I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but I made some excellent progress not only on January’s game challenge, but my larger challenge for the year, as well.

For anyone not familiar, my hefty challenge for the year was to beat over 50 games by December 31st. That equates to just under a game a week, and I’ve already completed four games this month! As follows:

Rise of the Tomb Raider
The Order: 1886
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Mario Kart 7

And all this with six days of January to spare! Hooray!

My latest goal is to have The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt completed by February 9th, as an onslaught of games release that day (Dying Light: The Following DLC, Firewatch, and Unravel) and I want to dive in as soon as I can. And I can’t very well do that with a 100 hour experience hanging over my head.

I actually dove back in to The Witcher last night, and allow me to just say, picking a massive and somewhat complicated game back up partway through is…something. I had thought I only had a handful of hours in to the game before I put it aside, but according to my save files, I was over 20 hours in; too far to turn back and start over. At least for me.

As I looked wide-eyed through the menu and control schemes, I felt lost. So I ran around aimlessly, wondered how I was going to pick the systems back up again, and decided to just embrace it. I’m sure I will end up witching sloppily for an hour or so, but I’m hopeful that if I just go for it, I will eventually figure it out again. I also have my trusty (and lovely) game guide, and I’ve been referring to it often.

I had a similar trepidation with going back to Pokemon X when I was a significant way through it, and I ended up finding my footing remarkably fast. So that’s another check in the hopeful column.

Over the weekend, I finished both Call of Duty: Black Ops III (my least favorite Call of Duty campaign to date), as well as Mario Kart 7 (playing solo is dreadfully boring). I was more than ready to be done with both, and I’m glad I finished and was able to move on to other adventures (namely, The Witcher).

I knew I would be playing the Dying Light DLC releasing on February 9th, but after reading and watching some content about it over the weekend, my interest in Dying Light was amplified. I would like to go back before The Following releases to get my feet wet and to be prepared for the experience.

According to HowLongToBeat, The Witcher will take just under 100 hours to complete, and since I already have 20 hours in, that leaves 80 hours. Giving myself two weeks to finish it seems like a snug goal, but a doable one. I just hope I can stop wandering around like a weirdo and getting back in the groove of playing.

Cheers to progress and tiny successes!