V is for Video Games

V is for Video GamesToday the A to Z Challenge continues! I’ll be posting about one letter/word on every weekday in April. Don’t want the barrage of posts? Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll let you know when I start doing new stuff next month!

V is for Video Games.

I’ve been looking forward to this one since I started the alphabet. Video games have been a big part of my life as far back as I can remember. As a little kid I remember playing a lot of co-operative games with my parents and one thing that really makes me sad is the disappearance of local cooperative multiplayer from most mainstream games. My fiance is a bigger gamer than I am and being able to game together is one of my favourite things about having him in my life, but there is a very limited selection of games for us to choose from.

That being said, many of my favourite games don’t have a local multiplayer function or any multiplayer function at all. I love RPGs including a great many Japanese RPGs–some of the Final Fantasy series as well as several others–because of the wonderful worlds these stories allow me to explore and the stories they tell. The Dragon Age series is another big favourite of mine.

A good RPG is simply another type of story, one which focuses a lot on dialogue and exploration. The best RPGs make fascinating character studies. Games like Dragon Age are a great way to explore what happens when characters make different choices.

Usually I go through intense bouts of gaming that last a few weeks, then go several months without playing video games, but the fiance and I have been playing an awesome cooperative video game called Divinity: Origin of Sin steadily for a while now and I suspect we’ll be at it for several months to come. Or years. I have no idea how big this game is yet. All I know is it’s one of the best multiplayer games I’ve played in a great many years.

Some people consider video games a waste of time, but I think you can learn something about storytelling from almost any game, especially a well written RPG.

Do you play video games? Got any awesome recommendations? Let me know about them in the comments section below!