Staycation 2015
So it seems that I've been taking an annual "staycation" to play video games since 2009. Holy Fnck, that means I've been doing this for SEVEN years! This tradition started in Jan of 2009 when my wife and I had been basically ripped off by a contractor we paid to remodel our home. He stole about 17k from us and we ended up with no kitchen and no money for a while.
When I say, we had no kitchen, I mean it. Everything was gutted while we waited for cabinets that would never come. We needed to lick our wounds, forget about our troubles and not spend very much money. So, we decided to deliberately invest time in some of the entertainment we'd purchased but never consumed. We both quickly isolated what we wanted was a vacation to play video games and eat things we could heat up in a toaster (which was sitting on our fireplace in the living room).
During the first staycation, I had a backlog of AAA titles I wanted to play: Mass Effect, Bioshock, Twilight Princess, God of War II. I set a timer for myself for about 60 mins. When the timer went off, I'd switch to a different game in the rotation. I realized early that one hour was really too short and upped it to 90 mins where it has stayed for 7 years.
Fast forward and the staycation has had a different flavor from year to year, but it has always been about video games. I've used different selection criteria to come up with the list each time, but this year I chose to favor variations in genres. Last year I played a lot of open world games and it was just too much, so I wanted to be sure I chose different types of games.
My staycation list looked something like this:
1st Tier
*Super Mario Galaxy 97 (3d Plat)
*Guacamele 81 (2d Plat)
*Halo4 91 (FPS)
*Brothers ATOTS 90 (Indie Story)
*Infamous 2 83 (3rd Open World)
*Haunted Adventure Trilogy (Classic)
2nd Tier
Tomb Raider (3rd Action)
Bioshock 2 (FPS/Horror)
Skyrim (RPG/Action)
*Stanley Parable (Indie Story)
MT Punch Out (Classic)
Punch Out (Classic Remake)
I've learned to make a 2nd tier in case I really just don't like a game, or I get through it quickly and want to fill its spot in the rotation with something else. The number on the right is the metacritic score for the game. These are games that I own, but have never gotten around to playing. I mostly sort my options by review score, but I'll make exceptions if I just don't trust the review score, or there is something further down on the list that I know I want to play.
I found that the variety of genres was very welcome. It even let me deal with some of the less enjoyable parts of some of the games, knowing I was going to move on to a complete different genre for the next game, and that helped to limit frustration quite a bit.
I "finished" every game with an asterix next to it either during the staycation or in the few subsequent weeks after. Here are some two sentence reviews and a grade (best is 5).
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