SPOILER ALERT! I think I should start adding these. During these posts I will be talking about where I am in the game and my experience as I play it. Some of that might just spoil the game for you if you are planning on playing it.

It’s been well over a month since I last spent anytime on my Switch Lite. Let alone continued my journey in Hyrule by playing Tears of the Kingdom.

I could come up with excuses as to why this is the case. But that is all they are. Just excuses.

Whatever the reason it doesn’t get away from the fact I’ve not played a video game for over a month.

Back in the eighties and my teenage years I had all the time in the world to play video games, read about video games in the pages of such publications as ZZap64!, Crash, or C&VG.

Some games I completed (not many), others I enjoyed but was just crap at them and never got very far. Sometimes you just didn’t have time to complete the game or get good at it before another game came along and demanded your attention and time.

Now decades later there just doesn’t seem to be the time available. Adult stuff like earning a living gets in the way. Age catches up, and energy levels are just not the same after a long day at work. All I want to do in an evening is unwind a little and sleep. Early nights are a thing for me. It’s surprising how drained I am physically and emotionally after a days work.

In fact it is well over a decade, nearly fifteen years since I last had a significant amount of time that I could dedicate to gaming.

Before that my gaming whilst a step parent was hand held titles for one of the Nintendo systems or the Sony PSP (I had both) on my daily commute. Whilst the kids got to play on the Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo consoles. That would give me a couple of hours gaming a day during the week.

Today it feels like I’m stealing moments here and there.

When last I played Tears of the Kingdom I had failed to take out the boss Colgera at the Wind Temple.

Unusual for me these days I had been playing the game after work one evening! Some how I had some energy left over from a day in front of students. Maybe I was feeling energised from having received the players guide a day or two earlier.

I finished the last two locks that would release Colgera, and had an attempt to defeat him fail. I was running out of arrows or more importantly things to meld on to the arrows to increase their damage.

So I retreated.

Sadly the amiibo stuff doesn’t work during the boss battle. I had to retreat to a shrine so I could unlock some supplies.

By that time it was nearly 10pm and I had work the next day. So I left it there, ready for another assault on Colgera.

I’d like to think that a younger me, even when I was playing Links Awakening on my GameBoy in my early twenties, and blasting my way through Doom, would have beat Colgera.

But as Shahid Kamal Ahmad said in the latest Remaster podcast (and I’m paraphrasing heavily here, maybe even putting words in his mouth, but I think I captured his meaning) “I ain’t getting any younger and my reactions are not the same as they were” when he was talking about the latest Street Fighter game and how his kids are thrashing him at the game (is this his “the student becomes the master” moment?)

Memory keeps telling me games were much tougher back in the day. And they probably were. They definitely were much less forgiving. But game design was in its infancy back then. It felt every other game was pushing boundaries, exploring what games could do, or redefining what a game was.

But back then I had youth and time on my side. Time to spend learning patterns to defeat that boss, or advance through the levels. Plus the reactions, hand eye coordination of a teenager.

Now I have greatly less time. And like Shahid my reactions are no longer the stuff of legend (well in my mind they were legendary) but more like that boxer passed their prime trying once more to capture former glory against a much younger opponent.

Am I finding Colgera hard to defeat because I’m old. Do I have to swallow my pride. Admit defeat and get Nathan to get me pass this bit?

Hell no! I’m not ready for the long walk yet (Judge Dredd reference there for you folks).

Time to remind myself of the controls (that drawback of long gaps between plays) and dispatch this boss.