Why Didn’t They Teach Us This At School?

Just before Christmas I bought my husband a PS4, you know, because I’m nice like that, and certainly not because I wanted a bit of peace and quiet from the whining from the ancient Xbox.  The practical upshot of the purchase is that there is now a perfectly good, if a bit noisy, Xbox 360 lying practically dormant in our living room, gathering dust and occasionally resurrected for Mass Effect, Bioshock and Skyrim.  Husband uses the PS4 sparingly, which given that there seem to be so few games for it is not a huge surprise, and has migrated to his PC.  This means that I have full use of the TV, the Xbox and the £500 Netflix machine.  I should make use of all this technology shouldn’t I?

I tried to play Skyrim on the Xbox once before.  I made it through character creation with very little difficulty and subsequently spent the next twenty minutes running into walls.  Spiral staircases were the bane of my gaming skills.  As it turns out, I can really only use one stick at a time: move, turn, move, turn, but never at the same time.  They didn’t teach us this at school!  Why didn’t they teach us this at school?  It has to be more important to my everyday life than trigonometry (which I have used ONCE in the last ten years, sorry Mrs Kesper!).

Back in 2008, learning how to play Lord of the Rings Online was almost as hard, but at least I knew how to use a mouse in advance.  Really all that was required was remembering which button did what, and as I was a minstrel (healer) only three or four of the buttons were much use.

But here’s the big question: where do I start?  I’ll need a game with a good story more than anything, and one that either has very little fighting or that I can put on a horrifically easy setting.  It seems that Bioshock might fit the bill.  I remember watching Husband play it a long time ago and it seemed fairly interesting then, even if not completely captivating.  I liked the graphics and I liked the concept.  I liked that there wasn’t too much fighting and that it talked you through each new concept.  Bioshock is something I can get into.

Here we go.