Although I have a number of games on my wishlist, Justine knows that when it comes to birthday presents I am averse to treating it like an opportunity to just order things that I could buy myself. As a result, she spent some time researching things that I may like, searched through my collections, and bought off list.

She did very well. Of the two games she bought, both are titles which are well considered and which I wanted to play. I may not immediately start Echoes of Wisdom, the Zelda game where you play as Zelda, since I have recently restarted Oracles of Ages on the 3DS Virtual Console, and we all know what happens when I try to play two Zeldas at once. But I did immediately start Hollow Knight.

I am sure I have played this before, in that I remember the start of the game, but I have no record of playing it on any platform and I certainly don’t own it. Maybe I watched someone else? That wouldn’t explain the muscle memory I have, or the recognition of how the slight pause when you strike an enemy conveys such impact. This is another stylish game, making me feel good about my abilities, even when I keep dying due to a lack of them.

It’s also a bit too dark. I know it’s set underground, but even so a few more lanterns wouldn’t go amiss.

I have explored a lot now. I’ve been through the first, blue, area, and found a (pinkish) mine which I couldn’t progress through. I’ve collected lots of money but not enough for all the charms I want. I defeated some big nasty bug thing pretending to be a knight, and a big mummy flying firefly thing. I went through a pretty green area, Greenpath, where lots of plants were growing even though they get no sunlight. I have opened the stag stations, and found some sort of underground railway but haven’t found the tokens for that yet. I fought a red-cloaked enemy who I understand to be the protagonist of Silksong. I have a cloak that allows me to dash through the air, and have now ventured into an area where lots of enemies want to poison me.

That’s not very kind.

On one miserable, rainy evening, with a bit of a cold, and with an hour and a half spare before I had to go and collect Nicholas from Scouts, I wanted to do something substantial; cross something off my “to do” list. I could have put up the hooks in the utility room that have sat there for several months. I could have rearranged the loft to get the Christmas decorations properly put away. I could have hung up the artwork that has sat on top of our bookcase for the past four years, wrapped in bubble wrap in case of accidents. Instead I decided to do something that has been overdue for much longer – I decided to start GTA San Andreas.

San Andreas is often cited as the best of the PS2-era GTAs, and one of the best games of all time. I’ve mentioned before that two things put me off playing it.

• The setting. The 2000s setting of GTA3, and the 1980s setting of GTAVC, felt much more relatable to me than the 1990s rap and gangster world of GTASA. I don’t like rap music, I don’t get the attraction of baggy trousers, I find the general griminess off-putting.
• The complications. I remember reviews telling us how amazing it was that you could get your hair cut, that you could go to the gym, that you needed to eat to stay healthy, and so on. At the time that seemed unnecessarily complex – could I not just run around the world shooting at other people, stealing cars, and failing missions several times before getting lucky?

I’ve now played a few hours, and while the first is an issue, the second isn’t. Maybe expectations have moved on (while my prejudices have not), but the use of food to recover health is just a clever cover for health packs, and everything else seems to be entirely optional cosmetics. I have bought green trousers and a white shirt, and that’ll do me. There may be more to the mechanics in future (and the immediate view of stats with L1 implies they may be more important) but for now I’m not having to think about much at all.

The first point is more of an issue. I have very little affinity with any of the characters, even CJ, and everyone is just generally unpleasant to each other all the time. They live in grimy houses, shout at each other in barely comprehensible sentences, and just seem ready to jump into a fight at any moment. It’s not a life I really want to live.

As such, I’m concentrating on completing missions, rather than exploring the world at large. This will no doubt give me a disadvantage in future missions when I don’t know my way around, but for now it’s nice to streamline my objectives.

Viewfinder caught my eye when it was first demonstrated, with the ability to take photos and walk into them, and clever world manipulation. When it came out it was £20, and that seemed a little expensive for the technical sandbox I imagined it to be. Towards the end of last year it was free on PS+, and given away on the Epic Game Store, and now, having played it, I can see that I was wrong: it is not just a technical sandbox, it was not too expensive, and a lot of the game doesn’t have you wandering around with a camera taking photos.

Indeed, you don’t get a camera of your own until World 3 (of 5); initially you are reliant on picking up photos (or other pictures), and then later you can use photocopiers and cameras which are fixed in place. All have a limited number of uses; once you place a picture in the world it is no longer yours and instead becomes the level itself, and photocopiers and cameras have limited film or paper. In some ways I was disappointed that there wasn’t a more free mode, where you could experiment with multiple photos and building your own platforms without a set objective. Maybe that is yet to come, or maybe that just wouldn’t work – my PS4 has already crashed twice in levels where I’ve been dealing with many different photos.

I’ve completed World 3 now, and on to World 4. The game focuses on small, restricted puzzles, and there are times when I feel like I’ve brute forced my way through rather than settling on a clever obscure solution. Maybe that’s just my perception. There is a story, which is rather hard to follow, but it seems that the levels you explore have been built inside this simulation, which in turn has been built inside a laboratory that you visit a couple of times. And you’re searching for a weather manipulator? Not sure why that’s in the simulation. The most important thing is that the only inhabitant of the simulated world is an artificial cat, and, when it’s not talking to you, you can walk up to it and pet it. When you do, it purrs, and the controller vibrates.

That’s worth the £20 by itself.

Back in April, when I completed Vice City, I posited that I might try playing San Andreas in “a few months”. It has now been a few months, and I’m not playing it. I have a bit of a mental blocker on that game, partially around the setting, but also because I remember when it was released that there were countless reviews evangelising the detail they’d gone into, with you needing to regularly work out to keep fit, and eat healthily, and so on. It sounded too involved, and even if that’s not the case, it’s prevented me from playing it.

And so I went back to Vice City, to finish off side missions and collect stuff.

My first objective was to collect the hidden packages. Throughout playing the game, I’d found just over fifty of them, but the other forty were evidently too well hidden. I used a map guide to travel around the city and find them, and eventually I came to the end of the list … and still only had 95. I had to retrace my steps, eventually realising that I mist have failed to save at some point after collecting packages in the airport, because there were five of them still sitting there.

Collecting all the packages unlocked a military helicopter at the South end of the first island, so I spent some time flying around and blowing stuff up, including the annoying planes carrying banners over the city. I got a nice big wanted level, which I then got rid of by landing on the roof of my mansion and running in to change my clothes.

I then bought the car showroom, and found all the cars required by its clients, including the ice cream truck and pizza delivery bike. The biggest issue I had on this was with the games in Little Haiti, who all hate me for some reason and blew up two of their gang cars when I tried to steal them.

And then I went to the Malibu Club and tried to complete the missions there. I got stuck here before – there’s a mission where you have to break someone out of the police station, and I was being shot to pieces as soon as I entered. It’s a lot easier if you go in without a gun in your hand, and then run straight into the locket room to get a police uniform on. Once you open the cells, they still try to kill you – but I had a fast car parked outside, and a route to a pay and spray planned, so I managed to finish that … only to get stuck on another mission where you have to race someone through the city, with the police trying to ram you (and not him) off the road.

I’m nearly done with this now.