A long time ago I did a bit of martial arts. The art that I learned practiced pushing hands, which is a very slow, controlled kind of “fighting” - it is a way of being in the moment with another person, focused entirely on their next move and the flow of the battle. It is meditation in motion. My teacher said he grew up reading about masters of the arts fighting for hours and, as a young boy, he believed they were locked in fierce combat, but as he grew up he learned that they were, in fact, moving slowly, pausing to consider their movements, consider each other, slowly choreographing the entire meditation together.
I wrote this a long time ago, and only finished it off recently. Figured I might as well post it. I actually played Horizon from March - December 2018.
It’s rare that I play a triple-A game, but Horizon somehow caught my imagination and dropped at a good time: just as I was returning to work after my paternal leave, when I felt in need of buying myself fun things, so I decided to give it a go. I played it slowly, over 9 months, racking up about 30 hours.
I only commute once a week, so I played Breath of the Wild almost entirely on the train every Tuesday, for 40 minutes in the morning and evening. It is a staggering game to experience in a handheld machine: a whole world lives inside that tiny cartridge. I am not a huge open world fan, so my opinion might not mean much here, but I’ve never played anything that feels so much like a living, breathing world.
2018 was a very busy year, but somehow I found time to play some games. Here they are, in no real order. Overall this has been a year of trying to figure out what genres I really like: I’ve put some time into games I didn’t get on with to try to push myself, and I’ve tried games that I think I’d otherwise have ignored. I’ve paid more attention to where I’m having fun and where I’m not.