The coronavirus lockdown has had a marked impact on day-to-day life. Reduced traffic in cities like Bengaluru has reduced travel time by marked amounts, lowered pollution has made breathing easier and areas typically used for outings being locked have made life endlessly tiring.
With most general forms of entertainment and recreation out of reach, you need only look to your computer (or console) to get your dose of entertainment. Here are five games to play.
1. Hollow Knight
We've recommended this game before during Steam sales, and Hollow Knight remains on our list. It's a metroidvania where you play as a mysterious silent protagonist who walks into a desolate kingdom of bugs, drawn by the awakening of an ancient plague.
Made by a small indie studio out of Australia, Hollow Knight has won several awards for its design, gameplay and music, and while it certainly can be completed in less than 15 hours, getting a total completion of every nook and cranny is sure to take a lot of time.
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
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2. Portal/Portal 2
Valve, during its heights of being a game studio, was credited with creating intricate experiences which required quick thinking as much as it did skill. Portal is one of those.
The entire gameplay revolves around using a 'portal gun' to solve increasingly complex puzzles, but the game itself has a healthy dose of lore to follow, and a very memorable antagonist in GlaDOS.
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
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3. Stardew Valley
How many times have you heard of a game made entirely by one man get any real praise or recognition? If not, Stardew Valley is here to challenge that perception.
Inspired by 'Harvest Moon' and developed by Eric Barone, the game is an open-ended farming simulator with no real end goal in mind. Players create their character, get a small patch of land, and have to turn it into a thriving farm by their own skill.
The game earned serious praise at launch and has only been getting better with regular content updates. It tells something when the creator of the game that inspired Stardew Valley, had nothing but praise for it.
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android
4. Uncharted
One of PlayStation's grade A exclusives, Uncharted has been a long-running action-adventure series sitting at the summit of PlayStation's library.
In Uncharted, you follow Nathan Drake, an adventurer with a soul on fire for ancient ruins and hidden treasures, who travels around the world with his friends and unearths pieces of history. The gameplay involves a healthy mix of shooting, platforming and puzzle solving.
The series has a healthy mix of real-world history and mythology, and spanning across highly praised four core games and two spin-offs, it will easily last you a full weekend, if not more.
Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita
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5. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
After the debacle with Star Wars: Battlefront II, no one thought EA could make a good Star Wars game. So, hopes weren't high when the publisher announced a single-player Star Wars game set right after Order 66 and the Great Jedi Purge. Unexpectedly, however, the game was...good.
The game follows Cal Kestis, a Jedi Padawan, on the run and hiding from the Empire's Inquisitorius, a clan of Jedi hunters led by Darth Vader, as he traverses the galaxy to finish his training and restore the Jedi Order.
The game received favourable reviews for its gameplay, story and lack of lootboxes and has sold eight million copies worldwide.
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
So, there you have it. the list may be longer than five games, but every single one of them is worth the time involved in playing through.
