Shack Chat: What game have you played the most during quarantine?

Adjusting to this sudden change in daily life has been difficult for all of us. The looming threat of a global pandemic means that everybody has been spending more time in the house than ever before. There’s been one shining light that’s kept us all occupied while we ride out this quarantine, video games. 

Luckily, playing video games doesn’t require one to leave the house, or even a single room. Nor does it (in many cases) require or encourage physical interaction with other humans. Gaming has always been a hobby of escapism, and we need that feeling now more than ever.

Here’s what games we here at Shacknews have been playing the most while cooped up in quarantine. We’d love to hear what you all have been playing in the comments below

Question: What game have you played the most during quarantine?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Asif Khan, Bellionaire

I have over 100 hours in Animal Crossing: New Horizons since launch. I have over 100 million bells, and I am just getting started with the customization of my home and island. What a delightful game to be released during a global pandemic.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Ozzie Mejia, Senior Editor

I had some Shack Homework to complete over the quarantine period. I never had the pleasure of playing through the original Final Fantasy 7, so it felt like a good time to get familiar with the new hotness. And yeah, I loved Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I won't bore anyone with the details, but the video above should help explain the rabbit hole I fell into.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Blake Morse, Reviews Editor

Watch ShackStream: Rusty Claymore's Final Fantasy from Shacknews on www.twitch.tv

So far, I’ve put close to 50 hours into Square Enix’s modern remake of their JRPG classic and I’m taking my sweet time with it. It’s rare that I’ll take the time to play such a game, but when I do I prefer to savor it for all it’s worth. I look in every nook and cranny for every secret I can find and put in the grinding time to get those extra levels of OP. As much as I’ve been enjoying my Final Fantasy 7 Remake experience though, I am coming to the end of my journey. Hopefully, that’ll be coinciding with reopening of the Bay Area, but I’m guessing I’ll more than likely have to find a new game to fill up my quarantine downtime.

SnowRunner - Chris Jarrard, Heavy Equipment Afficianado

I was assigned the review for SnowRunner here at Shacknews due to my enthusiasm for the game’s lineage. I played around 40 hours for the purposes of the review and determined the game to be the equivalent of digital crack. As I’ve already eclipsed the 100-hour mark in-game, I still have a ridiculous amount of content waiting to be dragged through a muddy quagmire. On top of all that, I finally convinced a contingent of my boy crew to acquire SnowRunner, thus opening the floodgates (pun intended) of online cooperative play. What’s better than getting solo tailpipe’d by a Russian 4-wheel-drive misery simulator? Watching three other friends endlessly flip their trucks and enduring rear entry from spinning driveshafts. If I make it out of this pandemic in one piece, it will be because of SnowRunner.

Halo 2 - Sam Chandler, Guides Editor

Though I have put a fair whack of hours into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Sea of Thieves during this time, it’s no real competition when it comes to the time I’ve invested into Halo 2.

Weekends, weekdays, and even some playtime during work hours for authorized streams and during lunch breaks -- all these are perfect times to play Halo 2. Even the bugs and glitches I’ve experienced haven’t done much to stamp out my desire to keep playing.

What’s more, there are a ton of Achievements I’m currently working on that are going to take quite a while longer. Lookin’ at you LASO Achievement. 

It’s been a great time for Halo 2 to come out, now if 343i could find a fix to the teleporting projectiles, that’d be great.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Donovan Erskine, no longer an intern

I have played Animal Crossing: New Horizons every single day since the game released on March 20. In those two months, I’ve logged more hours into ACNH than I have any other game on my Switch over the past three years. Animal Crossing feels like it was almost designed with quarantine in mind. There’s always something rewarding to do, and always a reason to look forward to the next day. On several occasions, I found my driving force to wake up in the morning being “my bridge is finally built!” or, “I need to see what Nook’s Cranny is selling today!” 

The social component of Animal Crossing: New Horizons has also been way bigger than even Nintendo could’ve imagined. Every day, people take to social media looking for items, sharing tips, and pursuing the trail of those sweet, sweet turnip prices. It’s become a collective effort to find and share the best turnip prices with one another, as everyone aspires to be a filthy rich bellionaire. 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has provided an outlet for me to meet up and gather with my friends during this time of social distancing. Hopping into Discord calls and sharing stories of finding rare items, or talking about the strange things our villagers have said/done has been one of the biggest highlights of my quarantine. I look forward to expanding my island, befriending more villagers, and making more memories in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for years to come.

Final Fantasy 13 - Brittany Vincent, Senior Editor

I'm going to answer purely outside of games I reviewed or did any type of work with, even if they were amazing titles. When I don't have anything going on, which is extremely rare, I've been spending time in Final Fantasy 13. After the excellent and mostly perfect Final Fantasy 7 Remake, I was itching for another Final Fantasy adventure, so I decided to play through Final Fantasy 13 again in its entirety. 

Next up is Final Fantasy 13-2, and I'll be going through the entire narrative just since they’re the games in the series I’m the least familiar with. And who doesn’t want to dress Lightning up as Cloud? I've had a blast, and still stand by the fact that Vanille's English voice actress sounds like she's climaxing every time she makes a move in battle, and it's really irritating. Otherwise, the game's great. Just be prepared for a ton of battles.

Red Dead Redemption 2 - Bill Lavoy, Landscaping Noob

If you factor in my stream time for Shacknews, it’s Red Dead Redemption 2. I’ve likely put a good 150 hours into that during quarantine, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons is close. I’m at about 100 hours of that. In fact, even though it comes in second to RDR2 in terms of time played, it’s by far my most relaxing quarantine game.

