Trophy Earned – Fatherhood #2

So back at the beginning of October I put together the first post in the Fatherhood series, detailing the day I found out I was to be a dad and having what I called my Wolf of Wall Street moment in confirming that despite a lack of work towards the site I’m still 100% committed to ticking GSRR over and plan to do so for as long as we’re going.

Since that post, someone rather special has entered into my life. My first born son, Travis. He decided to arrive a week later than anticipated actually arriving to the world at 13:57 on 31st October 2018 weighing in at a cute 7’11lb. Prior to him being born my wife and I were actually quite vocal in hoping he would arrive on Halloween, and we were thrilled he made it in time so that we can go on to have the best Birthday / Halloween parties for him and his friends in the upcoming years.

The point of this series was to chronicle this life changing event and how my once care free gaming whenever I wanted life would be changed. So without further adieu, an update on the first 6 weeks of life as a gamer dad.

Red DAD Redemption II

Travis due date – October 24th, Red Dead Redemption II release date October 26th. The timing for paternity leave couldn’t be better in that regard. What we weren’t expecting though is Travis deciding he wanted to bake another week. So my first week of RDR2 was actually limited to play as I was still in work. I was not expecting this.

When Travis did arrive on 31st October, I had played a bit of RDR2, but not made too much of a dent in the story. I did find a good 7 hour stint in one session before his arrival, but nothing much more. Obviously day one and two at home were a little tricky, the whole family was knackered, and of course everyone wants to see you and meet Travis, so family and friend visits took up time. But when the dust settled and we’d got to grips with this pooping, sleeping, feeding machine some normality kicked in.

As feeding at the moment is solely on my Wife, she would be up numerous times in the night to start with, with scheduled feeds and to feed him when a nappy change, burping and cuddles wouldn’t cut it. So Heather was feeling pretty sleep deprived.

I wanted to maintain some normality with my work schedule despite being off for a month, so I was waking up at 6am like I would for work and taking Travis downstairs till 9am if I could get away with him being quiet that long so Heather could claw some sleep back. From these hours he would be pretty content just sat on my legs, in my arms or even in his Moses basket next to me, meaning I actually got some considerably good RDR2 time in during these morning stints. 

GSRR Focus

Given that I was off work for the month, while of course the intent and purpose was to support my wife and bond with my boy, it also gave me a long time to regain my focus and put some effort into GSRR. I will openly admit my GSRR Email account was backlogged with a lot of unread emails. And these emails contained opportunities to review some wonderful games. With my desire and ambition back to full swing I began networking with contacts that I’d not spoken to in weeks to months. I began accepting review opportunities and actively requesting video-game keys to review that I thought I might have a chance at.

The response had been truly amazing and whilst playing RDR2 I found myself collecting a list of games to play and review before certain dates to beat embargo and release dates. It’s been great.

You will see that we’ve got some new faces to GSRR with Ross and Paul. Ross put together a great review for Monster Loves You! for Nintendo Switch. The formatting and template is brilliant, so I cheekily asked him if I could use the template he’d setup for future reviews. He thankfully said yes, and from there I’ve gone onto to get out 3 Switch reviews, 2 PS4 reviews with more due to come. You know what, I’m going to plug the reviews here, why not?

• ROCKETS ROCKETS ROCKET – Switch
• Storm Boy The Game – Switch
• Nidhogg 2 – Switch
• Energy Cycle Edge – PS4
• Big Crown: Showdown – PS4

And another big stride, which I’m pretty happy with, thanks to lots of help from Will, I managed to create a video review for one of the games. My first one. Reception so far has been positive, although it hasn’t quite set records for most viewed video on Youtube just yet.

Pokemon Lets Go: DAD

I have to say that Pokemon Let’s Go on the Nintendo Switch, is an absolutely perfect game to play while you have a new born for multiple reasons.

• The music and sounds genuinely kept Travis captivated
• The brightness of the game with the colourful Pokemon, equally had Travis captivated, he was staring at the screen with me for hours (is that bad parenting?)
• This is the biggy, you can play the game one handed. So this has been invaluable while holding him and catching Pokemon and battling gyms.

All the while he’s been watching Charmander follow me on my adventures. he will pick Charmander at the build a bear workshop, I’ll be sure of it.

What Next?

Well, since completing RDR2, I’ve moved onto Spider-Man as I dropped that as I couldn’t complete it in time before RDR2. It’s so far been another game in which Travis seems pretty content sat on my lap watching. Maybe the swinging around New York has him captivated. I do love New York as you may all know, and would want nothing less than Travis to become infatuated with New York too, so here’s the start of that process.

Hopefully the next instalments won’t be as long as the gap between part one and two here.

 – Murr