When I was a kid, I used to work in the kitchen of a local pub. It’s a small, well-respected company tucked away in some idyllic village in the Peak District. It is run by a chef who has worked in a Michelin starred restaurant. With age, gray hair, less patience and less time to pretend, he left the city and took to the mountains, quietly engaged in more authentic and honest cooking.
From the age of 12 to 18, I worked my way up from dishwasher (or kitchen porter, if you want to get more senior) to master chef – most of the time for less than minimum wage because, well, who would Woolen cloth? Paying underage children the correct amount, right? Every weekend, I’d lug my greasy, sweaty self to the bar, and the chef’s wife-tavern owner would jot down some notes, slip them into an envelope, and send me on my way. I’ll just head over to my local Forbidden Planet or GameStation (CEX doesn’t show up until later) and start perusing all the used games that the store has stocked over the past week.
Sometimes it takes two weeks’ wages to afford something particularly stunning – I remember getting Final Fantasy XII and the official Prima guide for less than £50 once – but it’s worth it . I work hard for my money, and if I waste it on shit like Spyro the Dragonfly, I’ll be damned. I now need to be more careful and spend my money wisely. I’m almost an adult after all.
This has all taught me to follow one very simple rule when considering buying a game: will it entertain me above £1 an hour? It’s a bit of an odd rule — some games will pay off a lot more than that, some a lot less — but it’s stuck in my mind in a pretty serious way, even as an adult Man, I also found it hard to shake. Admittedly, games are made, released, and consumed differently these days: Live service setups keep years of games on life support when needed, developers design narrative and features around battle passes, and many of us rely on PlayStation Plus or Game Pass to try new things instead of buying them.
This means that our relationship to games and money is very different than before. Just last week I was considering canceling my PlayStation Plus Extra subscription – the cost of living is high and frankly I have more pressing things to spend on £84 a year. But then, Sony added a sequel to the game I’d put hundreds of hours into: the fun, critical, frustrating, and brilliant Rogue Legacy 2.
In just four days of playing, I’ve put in about 22 hours of Rogue Legacy 2, and I haven’t fully grasped the game’s capabilities yet. It does everything the first game did well and more, and refines the formula to the nth level, making it an engaging, intuitive sequel with a whole host of hooks ready to plant in your brain middle. It loves letting you set the challenge for yourself, delights in giving you countless options and styles to play, and laughs maniacally as it watches you headbutt its multiple hazards and enemies until you learn to do better. good.
There’s even a chef’s class in there (apparently, it likes to set fires), allowing me to fantasize about the completely different life I could have lived if I had chosen a frying pan instead of a pen.
Thanks to the ever-changing map, and the way genes (for better or worse) are passed on to heirs, Rogue Legacy 2’s “one more go” rhythm is one that never stops. Your hands will be glued to the DualSense for hours after your prescribed bedtime. Give me a few more weeks and I can easily put in 90+ hours. Not to mention I want to quit PS Plus Extra’s 84 in 12 months.
Yes, yes, I know I could have gotten the game outright for £20, but adding it to the collection as part of a subscription means I don’t have to risk it – with the old one, what if it’s shit? Fortunately, this is not the case. I didn’t need to spend an extra penny to be sure of this. I got it the first day it was released on PlayStation.
I haven’t actually turned on my PS5 so far this year. But since Final Fantasy XVI arrived on PS5 as a console exclusive and Rogue Legacy 2 arrived on PlayStation Plus, everything has changed — and now my Xbox is gathering dust on my shelf. Given that Ratchet and Clank: Rift is also now on the PS Plus Extra service, I think my poor old Series X will suffer even more neglect as summer approaches. I am sorry friend.
