What are we all playing this weekend?

Alec

I'm playing Dawn Of Man, a management game about dragging ancient humans up by their hand-made, leaky bootstraps until they're able to survive harsh winters, mammoth attacks and chronic fish shortages. The tight focus on the rudiments of a particular era is really quite refreshing. And did I mention the mammoths? More on that on Monday.

Alice Bee

This weekend I have set aside time to finish Observer, the Blade Runner meets psychological horror game that Bloober Team made after they were done with Layers Of Fear. I got about half way through and stopped. Bloober Team make good, detailed horror games, although they are essentially ripping off a lot of the best bits from e.g. PT. But that's okay, because they still work. Observer's main character is voiced by actual Rutger Hauer, because they're really trying for that Blade Runner comparison.

Alice L

So, it looks like The Sims 4's StrangerVille was released this week. (I dunno if you saw my video on it, no this isn't a shameless plug, but you should go and watch it either way). So this weekend is OBVIOUSLY going to be spent revamping lots and levelling up my sim through the new Military career, all while solving the StrangerVille mystery. Oooooh. Ahhhh. Whatever could it be?

Alice O

I'm be mashing faces in Destiny 2's PvP ahead of next week's new season and contentblast, else I'll face a whole load of rank-resetting to finish some weapon quests after the wipe. I'm getting really quite okay at PvP, so it's fun rather than a grind, but goodness me I'll be glad to see some long-overdue nerfs hit on Tuesday. Beyond that, Alice Bee's Ape Out review has me looking at primate violence, though the Mutant Year Zero demo has me tempted by those animal antics too.

Brendan

I'm going to shoot a load of machinegun bullets at the air in an ineffectual panic during a game of Apex Legends. I've been playing on the PlayStation, because years of recurrent RSI mean my online skills with a mouse are even more pathetic than they were to begin with. But the PlayStation controller is nice and soft on the auld hands.

Dave

It's the Division 2 open beta weekend, so I'll be jumping back into that to see what's cooking and if anything's changed since the closed beta. It's highly likely not and if so, I might go ape in Ape Out instead - given that Alice Bee's review completely sold me on it.

Given that I use this to exercise during the weekends, there's also a new Pokemon available in raids in Pokemon Go, so naturally I want to get it out of the way while I can. I completed the second generation Pokedex last week, which is a big milestone, but there's still several 'mons to nab.

Graham

I got Mario Tennis Aces for the Switch and it is a lovely, frothy thing. I'm currently making my way through its adventure mode, in which you tour Mario's world and defeat its familiar characters by playing novelty spins on tennis. It has the air of a game that might abruptly reach its end at any moment, which turns out to be preferable to most of the games I play, which threaten to last somewhere between 80 and infinity hours.

John

John has been fired.

Katharine

I'm deep in Octopath Traveller territory right now, but provided Matthew doesn't stake out the living room PC for the whole weekend, I might finally play Night In The Woods as well, as I picked it up cheap in Steam's midweek madness sale the other day.

Matt

Yep. It's more Apex Legends for me.

I like the moving and the shooting and the ability using and the map and the respawns and the pings and the diversity and the bumslides and I said all this in my review and now I'm going to play Apelegs ok cheers bye.

Matthew

I've played enough of Anthem that I want to see the end of Anthem, though it's hard to get excited about the prospect of flying between blue mission markers and having the same fight I've been having since the first tutorial fight. Apparently the aggressive tethering has been patched, so at least I can enjoy the monotony at my own pace.

Ollie

The God of Wine has been added to the pantheon of concerned godly relatives looking to lend me a helping hand in Hades. So this weekend I think I'll crack open a bottle of... actually I'm not much of a wine drinker, so I think it'll be some sort of excellent gin liquor... and start a brand new save file for my new favourite dungeon crawler.