Battlefield 1 and (not) Civilization 6

Fridays are the worst days of the week for me, in terms of being bored. Usually half of the workforce is gone on Fridays, so it’s abnormally quiet and I have to spend eight solid hours trying to entertain myself in library-like silence. Using only my phone, mind you, because god forbid we have access to anything “fun” or “entertaining” on our work computers. The most interesting thing I can manage on my work computer is reading Wikipedia articles. My personal favorite is the On This Day page.

And no, I refuse to think about doing work on a Friday. Come on. That’s just crazy talk.

Anyway, one other thing I can do on the work computer is write, so here I am.

I ordered Battlefield 1 a while back and pre-loaded it a couple days ago. I noticed right before I left the house this morning that it has unlocked, so I’ll be playing that tonight and this weekend. (Right after I publish this post, most likely.) I’m planning to record the single-player campaign and put it up on YouTube because why the hell not.

I learned from my Doom recordings that it’s a terrible idea to record a blind playthrough on the hardest difficulty, so I think I’ll stick to the normal difficulty this time. It turns out that repetition, such as that which occurs when you die over and over again in the same area, is boring to watch. Also kind of frustrating to play. Not to mention the challenge of thinking of something uniquely entertaining to say after the 20th time you’ve died to the same mobs. The only good option is to edit the video into an amusing death montage, but I’m usually too lazy to do that.

Anyway, as I mentioned on Twitter, my only real interest in the game is to criticize the historical inaccuracies in their depiction of World War I, the war I know the most about. If I see a French Renault tank driven by a British soldier, you better believe I’m going to have something to say about that!

Since I’ll be playing Battlefield 1, I won’t be playing what it sounds like everyone else in my circle of the Internet will be playing: Civilization 6. (Or is it VI?)

I’m sure I’m in the minority here but I didn’t like Civ 4 or 5. I wanted to like them, because I loved Civ 2, but I don’t think I ever made it into the AD years. It just felt soooooo sloooooow in those initial stages when you explore with your Warriors and Scouts and Settlers. (And that exploration didn’t feel very satisfying.) It felt like it took hours and hours and hours (ie. days and days, for me) of drudgery to get to the fun parts of the game that I remembered enjoying the most. For whatever reason, I just don’t have the patience for it anymore. Still, I’ll probably get Civ 6 eventually. In a sale, probably.

But first, Battlefield 1!