Rainy day video games to play alone
By Vaughn Duque
Sometimes you just want to have a nice relaxing day with some personal time. The way I like to spend my time is to play video games, especially 1 player video games, to wind down and just have fun by myself.
Mario Wonder
Mario Wonder is the newest Mario game that recently came out a month ago. It is like most other Mario games being a 2D platformer and defeating Bowser, but this game has a twist to it that sets it apart from the others. In this game Bowser finally stops kidnapping Peach (which has been a very long-running trait throughout all the games) instead he goes after what is called a Royal Wonder seed in order to grow his empire and gain more power. One of the main mechanics in the game though is a new thing called Wonder Flowers; when Mario touches one of these things he goes to a different dimension almost, and it is best described as a drug trip in all honesty ( I have included a clip of one of the levels at the bottom of the page). The other main mechanic in this game is these power-ups called badges, which are basically things that Mario can use in order to make traversal easier or more fun. There’s a badge that allows you to have a grappling hook which is my favorite one to use, but this feature has a downside to it, being that you can only have one on at a time. Let’s say you want one that will attract coins to you but you’d have more fun with the grappling hook one you’d have to pick which one you want more rather than both, which is fair cause if you combined a bunch of them you could do so many things the game did not intend for you to do. I have yet to finish it but from what I have played so far it’s really good.
Spider-man 2
Spider-Man 2 also came out the same time as Mario Wonder came out so it was hard to pick which game I wanted to play first. There hadn’t been a Spiderman game for 3 years but the last main-line Mario game came out 6 years ago (so I went with Mario). I have since finished the game and can say it was really good. Basically, the story is about Spiderman and Miles Morales Spiderman has to stop a villain that is hunting down other villains and killing them. They both have different stories that link up in the end though. Spiderman is dealing with his sick friend who is now suddenly better due to something called a symbiote, which is an alien parasite. A little into the game hops on Spiderman and gives him a bunch of strength but slowly starts changing his personality. Miles is dealing with his father’s killer getting taken by the hunter in order to be killed and he has to save him because Spiderman protects everyone, good or bad. The Mario game made almost the same amount of money as the Spiderman game in the first 2 weeks but just barely fell short (as can be seen in this infographic below). My roommate and I both played the game and we talked about it on a podcast with one of our other friends who is a general Spiderman fan.
Pokemon Sword
This game came out a bit ago but it still remains one of my favorite Pokemon games on the Switch. This is like any other Pokemon game: catch Pokemon, battle them against trainers or wild Pokemon, fight the gym leaders to get gym badges, and beat the champion to become the new champion. There’s just something about the Pokemon in this game, they are the best designed that they’ve been in a while. There are only a few I don’t really like but the rest are awesome. The story was alright but the game has a bunch of lovable characters that make you very immersed in the world. I had a lot of fun playing this game and I can still remember when I first started playing it and how excited I was. This game probably won’t take you as long as Mario or Spiderman 2 but this is a game I highly recommend people play especially if they want to get into Pokemon but don’t know where to start.