I swiped down on the function bar on my phone, turned on auto-rotate, bumped up the brightness, and put the right earbud in my wife’s left ear.
“You gotta see this,” I said.
We were on our way to a bowling alley in the city, and it just hit me. The game was Ball X Pit, the latest buzz online. I’d seen it everywhere: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. People couldn’t stop talking about it. Addicting. “This year’s answer to Balatro,” they said.
Showing my wife the trailer was, in my own quiet way, asking for permission to buy it. She watched in silence, then looked me dead in the eyes and said:
“Didn’t we just buy Hades 2?” And that, my friends, is how you hit a strike.
It had been a couple of years since I last bowled. (Is “bowled” even the right verb?) The whole thing came about because my father asked if we wanted to play a game with Mom. I was really rusty. My wife got a strike on her first throw. Mom knocked down all but two pins. Dad got a spare. I was missing four. Regret always shows up early, I guess.
Her words kept echoing in my head.
Yes, I did buy Hades 2 on release. I couldn’t help it. The online chatter was deafening, especially when you follow the kind of stuff I do. IGN gave it high praise, SkillUp strongly recommended it, and Twitter was full of glowing takes. It was hard not to cave.
Being a dude living in a third-world country, the Philippines, money doesn’t come easy. And with digital stores not being too friendly to countries like ours (I really wish they were), I can only afford one big game a month. Last month, it was Silksong. This month, Hades 2.
And man… do I regret buying Hades 2 this early.
I gave it a fair shot, played a couple of runs, made it to the second boss, chatted with the Gods, experimented with powers. But it just didn’t click. It felt like I was playing Hades, too, not Hades 2.
That got me thinking about the other games I’ve regretted buying.
Another one from this year’s lineup comes to mind: Mafia: The Old Country. I loved the first two games (we don’t talk about the third). And to be fair, Old Country had a rich story, compelling characters, and solid gameplay. But damn, the pacing, it just crawled.
The reviews weren’t great even at launch. Some were downright brutal. But I bit anyway, drawn in by the idea of the game, the promise of that old Mafia magic, that cinematic crime-epic feeling I’d been craving.
It wasn’t terrible. It just wasn’t it.
Getting the Hang of it
By the fifth frame, the energy was dipping. The ladies were starting to tire, their laughter softening between throws. Dad was slowing down too, taking his time with each roll. Then it was my turn. I took a breath, lined up, and sent the ball down the lane.
A clean strike. Something about it, maybe the timing, maybe the patience, just clicked. I was starting to find my rhythm. The stance, the release. The balls, too, ehem.
Then it occurred to me that Dark Souls was one of those games once. I went out of my way, with the little money I had, to buy an Xbox 360 copy from some shady kid who’d had enough of it. One night with it, and I saw why. The game kicked my ass more times than I could count, and that was just the first level. I didn’t touch it again for months. Then one day, I told myself, I can do this.
What followed turned into one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time.
After finishing the Blood and Wine ending of The Witcher 3, I was bawling my eyes out. What a beautiful story, tremendously written characters, and an experience that’s never quite been duplicated.
But believe it or not, I put it down the first day I got it. I even complained to my friend that the combat lacked that oomph.
He just laughed and said, “Bro, you’re not playing Witcher 3 for the combat.”
That one sentence rewired my brain. From then on, I started to see what made it special. It ended up becoming one of the best games I’ve ever played. Shoutout Brian.
It was close till the end. My confidence was running high, and when the final tally came in, I surprisingly won. It wasn’t the win that felt good; it was the part where I stopped second-guessing myself and just saw it through.
In Bowling, it’s called a follow-through.
As in life.
The next day, my wife was playing Ball X Pit. Guess who couldn’t stop talking about how good it was.
