Married and Playing: 100 Days of Video Games and More: Far and Away from my PS4

Day 77: Robots in Disguise

Its been over a week since I blogged but the delay has been for the best possible reasons—the ocean and a mec (plus I had a crap ton of grading to do).

The Mec

A few weeks ago a guest speaker in one of my communication courses reported that the Target distribution center in Kern county is bigger than the Empire state building laying on its side. Inside this local Target warehouse lives a giant robot that helps the human workers (so much awesome). Since this revelation, and buying the game Helldivers, I have been fixated on getting a Mec to control in game (just to be clear, the game Helldivers not the Target mec).

And it finally happened, last Thursday we finally got exosuit and now every game we play I just clank behind John and mow down all oncoming bugs/cyborgs/illuminate. On a side note, if my character walks to close to the hubs character in game, while I am wearing the big metal suit it does damage because I stomped on him. What a great metaphor for life, when I am fully suited in my armor and get too close to the hubs I can make him bleed.

Since we earned the exosuit we have been playing Helldivers every spare moment we can get. I even played a few planets with our son who is a few levels behind me. When I played with our son, as soon as I called my Mec he climbed inside forcing me to call my backup because he loved playing as a robot as much as his mama. Over the weekend we were away from our PS4 for almost 72 hours and had to instead rely on our mobile games.

Our Fav Mobile Game

My last out of town trip was solo and John installed Carcossone and Agricola on our mobile devices so that we could pass and play. Since that trip we have ongoing games of virtual Carcassone that often take days to complete. Since the first time we ever played Carcassone on our phones I have only beaten the hubs once, and it was before we watched the tutorial and understood how to play, so my first win does not entirely count.

The Ocean

New blue hair with the hubs at the ocean

We travelled out of town to attend a marriage workshop near the beach. We thought it would be all sand and relaxation but the trip was actually a lot of work and simultaneously we suffered some PS4

withdrawal. The most enjoyable aspect of the trip was meeting another couple that like us are also board game geeks. They proclaimed they are “strange” because their standard celebratory gifts are board games to one another (um, most romantic thing ever).

Unsurprisingly this couple, like the hubs and me, had also brought board games along on their weekend away. After playing Sushi Go and Carcassonne, people who started as strangers became our fast friends. The beach was beautiful but my favorite part of the trip was the first time we play the RL copy of Carcassonne (and I won and have included a photo of our awesome board).

The game Carcassonne is wonderful digitally but it is so much better face-to-face. The face-to-face game is easier to modify and as the pieces start to weave together you move in closer to the people around you and start to silently communicate in building a region from nothing.

Tip of the day: Some days play without your armor so you don’t make your partner bleed. And, always take the opportunity to play games, even with strangers you never know what you will find out about yourself and your coupleship.