Looking for the perfect virtual getaway? Check out our top picks for getting warm pixels and dystopian water in between your toes.
5. Hyrule – Legend of Zelda series
With its lush green fields and vibrant renaissance towns it’s the ideal spot for those wanting to chill out. For the more adventurous types why not check out one of Hyrule’s many malevolent dungeons where hordes flock to bicker over evil. Become a part of the legend when you find Ganondorf is assembling the forces of darkness in the next door cave.
Love The Ocean? Swim with the Zorras! Big fan of hiking? Climb Death Mountain with a Goron as your personal Sherpa! Be warned that you may get drawn into fights quicker than a fat man gives into a bacon-frosted cupcake. But, foes are usually overgrown weeds or big insects and most of them can be subdued with a few swings of a wooden stick.
You may not be a massive fan of Grand Prix, but you’ll be more inclined to watch if races involve high speed jet cars blasting around tracks with loops bigger than most buildings. The world of F-zero GX encompasses everything you would expect from an ideal futuristic back drop. It’s a starting point for interstellar travel and befriending aliens.
Even if you find life beside the track pretty mundane, this place is run by Nintendo and they don’t do anything by halves! After the race most of the crowd hop into their flying cars and jet off to the land of rainbows where they spend their afternoons riding Yoshis and massive robots.
Now before you say anything, hear me out. Rapture is decrepit, creepy and filled with more danger than you can point a hose at, but huge rushes of adrenaline await those who brave the bathysphere. Rapture provides you with an opportunity to take on seriously nerve-shredding challenges which will leave you feeling like a real bad-ass once completed.
It’s a place where genetic engineering has progressed so far that people can be their own superheroes, shocking unsavoury types with electro bolts or hurling them across the room with telekinesis. It’s better than paintballing on acid. Accommodation doesn’t score highly and your neighbours aren’t particularly hospitable, but if you do kick the bucket you’ll simply be reborn. No worries.
Pacific City is a pretty average city, similar in a lot of ways to the New York of this universe. However, one of its greatest selling points is that you’re living on the set of the biggest action movie ever. So long as you’re not in the firing lines you’ll have front row seats to watch super powered agents rip through legions of enemy strongholds and zombie plagues.
If you’re lucky enough to become an agent you can spend your days running up buildings, throwing cars at one another and ordering tanks as if they were pizzas. Smashing.
Clearly the most entertaining and diverse holiday realm in all of gaming. This world boasts searing hot deserts, chilling arctic zones, calming cloud kingdoms and much much more – there are bizarre twists at every turn. Get your sweat on with a game of tennis or test your driving skills on one of the wacky karting tracks.
If you’re a parent then this is the perfect place to get your child to eat their greens and enable them to experience psychedelics in safety. Rather than just giving them gas, vegetables in the Mario universe appear to afford them special powers. Mushrooms make them grow to enormous sizes and eating flowers will let them shoot fireballs. Don’t worry, you can kill their trip by hitting them.
There is a small problem with the wildlife. Turtles, house plants and Gumbas can be a real hindrance to progress. But fear not, one leap on top of their enormously huge noggins usually renders them unconscious.
Featured image: TheAmy Tucker via Flickr
Joshua Livingston (Bioshock)
Josta Photo (Zelda)
Sonny Side Up! (Mario)
The post Gaming holiday guide: Top five appeared first on Planet Ivy.