I asked on Twitter which game I should hate play next. I made a poll consisting of Death Stranding, God of War (a.k.a. Dad of Boy, or “Kratos is chopping down birches in a surly manner”) and Jedi: Fallen Order. I have played between 2 – 5 hours per game and I strongly dislike them.

One of the things I have started doing to get stuff done is set up habits for myself. Bite sized portions of work or writing or playing to get myself to move forward. I am learning Latin (crustulum!), German, French, and for some misguided reason, Dutch.

I read 10 pages a day from boring, obscure, good or awful books about games. I write one page a day in my notebook (like this blog post). I draw one drawing a day and I play a game that everyone references but that I dislike so much I can’t play it for fun.

The main reason I do these things is because why not? I have time to do it and it is nice to see progress. Pisci in pavimentum iacio as they probably don’t say anywhere, not even in Duolingo, mostly because I’m not sure if pisces, pisci, pisce is correct. Fish. They throw fish on the floor, or rather I throw fish on the floor because iacio is I throw. I think? It’s going swimmingly, thank you.

Anyway, my intent with playing these games is because they’re often referenced at work and so it is good for me to know them. Also, I am nothing if not supremely angry and judgmental about people dismissing games without actually playing them. 90+ hours into the Witcher 3 I am intimately familiar with all the reasons I don’t like it.

That said, when I posted that poll, there seemed to be some misunderstanding around the word “hate”. People – not many, but some – started gushing about how great the three games I had chosen to hate play were. There seems to be this disconnect when mentioning not liking very popular games.

Admittedly, this is also part of why I play, so that I can properly eviscerate them, mostly around the profound sexism or toxic masculinity in them.

So the next game after The Witcher 3 will be Dad of Boy or Kratos really dislikes birch trees. I’m sincerely hoping that it won’t take another 90+ hours or I’ll never be done with my pile of games.

On the plus side, it will give me plenty of fodder for my writing habit, though.