What Are We All Playing This Weekend?
WELL?
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Yes, this is the way it goes now: we tell you what we're playing, you tell us what you're playing. Or, alternatively, you can pretend your dear pal Alice is making up stories about what everyone else is up to, then attaching their pictures in the hopes you'll fall for it. Will you?
Adam: Rocket League, then more Rocket League and a smattering of Sorcerer King. I like football but I'm not a big fan of cars wot go fast, so I wasn't sure if Rocket League would be my cup of tea. It's more than that - it's my bottle of single grain Scotch. When I realised I could score the equivalent of a bicycle kick using the car's double jump, I recognised that Rocket League was my favourite multiplayer thing of recent times. Its five minute matches create more moments of nailbiting tension, triumphant shouts and dismayed groans than you'll see on both benches during a Tory Budget, and it's considerably less grim. In fact, the bright blue sky stylings of the arenas make a pleasant change from the gunmetal gray of most futuresports. Lovely.
Alec: I'm fiddling with a pre-alpha version of The Flame in the Flood, a rustic survival game/roguelike from some of the many scattered ex-Bioshock souls, who for SOME REASON decided to make a game about trying to get back on your feet after your world suddenly falls apart. I'm digging the mostly real-world theme and acoustic guitar soundtrack - a much-needed change from angry goblins and doomy scores - but so far it's feeling perhaps a little too Don't Starve for comfort. More on that next week, though. I'm also cleaning up the last few audio logs and whatnot in The Magic Circle, so I guess it's a bit of a post-Irrational binge for me this week.
Alice: I'm stuck back into The Witcher 3. Reaching Skellige after sixty hours, I was a little tired and stopped as it felt a bit soulless compared to Velen, but I've made a start on some of the archipelago's bigger quests and I'm digging it now. This weekend I'll tidy up loose ends then get back into the main questline. It's very good, isn't it? I had dinner with Pip tonight and rambled on about the coolness of feeling like a clever monster detective while she told me about Batman's clue-finding.
Graham: After weeks of hearing about Arkham Knight, the hankering to smoothly punch goons in the face became too strong and I reinstalled Arkham Asylum. Why not City? Because I think the enclosed spaces of the first game are a better distillation of Bat life, in which each area is a kind of environment puzzle you solve by stringing people up from gargoyles and luring criminals towards explosions. I never completed it first time around and I doubt my attention span will last long enough to do so this time either, but for a weekend, hitting things seems like the perfect pastime.
John: If I can sneak away from baby duties, I hope to take a squizz at a couple of unreleased aRPGs I'm getting code for today. There is an international shortage of good, distracting click-fests, and I leap on every potential one in the hope it will fill the Titan Quest shaped hole in my life. That as well as cramming in some more time with Neverwinter Nights 2. But far more likely is I'll be playing Threes and Flow Free alternately on my phone while my son practises crawling backward into sharp things.
Philippa: This week I've been pottering about with some smaller games and a lot of transcription. Nothing that's in a finished play state though. The big game that I'm playing at the moment is still Dota 2. My team (Uptown Dunk) is taking part in The Rektreational. It's a games industry tournament and the first matches are on Saturday (come watch us!) so I've been trying to sneak in little bits of support practice as well as de-stressing by picking up some heroes I don't usually play.
But you, dear reader, what are you playing this weekend?