Plan Your Holiday Gaming Season

If you’re looking for an arbitrary beginning to this year’s holiday gaming season, you might as well label today’s release of Borderlands 2 as the starting gate. And wow, we’ve got a lot of gaming ahead. 

So break out your smart phone/email calendar/pocket planner/napkin, and let’s figure out how you’re going to fit all this in. 

We’re going to make a lot of assumptions in the following, including about how much gaming you do, and how long it will take to play games that we haven’t played ourselves yet. We’ve based our time estimates on a highly scientific structure called guessing, and we’re assuming you’ve got about three hours a day (averaging weekdays and weekends together) to devote to play. If you know you spend a lot more or less than that, adjust your schedule accordingly.

Already Available

The holiday pre-season got going early this year, and several big games are already out. If you’ve been on summer holiday on Majorca, then make sure you didn’t miss anything you love before you dive into later releases. 

Darksiders II

This one’s a biggie, and it’s Zelda-style dungeons are likely to take you a long while to conquer. If you haven’t started yet, set aside a good two weeks on your calendar for this one to allow for a complete playthrough. If you’re planning on doing New Game Plus, the Crucible, and all the other bonus features of the game, add a few extra days. 

Sleeping Dogs

This open world crime game raised more than a few eyebrows when it released in August, offering up a lot of fun for your money. You’ll need at least a week (20+ hours) of devoted playing if you still want to squeeze the title in before things get even more busy, and even that’s going to be pushing it.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

Fall of Cybertron has a robust single-player campaign, but it’s nothing you can’t handle in a few days. You’re probably going to mess around with secrets, upgrades, and additional difficulty settings a little bit, so let’s say four or five full days for single-player. If you’ve got friends also playing, talk with them about a few nights where you can play cooperative Escalation and competitive modes together; if you love the game’s multiplayer features, you can always budget in some extra time. 

Guild Wars 2

If you’re an MMO enthusiast, it’d be a shame to miss out on this landmark release in the genre. On the bright side, there’s no subscription fee, so you can install the game and come back to it intermittently in the coming months. If you’re doing it that way, consider blocking off a couple nights each week that you’re going to devote to Tyria. That said, if you’re really committed, you may as well throw out your calendar and forget everything else on this list. This one could easily keep you busy until New Years. 

[Next up: The holiday heavy hitters]

The Heavy Hitters

From here on out, we’re running at least in part on conjecture, using previous installments of franchises to judge playtime. 

Borderlands 2 – September 18

It’s out today, and it’s a good bet that you’re ready to get home and get started.  Borderlands 2 is a big game; even a single-player runthrough where you avoid some of the sidequests is going to clock in around 30 hours, so pencil in a week and a half at the very least. Our recommendation? Play Borderlands 2 with your friends throughout this holiday season, saving it to play for when you’re all free to hop in together. The game is more fun cooperatively, and you’ll have time to squeeze in some other single-player fun on other titles when no one’s online.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria – September 25

Like Guild Wars 2, if you’re sure you’re ready to return to Azeroth, you may as well cross most of the rest of these games off your list. MMOs are incredibly time-consuming, especially if you plan on really embracing new group content. That said, if all you want to do is hop back in and level from 85 to 90, we suspect a couple of weeks should be enough. 

Resident Evil 6 – October 2

If you’re ready to engage against the world’s greatest biohazard, we recommend you recruit a friend to play co-op. Whether alone or with your friend, each of the three campaigns in Resident Evil 6 is going to clock in around seven to eight hours, plus Ada’s campaign is another five or six. Let’s say two weeks. 

X-Com: Enemy Unknown – October 9

Firaxis has its big strategy game coming up early next month, and it’s looking like a must-play. Budget at least twenty hours to get through a normal playthrough – that’s a full week if you’re really putting in the time. Are you so hardcore that you’re going to play on Classic mode with permadeath and all the rest of the hard stuff? Add another few days for good measure. 

Dishonored – October 9

Ahh! Now they’re coming hard and fast. That’s right, Dishonored is out on the same day as X-Com, so you’re going to have to make a choice. Lead troops against the aliens, or slink through the rat-infested streets on a quest for revenge? It’s up to you, but do one or the other first; neither game will lend itself well to casual play. Since it’s a new franchise, it’s hard to guess about length on this one. But we can safely assume that it will take you at least a week to render judgment against all those who have wronged you, right?

