The Euphoric, and over-dramatized story of my PS4 purchase…

The day is Black Friday 2014.  There are a zillion deals online for gaming systems, with many deals specifically targeting PS4 systems and games.  My heart skips a beat when I see several games bundled with the PS4 system, for FREE.  But wait!  I can’t buy a PS4 now!  I have finals, and lots of school work, and and and… My logical mind reminds me that the deals that were out probably would not be topped until the following Black Friday season (maybe this wasn’t THAT logical).  As my fingers clicks away, adding my shipping and payment information, I can’t help but become giddy at the prospect of playing a brand new system with amazing graphics.  My mind wanders to happier times of staying up late and killing things in the privacy of my own home.  Finally, I click that bright orange “Confirm Purchase” button and I receive an email confirmation informing me that I would receive my new system in 2 days.

The wait began, but I didn’t wait idly!…

While waiting for my new system, I decided to catch up on all of the new games that were available for the PS4 and read about future game releases.  During my wait time, I also ordered a few more games and my excitement only grew as I tracked my PS4 system daily (ok hourly) until its arrival a few days later.  I became at war with myself because I had final exams to study for, but I also had a brand new shiny system waiting for me to click it, touch it, smell the new plastic smell (ok this is going too far).  But you get my point, I was torn between being the good straight A student and the video game playing cave troll that I’m just as comfortable with being.  But finally, the student won, and I tucked my PS4 away on the shelf until I finished with my final exams, for I knew that had I cracked open my new system, I would not be able to pull myself away in order to be productive.

Once final exams were over… 

Now, grades were posted, exams done, and I had 3 entire weeks to play to my heart’s content.  I started with, “The Last of Us”, with its pull on my protective nature and my fondness of dystopian settings.  I found myself loving the story and wanting to play more, but my mind kept returning to wishing I had a keyboard and mouse and not a controller.  So, I thought to myself, maybe it was just how the game was made and I moved on to the next game, Grand Theft Auto V.  Again, so much excitement and I was ready to repo the crap out of some cars and be as bad ass as I could be.  But again, my clumsy fingers kept yearning for my keyboard and mouse.  I told myself that it had just been some time since I played console games.  Over the past 5 years, my gameplay has been strictly PC and I wanted to convince myself that I just needed some time to revert back to my origins.  I started playing console games with the PSOne and wasn’t introduced to PC gaming until YEARS after I’d already fallen in love with game consoles.

I failed my fellow gamers… 

After hours of playing all of the games I’d purchased, GTAV, The Last of Us, Shadow of Mordor, Destiny, and Minecraft (don’t judge, or I’ll cry lol), I realized that my issue was the console/controller.  I found myself incredibly interested in the story and the game play itself, but not  enjoying interacting with the game via a controller.  My new-found disdain for controllers was extremely confusing to me considering the hours of time I spent playing COD, Halo, and pretty much every other FPS on my XBox360 and the metric ton of games I played on both my PSOne and PS2.  I considered that possibly I had bumped my head or was coming down with something, but no, I was in great health.  I found myself slowly gravitating back to my PC games, playing a game of D3 here, a game of LoL there.  Next thing I knew, my PS4 and the games were sitting collecting dust.  What happened?  What did I do wrong?  Do unicorns really exist?  My brain could not comprehend what was happening.

I haven’t completely given up…

I still believe deep down that I just need to keep at it.  Now that winter break is long gone and school is in session, I don’t have much time to play video games, so when I do, I go back to my old faithful games that I enjoy playing.  Although I do play some type of game every day, usually an hour or so of Diablo 3, or a match (or 2) of League of Legends, I don’t have nearly as much time as I will have during the summer break.  I will definitely spend quite a bit of time playing during the summer break.  I plan on playing around with the controller settings again and maybe tweaking my way back into the console scene that I loved so much for so many years.  Either way, I REALLY want to finish The Last of Us, and get much further into GTA V at the very least.

Mira is a Senior Full Stack, specializing in Web Applications developed in the healthcare industry.