A
s I write, my country
is still in lockdown.
Perhaps that will have
lifted by the time
you’re reading—if so,
hopefully you can still empathize.Heading into this period of enforced
self-isolation, I felt a strange pressure.
There seemed to be an expectation
that, with more free time, we’d all
make a sudden burst of progress with
our hobbies—we’d learn how to code,
or conquer our gaming backlogs. And
for some reason learn to bake bread.
But far from feeling a surge of
productivity, my tendency during
lockdown has been to retreat into
easy comforts. With the line between
life and work more blurred than ever,
and a hum of anxiety ever-present,
familiar games have been more
tempting. Marathon sessions of
XCOM 2 , match after match of
Legends of Runeterra, and yet another
game of Stellaris—these have been my
safety blankets against the chill of
quarantine madness.LIFE LINE
Another collective expectation was
that our social lives would shrink to
nothing. In reality, the situation
seems to have woken everyone up to
quite how many means we now have
to connect with each other.
I’m gaming online regularly again,
catching up with old friends as we
end millions of ratmen lives in the
quietly brilliant Vermintide 2. It’s a
perfect lockdown game. You’re
pushed to communicate and
strategize, but not so forcefully that
you can’t talk nonsense at opportune
moments. There’s enough of a loop
that you’ve always got more to
progress towards, but not
aggressively tuned to feel like another
responsibility. And the sense of facing
this overwhelming, oppressive,
endless plague, and, through the
strength of your connection with
your friends, triumphing... it’s exactly
the feeling I needed.
In fact, between that, and enjoying
for the first time doing everything
from playing Dungeons & Dragons to
wargaming to having a family dinner
over the internet, I’m being more
social than ever. I hope that’s
something positive I take with me
out of lockdown—despite our
increasingly busy lives, we have the
tools to spend time together, if we
can just shake off our preconceptions
of what that means.Later, in 1992, McRae finished a
rally in Finland, having sustained
heavy damage after suffering several
dramatic rolls. In this challenge you
have to survive a gruelling three-
stage rally in Finland in a badly
damaged Subaru Legacy RS, which is
a nerve-racking experience.
FINNISH LINE
Finland’s white-knuckle woodland
tracks are littered with sudden,
severe jumps, and with every
chassis-rattling jolt you run the risk
of taking internal damage and being
forced to bow out of the rally early.
I love how this challenge mode
isn’t just a list of arbitrary objectives,
but rooted in actual events. This gives
everything you do added context, and
it’s a unique way of immersing
yourself in the history of a sport. But
be warned: It’s tough.
If you’re a Dirt Rally 2.0 first
timer, you might want to spend some
time playing the base game before
you step into McRae’s racing boots.
Navigating his notoriously powerful,
twitchy Ford Escort RS Cosworth
through some of those treacherous,
snowy Swedish stages is hard work.
If you prefer a more
straightforward rally experience, you
might find the challenge format a
little too gimmicky. But I love it, and I
hope other driving games steal it. By
being put in these wildly different
situations, you get to experience
everything the simulation has to offer
in a clever, compelling way.
ROBIN VALENTINE
THIS MONTH
Actually did learn how to
make bread, eventually.ALSO PLAYED
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order,
Gears TacticsReconnecting in WARHAMMER: VERMINTIDE 2
“It’s the perfect
lockdown game”
There are a lot of Scottish
flags in this DLC.THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW
NOW PLAYING
The Skaven are that perfect kind of loathsome
that makes it absolutely fine to murder them.The classic livery of
McRae’s Impreza S4.