The internet is both the greatest and worst invention ever. It’s absolutely brilliant when you’re online; it has everything you need and you’re always connected to people. It’s the worst idea ever when it’s taken away from you, you’re left alone and you don’t have everything you need at your fingertips. It’s the same with online gaming; you’re connected to people, you have everything you need and it’s really great.
So, what would anyone do if this was to be taken away? You’d be disconnected from everyone, your trophies and achievements would soon become worthless, all those games that you spent sleepless nights playing online will cease to exist, it’s the worst. Unfortunately, after moving into my student accommodation, I seem to have found myself in this situation; I’m stuck without online gaming.
Sure, I can go home some weekends, but that’s an eighty mile journey with a PS3 just to download some stuff, sync my trophies and perhaps get a few hours of online play. Even though I may be going home next weekend, I’m still disconnected and I know that I’ll only have the luxury of PSN and Steam for a few days at most (and I’ll be downloading constantly during that time).
I’ve seen grown men cry at the fact there is going to be some PSN maintenance, or their new game needs a patch before the online will work; I’ve seen the internet explode with rage as the Store Update is delayed by a few hours; I’ve seen people in both of these situations complain about how badly supported their console of choice is. That’s nothing compared to being completely disconnected.
Well, here I am, stuck with near permanent PSN maintenance, only the single-player and local multiplayer portions of games, no store updates on time and no up to date online support for my consoles. The fact that Steam doesn’t even work, so I can’t download PC games or get the latest deals is horrible. However, I’m not just going to sit here and complain about how bad the internet at my student accommodation is, I’m adjusting to it.
What I am going to do is write a series of articles about my experiences and how to survive whilst disconnected. So that if you ever find yourself disconnected from the gaming world for a week or 20, you’ll know where to start in order to have fun without sticking to the latest trends. I’ve only been disconnected for over a month and I think I’ve adapted quite well so far.
Each article will tackle a different area; I’ll take a look at the benefits of local multiplayer and how I (re)discovered it, how single player can be so much better than multiplayer, why RPGs are actually the best genre and of course I’ll write something about the downsides of being disconnected – there always has to be downsides. You can expect them every weekend until, well, I get bored. Sound good?
Where do we start, then? How about right at the beginning? The first thing that I did when I found myself PSN-less was to get rid of the games that I only played online and to keep my local multiplayer games close. Modern Warfare 2 went straight into some trade-in credit along with a few other games to buy Move. There’s not really much online functionality with Move yet and I’ll find a way to patch the games that I need patched. I was all set… or so I thought.
Then I realised that I still miss online gaming. I’ve just got Black Ops from Lovefilm and I’m at that point in the story where you think “Hey, I should try out some online”. Sadly, I won’t be able to test it out at my leisure, so this is a big downside to being disconnected. Anyway, enough about the downsides and on with the writing! This time next week, we’ll be discussing why local multiplayer is awesome and I might even talk about Rock Band some more (wait… where are you going?!).
tactical20
Dude…..
Pemberton_
where’s my car!?
crit10
Where’s your car dude?
(God I hate that film)
solidsteven
it’s been towed.
bunimomike
Your reply is slightly less useful than “first” and that’s saying something.
OpenEmotion
Been there done that for a while… Painful… At present our coder, Colm, has been without Net at home for nearly 5 months… All single player for home, but he has gotten more out of Red Dead than anyone else I’ve known :P
Gamoc
Yeah, I hate having no internet. I recently moved to Dundee and had no internet at home for 2/3 weeks (even mobile internet refused to work whilst actually in the house). It got to the point where I had to go into the city centre so I’d get signal and could check my emails on my phone, it was terrible.
Pemberton_
So is this a general incompatibly with the uni network? Or are they actively filtering it?
There must be some way around it.
shifty360
he should try bridging his playstation with his laptop so it uses his laptop to access the internet and by pass the filters might work
Raen
Blair and I spent over an hour trying that, huge failure.
mynameisblair
It’s impossible, they’ve completely blocked it.
Tried everything.
cc_star
I love & hate the internet also.
Love having it, hate it when it goes unreliable… but equally I love not having it – its awesome to be out of the loop, out of touch and not to feel the need ‘just to check something’
When I was in Carribean for nearly 3 weeks a year ago, it was awesome not having the net.
iBirch
I’m kinda in the situation at the mo my PS3 YLOD’d tuesday the day I got Black Ops and I’m gutted.
MegaBonez
You know, I think i could live with being disconnected, I have always really enjoyed single player, in fact it’s only been a year since I had a PS3 and discovered online gaming. So yeah, I’d be cool!
Gamoc
Not just having no online gaming, having no internet. You wouldn’t be able to visit TSA!
MegaBonez
I’d go to my dad’s :-P
eye8have9you3
in second year atm but my uni halls last year had a ridiculously fast connection, upto about 50Mb, but lan halo soon became very popular
Tzares
lol you make it sound like your addicted to playing online.. ofcourse its fun and all, but its not life changing >< also, trophies are just as fun even tho no one else can see them. I see them as a "challenge list" instead of "do this to get useless points to brag aboute points".. if you like rpgs you wont even notice the difference (not including fallout here, cus you really really need patches to play that!)
hunterstryfe
why? Fallout WILL always be glitchy as hell no matter how many patches it gets!! Still awesome tho, love playing both Fallout 3 & DLC and Fallout NV. My mates were getting annoyed with me coz I stopped playing BFBC2 online in favour of F:NV
moshi
Makes you wonder how we coped for 1000’s of years when the lack of internet for a few hours can reduce a human to a gibbering wreck. We have become to reliant on it in my opinion, I heard on the news yesterday that some people living in the sticks believe its there God Given Right to have the Internet even though all providers meet all the industry standards.
sesameseed
Well said… I think humanity has got a lot closer to extinction since we’ve all been internetted than before we had it.