Forza Horizon – October 23 

Racing enthusiasts will likely want to make a choice this year whether to do this title or Need for Speed. Forza is going to lean a little more in the sim direction, if that makes a difference to you. Based on previous installments, you should be able to wring a lot of the fun out of this racing title in a good week’s worth of play, but there’s no doubt that serious car enthusiasts will find more to enjoy.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted – October 30

See above, but know that Most Wanted leans a little more in the arcade racing direction than Forza. Need for Speed may end up being worth the extra week’s wait for the cool open world multiplayer and cop chases. The social competitive angle of multiplayer alone should give this game long legs; consider adding an extra day to the calendar for each friend you can convince to come play with you. Then again, if you opt for Need for Speed, you’re going to be up against our next entry…

[Next up: Ubisoft's flagship franchise, and the rest of the big holiday releases]

Assassin’s Creed III – October 30

Ubisoft’s flagship series gets a new numbered entry at the end of October, and all signs point to a game you’ll want to play. Previous entries indicate that between 20 and 30 hours are going to be needed to complete the campaign. That said, ambitious design decisions at Ubisoft Montreal may extend that even longer. We’d recommend no less than two weeks of allotted time. If you’re into the cat and mouse multiplayer, or you’d like to try it (you should), at least another week on top of that would be wise. 

Halo 4 – November 6

By this point in the season, you’re probably already working through a backlog. But if by some miracle you’re up to date, you’ll be ready to tackle Master Chief’s big new adventure. Your time investment on Halo 4 this season is going to be based on what features you’d like to play. If expectations line up with previous entries, you ought to finish a campaign run on normal over a weekend. Play on Legendary? Knock that up to at least a week. If you’re in it for the competitive multiplayer, you probably already know how much time you’ll be investing, but it will take you at least two weeks to get your skills back up to where they were when you played Reach. Plan on trying out the new cooperative Spartan Ops? Set aside one evening of playtime once a week for the foreseeable future, and line it up with your friends. Maybe you and your friends will have just finished Borderlands 2?

Call of Duty Black Ops II – November 13

Historically, Call of Duty single-player campaigns are pretty short, so lock in a weekend to blast through. If you’re excited about Black Ops II, you probably have your sights set on multiplayer, which ought to keep you busy for at least a few weeks; for some players, multiplayer will keep you busy until the same time next year. Plan accordingly.

Wii U (New Super Mario Bros. U) – November 18

Nintendo’s recent announcement of a release for its new system is still something of a mystery. We don’t know what games devoted gamers will be interested in playing, and more importantly, we don’t even know what the full launch line-up will be. If nothing else, if you’re planning on picking up a Wii U, you’ll need a week to jump through Mario.

Hitman: Absolution – November 20

If you’ve got time to squeeze it in, the new Hitman is looking pretty rad in early builds. We’ve yet to play the final version, but let’s set a nice round week to play through the campaign and experiment with cool new features like Contracts mode. 

Far Cry 3 – December 4

With over a month spacing it away from the other big Ubisoft release, Far Cry 3 has carved out a great little spot for itself late in the holiday season of releases. A big open world campaign should keep you busy for a couple of weeks, and a separate cooperative set of adventures adds more to explore, not to mention some competitive options. Set your play time to match your ambitions with the game.

We certainly can’t account for everyone’s tastes, so we apologize for all the awesome games we’ve left out. You should be able to apply the same principles we've used above to fill in the gaps. Plenty of other big titles are on the way, including Torchlight II (September 20), NBA 2K13 (October 2), Dance Central 3 (October 16), Skylanders: Giants (October 21), Medal of Honor: Warfighter (October 23), Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask (October 28), Assassin’s Creed III Liberation (October 30), WWE 13  (October 30), LittleBigPlanet Karting (November 6), Paper Mario: Sticker Star (November 11), Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two (November 18), and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale (November 20). That’s not to mention a wide array of downloadable games whose release dates are still in flux for the coming months.

Our rule of thumb; don’t rush through all these awesome games. If you fall off your schedule, don’t stress. Enjoy each game at its own pace, and don’t get caught up in the mad rush to complete everything before the end of the year. You should have plenty of time in the first few months of 2013 to catch up. 

Tell us about your holiday gaming plan in the comments below!