Our author Jürgen recently became a victim of a little catastrophe: Total internet outage for weeks! So what to do when you crave online games and MMOs and your usual games are not at hand?
What terrible thing happened to Jürgen? I am Jürgen, and I have suffered greatly. Because my old internet provider totally messed up the planned switch to a faster provider, I was offline for 3 weeks and only got my connection back today.
It is really bad to be offline: And while I found a solution for my work and moved out of the house, I was privately without internet for days. It was extremely annoying; I couldn’t watch series on the Smart TV, couldn’t play tabletop role-playing games via webcam stream, and my smart home didn’t work since Alexa was offline. I really felt like I was in the Middle Ages!
It was terrible, but the worst part was that I couldn’t play any of the games I enjoy. I wanted to continue exploring the cat kingdom in ESO Elsweyr, but that wasn’t possible. And the new season in Apex Legends would have totally excited me after my epic victory right before the internet outage, but I had to forget that too.
Mobile hotspots fail due to the poor mobile network here in my area. So what could I do?
Mobile games against the gaming emergency
In my desperation, I turned to mobile games. So far, they had been more of a dull pastime on the go for me, less a full-fledged gaming experience. But there were three online games that I enjoyed a lot and that kept me entertained during the internet drought in the evenings and satisfied my MMO cravings.
Most mobile games are very economical in operation and do not consume as much data as full-fledged titles on PC like Apex or ESO. Therefore, I was able to have much fun with the following games and my tablet.
Shadowgun Legends – Shooter action like Destiny
I still had in mind an article by my colleague Robert about the mobile shooter Shadowgun Legends. It sounded promising, and I like shooters. So I started Shadowgun and had a lot of fun there. Especially after I connected a gamepad, in my case a Razer Raiju, to the tablet.
So much fun to play: I am used to playing with a mouse and keyboard, but compared to touch screen control, it worked quite well with the gamepad. The frantic shooting for more loot sweetened many evenings, and the crude humor of the game was totally my thing.
Where else do you have to gather flowers for a fat, shabby arms dealer from a death zone because the guy just threw up in his wife’s shoes?
The longer I played, the more fun Shadowgun became, and I constantly received something new. Sometimes new loot, then again new skills for my hero, and now and then a new game mode like team PvP or coop raids.
Shadowgun will definitely continue to be played, even if the internet is back. But only with a gamepad; without it, I find the touchscreen controls terrible.
The Elder Scrolls Legends – Elsweyr as a card game
The Elder Scrolls Legends has always been a mobile game that I enjoy a lot. For example, I like to play it while I’m exercising on the stationary bike or have to keep an eye on the sleeping baby.
That’s why Legends is the perfect card game for ESO fans: Luckily, during my internet drought, the new addon “Moons of Elsweyr” was released. This is basically the card game extension for ESO: Elsweyr since, as a connoisseur of the MMORPG, many familiar faces appear. Among them is the cool feline Khamira, who already delighted fans in the E3 trailer for Elsweyr.
So I immediately got the pre-made Khamira deck and expanded it a bit, including my favorite Razum-dar, whom I was lucky to draw from a booster pack. With this deck, I had many fun evenings since it is full of nasty and mean possibilities.
Many of the Khajiit in the deck “steal” upgrades from the opponent when they break through, and then they can constantly sneak past enemy guards thanks to some tricky actions. More than once, I was able to outmaneuver a perfectly positioned enemy at the last minute and narrowly win.
If things went wrong, I got some new boosters (I still had a lot of gold left) and further improved the deck with fine adjustments.
The Elder Scrolls Legends gave me many enjoyable evenings and, thanks to the minimalist card game interface, consumed hardly any valuable data volume on my tablet.
Durango – More exciting than Stranger Things!
The last game I often played during my internet exile was Durango. The new mobile survival game was just released recently, and I became aware of it because colleagues were discussing it. It is already said to be more popular than ARK!
Although I have never played ARK, I like the survival genre in general, and I had no problem with dinosaurs either. The download of Durango costs me a bit of volume, but I was in the mood for something new, so I went for it.
So exciting is Durango: From the very beginning, Durango was a well-rounded experience. The game led me with a well-made tutorial into the wild game world full of dinosaurs and wild nature, and I could hardly tear myself away.
There is always something new to do and discover: Here I learn a plan for an improved axe, and with that, I can finally hunt that one big dinosaur. Cool, the meat is new; I can complete a quest here again! Awesome, a level-up; I can explore new things again!
This creates a constant spiral of rewards and achievements, paired with the joy of exploring a foreign world while always being on guard against dangerous dinosaurs.
Durango was so much fun on the first day that I played it until I fell exhausted into bed. That evening, I had actually planned to watch the also newly released season 3 of Stranger Things. I had downloaded the episodes in advance via Netflix on the tablet and could have watched them without data loss.
But somehow, the dinosaurs and my survival attempts in Durango were more exciting.
How did the gaming crisis actually end?
As of today, the day this article is published, I have internet again! The connection has finally been activated, and I also have a proper line at my new residence with which I can play MMOs and even stream.
Nevertheless, I do not intend to turn my back on mobile games, and the three games mentioned here will definitely continue to be played.
But enough about me and my views. Are there mobile games that you enjoy playing and that are a worthy substitute for “real” games on PC or console?
