It has been mentioned many times in the last months, the year 2020 has been quite a weird and frustrating one for everyone. We all know what’s been going on, so I won’t really put much thought to it, again, but I might have to mention a few things anyway. Despite the year we, or me personally, have had, there were some positive changes nonetheless. Whether you’ll understand my point of view or not, that’s entirely up to you, I’ll do my best to present it as best as I can, so you understand how I feel about this new “career” I’ve mentioned in my title.
Let’s rewind the clock a few years first (if only that was possible in reality as well :D), to my teenage years. This new “career” I’ll be talking about regards video games, and when it comes to video games, I usually only played them on a computer back in the day. Back then, I haven’t been giving it much thought, apart from just playing the games for fun in my free time, which I didn’t have that much of, due to my volleyball practices and games.
I have had a few consoles when I was younger, which used those yellow discs you could easily change, which some “older” readers might also still remember. 😀 But my first PlayStation console came much later in my life, I think I was around 14 or 15 years old. It was a PlayStation 1, and it was a gift from my aunt and uncle, since they haven’t been using the console anymore. Of course I was happy about it at the time! But as I kept updating my computer, the console was slowly but surely fading away. Some time has then passed before I (finally) got another PlayStation console, this time, that I bought myself. It was just a regular PlayStation 4, which, as a matter of fact, I’m still using these days.
In the beginning, I never really paid too much attention to racing games. Sure, I bought an F1 game almost every single year since getting the console, but that was it. Then there were the Need for Speed games, but both of those series are gearing more towards being arcade games, rather than simulators, which feel completely different when you play them. One of the first true simulator racing game I got was Project Cars, and I do have to admit, I wasn’t particularly good at it at first, and didn’t really enjoy it as much because of that. I did, however, managed to get a grip of it somewhat after some time, and started to like it more and more.
It has been my wish for quite some time to also have a steering wheel that I could use to play these driving games with, but never really decided to look into that more. A few years back though, I got (as a Christmas gift) a Logitech G29 wheel. At the time, I thought it was a pretty expensive wheel, but now I can say that it’s nothing compared to the prices of wheels I’ve looked at recently.
The G29 was/is a great starting wheel, as everyone usually always suggests to someone wanting to switch from playing with a controller to a wheel. At first though, I haven’t actually used it that much. I also haven’t had the right set up in my room to be able to properly sit down and play, but after a while, I redecorated my room and put a desk in it, so I was able to mount the wheel on that, put the pedals underneath, and was good to go! As I’ve said, the wheel was used very occassionally right up until last April. That was when I decided to buy Gran Turismo Sport and a few other racing games along with it. You can read a bit more about it in my previous post.
Since last March, so let’s say in the last 11 months, one of the most impacted areas of my life, due to current restrictions, have been sports. I did get to play some volleyball during summer, and the beginning of autumn, but at the time of writing this, I haven’t played any sports or done anything related to it for something like 3 months, so you can imagine there’s something missing for me, and I’m aware I’m not the only one. Usually, sports for me represented a way of getting my mind off of things that were going on. Once I stepped through the door to get to the changing rooms, I left my problems outside, and for those 2, maybe 3 hours, I was care-free. Unfortunately, I don’t have that now, so what else is there to help me take my mind off of things? Yes, you guessed it, sim racing!
I have been playing quite a lot lately. One, because of the reasons mentioned a few rows higher, but also because of my YouTube channel (check it out here). So, as you may already know from my previous post, I decided to update my wheel and pedal set, and went for a Fanatec CSL Elite F1 set, as you can see below. I have been using that for more than a month now, and I can say it’s amazing! While the G29 wheel was good, I didn’t imagine how much more there was left out with it, that I can now feel with the Fanatec wheel. I do believe it helped me get some better lap times, but it surely helped me with consistency during the longer races. You’ll be able to read some more about that in another post coming up in the near future, so keep an eye out for that.
While my current setup is relatively good enough, there are some things I would still like to change and upgrade when it comes to gaming. Most likely, my next big project for 2021 will be to put together a decent gaming PC, allowing me to play some more games that aren’t available on consoles. I have already started working on that, but it is going to take quite some time to get to the end of it, since there’s so many things to consider, and more importantly, it won’t be that cheap, so it’s easier to get it sorted step by step.
And for the end, let me just briefly touch the subject of how people look at gaming these days. I know many will say that this is still just something to waste time on, but lately, I’ve seen quite a number of people change their opinion about these kinds of things. We have been tied to our homes for so long now, of course you have to find something to keep your mind occupied, and why not have some fun in the virtual world to do that.
Blogging with Jure 