For me, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game that fills the gaps. It doesn’t require me to play daily, although I do. It doesn’t require me to dump dozens of hours into it to keep up, like Destiny 2. It simply allows me to turn it on at my convenience and spend a few minutes in a place filled with positivity. I play it during work calls, while watching livestreams, and as I cook dinner.

What’s most rewarding, though, is how it’s brought so many people I know and work with together. We find great turnip prices as a group, share items, go fishing together, and just share a positive experience in a time when so much negativity can be found in the world.

Animal Crossing, duh - Josh Hawkins, Guides Guy

I mean, the answer is pretty self-explanatory. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was perhaps my most anticipated game of the year. Everything about the title just pulls me in and while it continues to frustrate me at times with how badly designed some aspects are, and how dated Nintendo’s multiplayer is, I still can’t help but play it.

Since the game’s release, I’ve logged well over 150 hours in New Horizons, making it the most-played game on my Nintendo Switch since I got the thing back when it launched. Throughout that time I’ve restarted three times, completed the “main story” twice, and managed to somehow continue to find new ways to set up the areas I already finished, resulting in me spending literal days moving the same things around again and again, all without growing bored.

League of Legends - TJ Denzer, League of News

When I'm losing in League of Legends, it seems like the most obnoxiously common question is "how did you get to this rank?" There's a lot of reasons, but likely chief among them is that when I play Swain, I do things like this. pic.twitter.com/kVS4s1VJRJ

— TJ Denzer (@JohnnyChugs) October 24, 2019

Every season a whole new set of free-to-play games comes out, and every season, I fiddle with them for a while before I go back to League of Legends. It’s nothing against those other games. It’s just that League keeps my attention in a way those other games don’t. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. The community is incredibly toxic and critical towards anyone that isn’t playing at perfection. Even then, you have a chance of a troll who will sabotage the game on purpose for no reason other than to troll.

That said, there’s a style and grind to League of Legends’ free-to-play system that is just… addictive. And it’s only become moreso during the pandemic. Fun fact. I have uninstalled League from my PC like… 3 or 4 times over the course of the probably 5 years I’ve been playing. Sometimes because it’s frustrating, and sometimes because it’s a time sink that’s too easy to open up and gets in the way of me doing other more constructive things.

With COVID-19 keeping me at home more often and boredom setting in, I guess it was only a matter of time before I gave in again. That said, for all of my annoyances about how bad it can be, League of Legends has a versatile character roster like no other. I enjoy learning them, figuring out my specialization, and where I fit into a good team. I also enjoy the rare occasions when a team is cool and we all do our part to play through to a win. But most of all, I probably like stomping on overconfident Yasuo or Fizz players with Swain and dismantling their team with the level advantage I end up getting from a good lane phase. Maaaaybe that last one most of all.

Sea of Thieves - Greg Burke, Head of Video

While I’ve played a lot of games since the lock down. Some are for work to review, and others I just step into for 20 minutes at a time or maybe on a Sunday evening. The one I consistently go back to is Sea of Thieves. The game has evolved so much since its initial launch in March of 2018. Sometime my mates and I will just fish on a dock and talk about life for 3 hours. It can be a really relaxing or exciting experience. What's better than sailing over a big blue ocean when you’re stuck at home? 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons - David L. Craddock, Long Reads Editor

Every action you take in Animal Crossing seems engineered to produce positivity. When you bring Blathers a fossil you’ve already submitted to the museum, he doesn’t laugh in your face and tell you to make like a tree and get outta here. He admits the museum already has that fossil, and boy, he’d sure love to buy it for his personal collection--but, no, he’ll leave it with you. It’s yours to set up in your home, or elsewhere on the island, or sell for a few thousand bells.

All this is to say that Animal Crossing has been the perfect quarantine game. Every day, news seeping in from the real world paints a bleaker picture. Humans are stupid and willing to cut off their nose to spite their face, as the saying goes. Animal Crossing is a ray of sunshine that cuts through that darkness. It gives me a virtual pat on the back for everything I do, and has been a constant companion during a time when I’ve missed my friends and family.

Tom Nook and his entrepreneurial cohort will never take the place of real people, but I still look forward to visiting a fake place whose charm and optimism makes me feel better in real life.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Steve Tyminsky, Contributing Editor

Every action you take in Animal Crossing seems engineered to produce positivity. When you bring Blathers a fossil you’ve already submitted to the museum, he doesn’t laugh in your face and tell you to make like a tree and get outta here. He admits the museum already has that fossil, and boy, he’d sure love to buy it for his personal collection--but, no, he’ll leave it with you. It’s yours to set up in your home, or elsewhere on the island, or sell for a few thousand bells.

All this is to say that Animal Crossing has been the perfect quarantine game. Every day, news seeping in from the real world paints a bleaker picture. Humans are stupid and willing to cut off their nose to spite their face, as the saying goes. Animal Crossing is a ray of sunshine that cuts through that darkness. It gives me a virtual pat on the back for everything I do, and has been a constant companion during a time when I’ve missed my friends and family.

Tom Nook and his entrepreneurial cohort will never take the place of real people, but I still look forward to visiting a fake place whose charm and optimism makes me feel better in real life.

Shack Staff

Shack Staff stories are a collective effort with multiple staff members contributing. Many of our lists often involve entires from several editors, and our weekly Shack Chat is something we all contribute to as a group.