Games – By the River

2021-02-242021-03-01

Side-effects of a Pandemic

Oh no, the dreaded P-word. I’ll be honest, I have been avoiding video games and movies with ‘pandemic’ in the title. I am sick and tired of the altered lives we have been forced to live for nearly one year, but this is not the reason for this entry.

Let us focus on the positive side-effects of this pandemic. It is hard to believe that anything “positive” has arisen from this nightmare, but hear me out.

It is winter in Toronto and I have yet to brave the nasty weather commuting to work. I have been working at home since March of last year. We can take this as one of the positives.

I always loved video games but have not really played since high school due to time constraints. Prior to the pandemic, I would spend the vast majority of my time on the road. I simply did not have the time to play video games.

Since the pandemic began, I find myself at home with plenty of time for games. Video games help me take my mind off the pandemic. Since travel is severely restricted, I find I can travel virtually via video games.

I can to explore the United Kingdom and Germany via Train Simulator and Train Sim World. I fly around the world via X-Plane 11 and Infinite Flight. I drive around Italy and France in Euro Truck Simulator. I drive around the western United States in American Truck Simulator.

I explore Victorian London via Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. This game is underrated and a lot of fun. The architecture is beautiful and being able to scale any building in the city via parkour is a thrill.

I fight for survival in a post-nuclear war Russia, beginning in the Moscow Metro and exploring the monster-ridden forests. Metro Exodus is a fantastic game with unbelievable graphics.

I experience the difficulties reintegrating into society upon returning from the Vietnam war in Mafia III. This open-world game is set in a fictitious city called Bordeaux, modelled after New Orleans in the 1960s.

Medieval fantasy is explored via two of the most highly-regarded RPG games of the past 10 years… Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3. Both offer the ability to escape the real world and live vicariously through the characters throughout the vast lands they inhabit.

Those who know me know of my deep connections to Asia. I travel virtually to Hong Kong by playing Sleeping Dogs. This is a game where you play the part of a triads gang member who ends up working undercover for the police. The streets of Hong Kong are incredibly replicated in this game. You feel as though you are really in Hong Kong.

While in Asia, we cannot forget Tokyo and Osaka Japan. Yakuza 0 is a fantastic game set in both cities. Walking the streets to me feels so authentic due to the time I have spent in both cities in real life. This game makes me want to go back to Japan so bad.

Gaming has been a lot of fun for me and has taken my mind off the isolation brought on by the lockdown. Another positive side-effect is cooking.

Now that I am home, I have time to cook every single meal I eat. Although my community contains hundreds of restaurants, and we have easy access via delivery applications, I have rarely eaten takeout food this past year. I can count how many takeout meals I have consumed.

I am enjoying cooking all the foods I love every single as opposed to weekends only. Another side-effect if you can call it that, is the fact that I have lost weight due to eating healthier and maintaining an exercise regiment at home.

Friends tend to be temporary items in our lives. Only some friends remain with us through thick and thin, year in and year out. I have been blessed with having a lot of wonderful friends. The pandemic has allowed me to realise who my true friends are. It has given me more time to actually speak with friends who I have not spoken with much over the past few years because we all lived such busy lives.

My favourite side-effect of this pandemic is that isolation has given me more time to focus on writing. I have much more time to contribute to these blogs and my books. I love to write, as most of you can tell by now. Be on the lookout for many more products on the horizon.

2020-10-31

Virtual Escape

Throughout the global pandemic, technology has proven to be vital in several ways. It has allowed many companies to continue working as they were while onsite. It has allowed retailers to continue selling goods. It has assisted in the delivery of restaurant food (although the service fees charged to these restaurants is another story). Technology during the pandemic has allowed people to keep their sanity by engaging in a virtual wold.

The live music and nightclub industry has been devastated by the pandemic. Bands, DJs, and singers no longer have venues to perform the arts they love dearly. Technology has enabled them to keep in touch with their fans.

I have heard about online events where different bands play live from their own residences as part of a virtual concert. Thanks to technology, music is still being recorded and released for sale as the various artists, DJs, and producers are able to do their own recording from several sites and have it mixed together at the end.

Defected Records has been hosting live, virtual music festivals every Friday. These festivals feature different DJs each week spinning both classics and the latest in house, techno, garage, disco, tech house, etc. Some of my favourite DJs appearing on Defected Records live streams are Carl Cox, Monki, Gorgon City, Sam Devine, Simon Dunmore, and Themba. In case you did not know, they are all house music DJs.

Speaking of house music, Pan Pot has been doing live shows from Berlin, Germany. One such show was performed while they operated a boat giving us a tour of the city via one of the rivers snaking through the city. Their specialty is tech house and they spin the latest and greatest songs of the genre.

Bodhi Satva is another favourite of mine. He hails from Central African Republic and is also a producer. He produces house music, but is known for a special sub-genre of house coined Ancestral Soul. He is the Godfather of Ancestral Soul which blends house music with traditional African instruments and vocals. He hosts a live show every Friday where he spins a nice mix of Ancestral Soul, soulful house, and classic house. This past Friday he also spun a new roots reggae track.

DJ Jazzy Jeff from Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince has been spinning live online throughout the pandemic. As I type this article, he is hosting a virtual Halloween show. He has guest video windows for fans to stream from their homes. The party is a mix of the good Hip Hop (1980s through 1990s), R&B, and dance music. Canada’s DJ Scratch Bastid just started spinning as I type. This is just awesome!

