Having recently completed a rather pointless two year college course as part of my work apprenticeship I have decided to take a week off to relax, potter around the house decorating, drinking tea, drive around aimlessly in the sunshine and to (most importantly) catch up on some video gaming.
To celebrate this occasion I've bought Red Dead Redemption, Splinter Cell and 2100 Microsoft points. The microsoft points purchase surely needs no explanation, the new Modern Warfare 2 map pack is released tomorrow and I am very much looking forward to the prospect of killing people in an abandoned fairground setting. I am also pleased to see that they have brought back Vacant although I feel a little bit annoyed that Infinity Ward feel that it is justifiable to charge 1200 ms points for a pack that contains re-hashed maps from their previous game, surely a free map pack with the old favourites could have been thrown in as an incentive for those users who purchased the previous 2 packs? But that would mean Activision would be doing something nice AND for free.
On to the meaning of my topic... I actually feel guilty spending my hard earned holidays playing video games. Whilst other people use their free time to sit in the sun (as rare as that is in England) or drink (which is not too rare admittedly) I prefer to take Mr John Marston hunting in the mountains for bears or to occasionally hogtie a prostitute and leave her lying on a railway line whilst i stand by cackling with joy... Ok, maybe I should feel guilt for that. But the crux of what I am trying to get to is that I genuinely feel as if I am missing out on something despite the fact that I am usually delighted to sit around in my pants playing video games.
My girlfriend is working this week and most of my friends are also working so I don't really have anything to do during the day except play on the xbox or catch up on a bit of Football Manager, the sun, however, is shining and I can't help but feel a little bit pathetic hiding away in my room, with the curtains closed (blasted sunshine affecting my view of the screen!) and endlessly riding around New Austin on the hunt for rare flowers.
On the positive side though, I am really, really, really enjoying Red Dead Redemption, more so than previous Grand Theft Autos. I hope that the sales of RDR are high to encourage Rockstar to branch away from the city settings of GTA and to try new vistas, personally I would really like to see a pirate style GTA clone as well as a futuristic GTA, a futuristic sandbox game would be incredible, Rockstar would not be limited by technology (i'm thinking back to the future 2 style flying cars) and the art direction would be breathtaking (I'm thinking Mirror's edge or even the dark, bleak futuristic world of Blade Runner).