Having spent my Sunday morning binge-watching ‘Honest Trailers’, refusing to step outside into the buzzkill that is ‘the tail-end of Hurricane Bertha’, I think to myself, ‘God, I could do with a holiday’. Sadly, working part time and spending most of your wages on bus fair doesn’t exactly put you in the best position to pay for one.
So, how can a poor wanderluster like myself get a free holiday, without performing twenty four acts of fellatio (any at all, preferably) in a Magaluf night club? It’s simple – gaming.
Back in the day, gaming used to be the very reason I went on holiday. Like the sad little youth I was (arguably, I still am), I’d spend most of my time playing on Wario Land 3 until a) my Mum booted me off b) I booted myself off at risk of popping an eyeball.
A holiday was a form of escapism from gaming, a chance to see a ‘new world’ instead of the lackluster 2D one I experienced every single day. And now, it seems, the tables have turned – for gaming is my escapism from the holiday.
With the incredible developments that gaming has undergone in the last decade, it’s now become the poor man’s holiday. The main culprit for that, I’d say, is the open world game.
For a maximum of £40, you can travel the Caribbean on a pirate ship, searching for gold and adventure wherever it may be. Or, you can travel across The Milky Way in a space cruiser, fighting exotic alien races and exploring new depths of the galaxy. You can’t find that in a Thomas Cook catalogue now, can you?
Let’s face it – as we grow up, the family holiday becomes nothing more than a distant memory. Reality checks in, and trying to find a nice destination to go to that isn’t just for the sake of going on holiday can be pretty expensive. The short term solution, therefore, is gaming.
By all means, I’m not suggesting that gaming becomes the substitute to a holiday. After all, you don’t want to become one of those ‘basement dwellers’ who retches at the sight of natural light and the thought of social interaction. Instead, think of it as a supplement until the real thing arrives, like those free samples you get at ASDA.
But until it does, go grab that Dualshock controller and get lost in that cheap-as-chips virtual world. Heck, stick your feet out of the patio door whilst you play, you may even get that tan you wanted to go away for.