I've been a PlayStation guy for a long time now.
My first Sony console was the PlayStation Portable. I loved it. Back when it first came out, I had a gig that saw me working overnight on a regular basis. My PSP made the slow points on those shifts fly by. A few years later, I invested in a PlayStation 3 – it was my first home console that I owned since the original NES came out. I loved it too. Skyrim, Assassin Creed Black Flag and LA Noire were wonderful. But no other title I bought grabbed me like Red Dead Redemption did. Grand Theft Horse! Playing through it took me back to a childhood of the Sunday afternoons I'd spent with my grandfather watching spaghetti westerns, WWF Wrestling and roller derby. There was so much to do, and so much of what I did in the game resonated with me.
Not long afterwards, I moved on to a PlayStation 4. It gave me access to one of my other great nerd loves: Fallout 4. As great as Fallout New Vegas was, Fallout 4 quickly became my favorite of the series. There was a freedom in it that made the nights I spent fighting insomnia or waking up from shitty, repetitive nightmares, feel OK. Sadly, I lost a gig that paid well during the winter of 2016/2017 just as my wife was headed back to finish off her degree. At the time, I was the only one in our wee family that had anything close to full-time employment. It left me scrambling for work, picking up assignments where I could and, at times, selling gear that I could do without so that we could pay the bills. I had to say good bye to my PlayStation 4.
These days, things are looking up, financially! By this fall, I should be able to afford to buy a new game console to replace the one I was forced to give up. I've done a lot of soul searching over the past little while, trying to decide what to buy. The Nintendo Switch has been at the top of my list, for a few reasons. It's a new console that, with it's raging popularity, will have a ton of life left in it. A good number of development houses are paying attention to it, bringing some great third-party games and some last-gen classics – I'm looking at you LA Noire and Skyrim – to the system. As an added bonus, it's portable. My wife and I are full-time nomads, living in a 40-foot diesel RV. Saving space is a constant priority.
But then I watched this video for Red Dead Redemption II and all the warm feelings I had for the original title and the amount of care that Rockstar put into it came back to me. I recently, in the name of saving battery power while we're dry camping, ripped a decade-old DVD/VCR deck out of the RV. A PlayStation 4 would draw significantly less power than that old beast had, I sez to myself. Plus, I have a whack ton of digital download games that I can still play on the console. With the Switch, I'd be starting from scratch: No Fallout 4. No Tomb Raider.
I'm months away from being able to buy a new console. In the meantime, I have a Nintendo Gameboy Advance Micro to fart about with and Civilization VI to play on my Mac. Chances are that I'll flip-flop back and forth on which piece of hardware to pick up.
But for right now, man, Red Dead Redemption II looks great. I can't wait to snag a new PS4 so I can play it this fall.
