Oh, I Guess I Can Get Elden Ring When It Comes Out

 When The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out, I was somewhat hesitant to get it. I had a Wii U, probably the least successful Nintendo hardware product since the Virtual Boy, and the game had been originally announced for that platform, but it became a big selling point for the new, far more successful and popular Switch.

Still, I was hesitant to get a Switch without knowing whether the library for that console would be good enough. So I got Breath of the Wild on the Wii U.

Now, I felt it was just ok (I'm sort of blown away by the degree to which so many people are in love with the game, as I think it inherited a lot of the least appealing aspects of "open world" game design while jettisoning much of what I love about Zelda game,) but then I did get a Switch, and I feel like maybe it would have been nicer if I had waited and been able to play it on, say, an airplane - or just not having to hold the massive Wii U tablet controller.

I've been having the same ambivalence about getting Elden Ring - I've been a big fan of From Soft games (though of the three Soulsborne I have I only actually beat Bloodborne) but I feel like I'd rather play it on the more powerful Playstation 5.

But... A: it's not super cheap, and B: even over a year after the PS5's release, actually getting one is apparently still a challenge. (Granted, I haven't been searching that hard).

However, I realized something I should have realized a while ago: if I buy it for my PS4, in this day and age, I can just download it to my PS5 if and when I get the console.

I checked the Sony online store and yep, you can just buy the "PS4 and PS5" version for 60 bucks. I've tended to just buy my games digitally these days (the libraries of my Switch and PS4 both look a lot smaller than they are if you only look at the bookshelf) so I think this is probably the way to go (might need to clear some of that space, but there are plenty of games I have downloaded that I don't play super often anyway).

Anyway, this makes me excited, as I'll probably be popping into the Lands Between by week's end.

This is, of course, another case of a game adapting to the "open world" genre, but from what I've seen of it, Elden Ring looks like it's retaining that tight From Soft design, and given how punishing these games are, it might be nice to have a very wide range of options on where to progress.