimed by the alluring tendrils of gaming for the, now destressed, gamer to find other ways to ill-spend their time.
Robert Hill, JP-EN Localisation Specialist:
I don’t really have a game that I only play at specific times, but I do have a game which I play ALL the time…
It’s a game that has probably already had its time in the sun… already been in the zeitgeist and subsequently moved on, leaving only the most committed of players behind…
That game is of course Derek Yu’s 2012 indie-gem, Spelunky HD. I cannot tell you exactly how many hours I have plunged into/wasted with this game, but I’m sure my partner will tell you that it’s far too many. I will not delve deep into an explanation of Spelunky as you can find all that information in previous blog posts, but what I can tell you is that the game is ridiculously addictive, and devilishly hard. In fact, my current stats read 1103 plays and 1102 deaths. Yes that’s right… my win percentage is 0.01%...
To have me keep coming back for more punishment with such a measly win ratio tells you everything about how much I love this game. Would I say that is relieves my stress levels? Hmmm… It certainly allows me to forget about the stress of the outside world, but the game itself is so stressful that I can hardly call it a relaxing experience. There are players out there with much higher win ratios than me who probably find much of the game a breeze, but for me every stage is an exercise in patience and skill. Sure, sometimes the dice fall just right and I can be out the caves, all damsels accounted for, 50,000 in the bank and the Udjat Eye pointing me in the direction of the Black Market with barely a few minutes gone, but misfortune favours the foolish, and, my word, has my foolishness led me to some untimely deaths! It’s all going so well… Shiva is pleased with me and the game wants me to succeed… is what I’m always thinking when I fall onto spikes or get knocked in between two Tiki Traps.
Would I recommend Spelunky HD for getting rid of daily stress? No… not at all. The game delights itself in punishing you for the merest slips of concentration, and anybody with even a slight disposition towards anxiety will not find it an enjoyable experience at all. But you know what? That one win out of 1103 attempts was one of the most gratifying gaming experiences of my life, and that is the magic of the game. Would I recommend it for relaxing? No. Would I recommend it full stop? More than anything else ever…
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Do you have your own weekend favourites when it comes to games? If so, feel free to share your recommendations with our readers by leaving your comment on our Facebook page.
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