I had to take a break from writing this article because the music spun by Jazzy and Scratch was so good that I had to get up and dance! I got a pretty good workout from dancing and even doing some strength exercise while enjoying the show.

Since travel is severely restricted, I found another way to pass the time during the upcoming dark months of winter… virtual travel! I am both a rail fan and av geek. I play X-Plane 11 and Infinite Flight for aviation, and Train Sim World and Train Simulator 2021 for rail.

I found some enthusiasts on Twitch who live stream their flights or rail journeys. There are quite a few real-world pilots streaming X-Plane 11 on Twitch. These streams are interactive and viewers may ask questions during the show. The pilots are really cool and helpful towards those of us who are still learning to fly or are simply interested in aviation.

There is yet one more method for virtual travel… watching videos on YouTube. There are a lot of videos taken by people either walking or driving around cities and countryside in various lands. I watched an interesting walk through Moscow filmed in 4K. I also watched another filmed in London. I found a YouTuber who films drives around Abuja, Nigeria and its surrounding countryside. It is the next-best thing to being there. I will surely visit these cities after the pandemic.

I discovered that some of these events can be a cure for loneliness. I was feeling pretty down about the current semi-lockdown and its effect on Halloween. I decided to start writing this post because I realized I had not written to this site in nearly two weeks. While I was writing, I remembered that Jazzy Jeff was hosting a virtual Halloween party. I tuned in and resumed writing until the music made me take a break and dance. The party made me feel happy and forget about the situation that we are all in this year.

2020-09-122023-05-21

The Transition to a Virtual World

What strange times we are living in. During the lockdown, many of us were forced to transition to a pretty much virtual world. Some of us had the privilege to be able to work from home. During the height of the lockdown, it was advised to avoid close contact with people outside of your household. For those of us who live alone, that meant an extended period of mind-destroying isolation.

I am blessed to be able to work from home. I often say this is the only good that came out of the pandemic for me. I shudder at the thought of isolation without work. I worried so much about those who could not work from home and were effectively laid off. Spending up to 6 weeks at home alone must have driven thousands of people to the edge of the cliff.

During this period, I began living in a virtual world. I did my work via remote connection to a virtual desktop. I participated in team meetings via virtual meeting software such as Teams or Webex. As of publication, I am still doing these things at home.

Outside of work, I socialized with friends via social media by way of text, voice, or video calls on KakaoTalk, Line, Facebook, or Instagram. I was entertained by virtual music festivals held online by Defected Records and many other outlets. I also found time to play video games.

When I look at my Steam gaming library, I see that all of my games are simulation games. I also have one adventure game which is like living in a virtual world. During the height of isolation, I found great joy driving transport trucks around Europe and the United States via simulation games. I also enjoyed driving trains throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.

Those games and the ability to socialize and work online enabled me to get through the isolation period while living in a virtual world.

Euro Truck Simulator enabled me to take virtual trips throughout Europe while performing the various tasks related to driving a transport truck. I was able to drive through Italy and board a ferry to Sardinia and continue my journey through the island to drop off the cargo. This is probably the most fun game I have ever played.

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a big rail fan. I absolutely love trains. While travelling throughout Asia, I like to spend my free time riding the trains. Japan is a country that I consider a mecca for trains. Trains quite literally hold that country together.

Train Sim World 2 by DoveTail Games is a visually stunning train simulation. Not only can you sit in the cab and drive trains, you may get up, walk around, and even interact by performing tasks such as adding fuel, operating switches, etc. You may also play as a rail fan taking photographs, riding trains, or just walking around the station or one of the sprawling yards.

Infinite Flight truly amazes me… this is a fully-fledged flight simulator made for mobile phones and tablets! Before playing this game, I knew nothing about how to fly an airplane. When I got into this game, I found myself reading their guides, forums, and watching videos from real pilots in order to learn how to fly.

This simulation has a large following from around the world. Many pilots actually use this application and are active in the forums. They have a live feature where players can either fly or operate Air Traffic Control.

Taking off is the easiest part of the flight, just like in real life. Landing is the most difficult. It took me quite some time to be able to successfully land an airplane in Infinite Flight. My first successful flight was with my favourite plane, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I was playing this game pre-pandemic while at my bar after work on a quiet evening. I was so happy I just had to order another drink and tell my friends and staff.

Train Simulator 2020 is the original simulator also by DoveTail games. This tried and trusted simulator has a large online community who create several mods and custom routes from around the world. It may not be as visually stunning as Train Sim World, but it is a more well-rounded system, popular with the most die-hard train enthusiasts.

This franchise is known for its massive collection of add-on routes and locomotives of which there are over 500 on the Steam store. This does not include the hundreds if not thousands of downloadable content created by enthusiasts and third-party developers. I have amassed quite a collection of routes and locomotives over the two years I have been playing.

Conclusion
Although many of us felt isolated and lonely during the lockdown, I was able to enjoy a virtual life by playing these incredible games.

Games Played during Lockdown
Euro Truck Simulator
American Truck Simulator
Train Simulator
Train Sim World
Elder Scrolls
X-Plane
Infinite Flight