Gavin Might Be Too Old for Video Games (DOOM Review…Sort of)

I hope I'm wrong about this as gaming has been one of my main hobbies since my friend Lee gave me a Nintendo on Oct. 13th, 1995. This past weekend I had planned my Saturday around playing the new video game DOOM, a sequel to the classic series of first-person shooters. However, things did not go as planned.

Friday, I went to Redbox and rented the game. I didn't buy it because I'm frugal and I can't justify dropping $60 on something I don't know that I'll 100% enjoy. This should have been my first indication that my gaming priorities might be slipping. When you start saying things like "If I buy this game, I won't have money to eat food" and other crazy adult things, something might be changing.

Saturday rolls around and it is time to play a game I had been anticipating for months. I install the game and start the first level. I'm shooting demons and causing huge piles of gore too occur. It's awesome! Sadly, my fun was short lived as I looked over at my mountain of laundry that I hadn't put away. That lead to me remembering that I needed to do dishes. I turned off the game, put away my laundry, did the dishes, and then went to lunch with some friends.

I get home and finally, I can play this game. I turn my Xbox on and get another 3 hours of playing in before I have to stop. Was it because the game was bad? Was it not fun or the story was bad? No, I had to stop because the game was giving me motion sickness and a severe headache. I have never experienced these issues before with a game. instead of taking a break and coming back to the game later, I thought of the $3 per day I was paying to not play the headache-inducing demon shooting game, I took it back to Redbox less than 24 hours later.

Maybe this is just a one-time thing with DOOM, but what if every game is going to give me a headache? Or maybe I'll just keep putting laundry away and doing the dishes instead of gaming. I can't handle that. And if I have kids, I hear that they need love and attention and stuff and I don't know if I can handle that! Hopefully this is just a phase and I can go back to being lazy because adulting is hard.

PS: The game was super fun from what I got to play before my body decided to be 80 years old. I would recommend.