The world is currently in turmoil Palworld. Some people love it. Some people hate it. And almost everyone has an opinion (or an opinion on all opinions), resulting in one of the worst discourse storms I’ve seen digitally in a long time. But I’m not here to discuss it. Instead, I have to admit that I’m so tired of survival games and punching trees.
The history of survival games isn’t as clear-cut as I’m going to present it, but in my opinion it all more or less starts with Minecraft in 2009. And I’ll admit, when I first started the game when it was still in unfinished alpha, I spent a lot of time on it. At that time, Minecrafts Crafting, survival, and building mechanics were engaging and fresh. They tricked me (and many others) into spending far too many late nights playing until the sun came up. The idea of emerging into a new, randomly generated world, finding supplies, and using those resources to build a new life in this strange world of pixel blocks was unlike any other game I had played up to that point. And I’ll still play a little today Minecraft
Because Minecraft was (and still is) so damn popular, many imitators, clones and games partly inspired by Mojang’s breakthrough hit released in the years following its release. Some of them were good! Some of them were bad. And almost all of them forced you to cut trees and collect stones to start. That’s why I call these games “Tree Punchers.”
Palworldlike so many other tree-huggers in recent years, tries to hide that fact or build on it with new ideas – like adding weapons, etc Pokémon-like creatures. However, that doesn’t matter because the problem with tree punchers isn’t really about punching trees.
No matter how much a tree beater tries to disguise itself or add new ideas to the formula, in the end it all starts with you (possibly naked) punching trees, collecting rocks, and snooping around to survive. That was fun and exciting Minecraft years and years ago. Today it just feels like busy work. I know what’s coming. I know I’ll be forced to slowly gather resources with my fists and terrible wooden tools that break quickly, so I’ll get there eventually so happy never to hit another tree or rock again once I unlocked better and faster ways to farm materials.
And I just don’t care about this loop anymore. It feels like a bad job.
It doesn’t matter that while I’m punching trees, there’s a Pikachu-like animal nearby making silly noises. It doesn’t matter that I’m a Viking warrior. It can’t completely disguise the fact that the main reason for collecting resources and crafting things in tree punchers is to make the boring, slow, annoying parts of the tree puncher things that can be largely avoided. I’m cutting down all these trees and building all this crap so I won’t have to do this in a few hours.
The thing is: I just can’t play these games anymore and free myself from all the hours of resource gathering and stone collecting. And with one exception (Lego Fortnite) I realized that I was burnt out and tired of the tree cutting. So these days, when a new game goes viral and I try it out as part of my job, I can stop playing if the first thing I have to do is punch a tree. I already know this song and dance and have no interest in it. (Unless, of course, I’m trying to review the game or play it for professional reasons. But that’s another, weird situation that most people don’t have to deal with.)
Those who still enjoy these games should continue to play and love them! For me, though, the thing is, I’m tired of chopping down trees. There are better mindless grinds in other games.
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