I’m off for the next two weeks. This is the rare vacation where I’ll be at home the whole time and have the house to myself – Wait, scratch that. This is the only vacation I’ve ever had where I’ll be at home the whole time and have the house to myself.
My wife will be out of the country for a wedding, and I’m planning to use the time as a DIY writing retreat to work on some extracurricular projects I’ve had percolating. But that’s just during the day. At night, it’s all fun all the time and ditto for the weekends. Those are prime movie and video game hours.
I’ve made the mistake on past vacations of assuming I’ll have more time for gaming than I actually end up having. I’ve always been this way. When I was in elementary school, we took a field trip that required a two hour drive each way, and I put every Magic Tree House and A to Z Mysteries book I owned in my backpack for the ride. I did something similar at 13, and spent most of my family vacation in the hotel room trying to get through all the novels I packed. As an adult, I’m better at actually vacationing on a vacation, but I still pack four or five books for most trips. I have never learned.
I’ve done the same thing with games, too. In December 2020, I took the last few weeks of the year off and tried to get through multiple RPGs, each big enough that you could easily spend a hundred hours playing it. I started Dragon Quest 11 with the intention of trying to finish it in the few days before Cyberpunk 2077 came out, but ended up getting five hours in and never touching the game again. I also tried to play Haven, a cool romantic story-driven RPG, and quickly had to move on as Cyberpunk consumed all my time.
Now, as I anticipate a vacation with an unprecedented amount of free time spent alone, I’m trying to recalibrate. If anything, I’m underestimating the amount of games I can play in my two weeks off. I’ve settled on two that I’ve wanted to cross off the bucket list for a long time, but have never gotten around to until now: Alan Wake and Fallout: New Vegas.
Fallout: New Vegas is a game that has been on my “ooh I have the house to myself” docket before. I started playing it once when my wife was gone for one (1) day, and barely got through the character creator. When I had to go back to playing games for work, it fell by the wayside. Now, I’m committed to making real progress. By all accounts, it’s a game I should love. The Outer Worlds is a personal favorite and I’ve never met an Obsidian game I didn’t like. The problem has always been time and now I’ve got plenty of it.
Thing is, I don’t like sitting at my computer for long periods of time if I’m not working, and that’s where Alan Wake comes in. I've got a borrowed copy for PS4, and when I'm not taking in IMAX showings of Oppenheimer and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, this is how I plan to spend my nights. I like the Remedy games I've played (Max Payne and Control) and the sequel looks right up my alley as a fan of The Last of Us Part 2's overgrown Pacific Northwest setting. Maybe I should get some Stephen King books out from the library to complete the package.
You know what? No. That might be too much. Let's keep it simple. Fallout: New Vegas and Alan Wake. That's it. When I come back at the end of the month, I'll have made serious progress in both. You can hold me to that.