Though I may have (disappointingly) renounced my proper February game challenge, I thought I’d give a solid look at the end of this month, as well as a look forward to the activities commencing next week.

After a cascade of disappointments (in-game), I have successfully tapered off my intense Destiny playtime. I also felt vindicated that Xur finally gave it up and had heavy ammo synth, and I took advantage of it by scooping up over 400 packs over three characters.

I’m not going to lie. That felt pretty sweet.

I haven’t finished Dying Light yet, but I have been playing it regularly. I played the first two Techland games (Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide) solo, however I’ve been playing most of Dying Light with company and I enjoy it thoroughly. It certainly doesn’t hurt that if you leave a field of zombies slayed without looting them for a bit, you can return and find the battlefield empty of corpses, but filled with what a friend and I affectionately call “crack bags.”

I’m not sure why that’s so funny, but it is.

I anticipate that if we slow down on the plethora of side missions in the game, we can finish the narrative by midweek. We have a session planned for today, and I will see how far we get.

I didn’t finish any other games, but there is still plenty of time in the next five days to do so.

Looking ahead to next month’s challenge, I have allotted a week (up to ten days) for each game, beginning with Fallout 3. I’ve been so curious about this game for so long, it will be excellent just to get started. I recall seeing the first hour or so of the game a couple of years back, but I look forward to getting my hands on it, myself.

According to HowLongToBeat (HLTB), Fallout 3 (the story combined with side quests) takes approximately 58 hours to complete. At ten days, that’s about six hours a day, and that seems like a tall order. A doable order, but a tall one, none the less. I’m so grateful to the site for helping me budget time in this endeavor.

After Fallout 3 is behind me, I will move right along to Far Cry 4, a game I’ve been salivating over for months. Again, according to HLTB, it shows a combined time of around 26 hours to compete the game. At ten days, that’s less than three hours a day which seems more than palatable. Also, with my history of getting addicted to Far Cry, I imagine I may well finish it far quicker that that. I hooved Far Cry 3 right up in no time.

And last will be GTA V. Believe it or not, this will be my first GTA. Ever. I have it for PS4, and even though the first person perspective was added specifically for current gen, I will likely stick with third person, anyway.

HLTB lists GTA V as around 40 hours to complete, so in the ten day period, that’s four hours per day. Also highly doable.

Provided I complete these games as outlined, my “reward” to myself is to get to play through the first Borderlands again. It’s one of my favorite games ever, and I’ve lately (the past handful of months) had it heavily on my mind.

Sure, the Handsome Collection releases on March 24th (my copy is pre-ordered), and while I’m looking forward to current gen Borderlands (less pop-in textures, please?), the omission of the first game is still one of the weirdest things. Why anyone, especially Gearbox, would do this, I have no idea. Who releases a compilation of their most profitable IP without the game where it all started? Who releases a compilation without including all titles?

Gearbox does. Weirdos.

Either way, I will be more than happy to boot up the game on the PS3. I’ve not used it much lately, but there are still so very many games on it that I want to experience.

All this being said, I feel very hopeful about next month’s prospects. In the meantime, I have a grip of crack bags to collect in the city of Harran.

Disclaimer: the aforementioned crack bags are all pretend (so is Harran!) and in no way would I ever actually do crack.

Happy Monday friends, and here’s to a successful March challenge!