Apparently vacation is a time to do absolutely nothing

With a week off work I was sure I would get some writing done, but in truth I have done pretty much nothing with my time except finish "Sword Art Online" and play video games. It has been most relaxing, to be honest. Not that I don't enjoy writing, but I rarely focus on games these days (that aren't "Marvel Heroes" anyway), so it was nice to do so freely at will.

Most of my time was spent playing "Watch Dogs" on the PlayStation 4. My brother described it as "A thinking man's Grand Theft Auto", and I can't say he's wrong. Far from being a drivey/shooty bang-bang kind of game, Watch Dogs primarily confronts you with problem solving situations, like trying to figure out how to infiltrate a building via a collection of security cameras, and some light terrain-traversal puzzles using pieces of the environment to get from point A to point B. Even most firefight situations can be avoided through clever use of the tools at your disposal. I even once managed to block off some pursuing cards by closing the obvious way out of a compound and taking off in the other direction away from them, then hiding silently in my car until they gave up the search.

Of course sticking behind cover and picking people off one at a time is still an option for most situations. The fact that you can choose how to do things is one of the best parts of the game, though personally I find it hard to off people after I hack their phone and find out they're organ doners, or that they're putting their first child through college, or that they do extensive volunteer work. Yeah, the individual descriptions of people are randomly generated, I know that, but it still gives the world a splash of life that you simply don't get in other games full of faceless cold-blooded mercenaries, and every character in the game DOES have a unique face (or at least with far more variety than other games of the genre).

The story isn't incredible, but it has a fantastic atmosphere and present an incredibly lively world. You play as a low-profile hacker, and indeed you spend most of your time feeling like a ghost as you wander imperceptibly through the world, unseen and unnoticed by the people going about their daily lives. A standout experience in the open-world-sandbox genre, to be sure.

Also Mario Kart 8 came out yesterday. A pretty good game in its own right, and my favorite Kart since 64.