It's almost time for the Game Developers Conference again, kicking off Monday week in the city locals call Sunny San Fran. If you yourself intend to confer on the subject of game development, hey, swing by The Mild Rumpus - the lovely chill zone organised by a group which I am part of but so inactive within I can claim no responsibility for, so I recommend just cos it'll be nice. GDC is becoming more of a stage for marketing too (I mean, more than self-promotion), with a number of showcase events and announcements around it. Paradox's tease better chuffing well be a new Vampire: The Masquerade or I'll send our roving reporters out to loudly sigh and groan as they follow anyone they see in a Paradox shirt.
What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
Alec
Alec has been fired.
Alice Bee
Earlier in the week, Alice O linked to a game called Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions, and I went 'Ooooooh' and now I play it all the time. I have fidgety fingers (at work I play with a USB stick that had a magnetised wooden lid, and this week I dropped the lid in my tea, and Matt laughed and laughed) and I really love jigsaw puzzles. When I'm sifting all the pieces and turning them over in my hands I feel remarkably close to our ape cousins, picking lice off each others backs with careful little pinches. Glass Masquerade 2 is actually a very beautiful game of piecing creepy stained glass windows together, and so the comparison to lice-picking was probably unwarranted. Anyway, I shall be playing it again this weekend.
Alice L
Alice has been fired but hey, we have spares.
Alice O
With new PvPvE and co-op modes in Destiny 2 and a higher power cap to hit, I'll be jetting all over the universe shooting and looting. I guess I'm an MMO player now. Here's me, playing an MMO. Doing those MMO things. And still having a cracking time.
With snow a possibility this weekend, I'll leap in the sea if it looks like something dramatic is about to come down. Swimming in intense weather is my favourite thing in the world.
Brendan
I'll be Aping Legs, most likely. I enjoy sliding about and picking up nice bits of gun. Then pointing those gunbits ineffectually at dangerous people with much better aim than I. My record for kills suggests I am a very poor battle royalist. But there's something about this delightful mega-level and all its sewer tunnels and caves that has captured me. If I have to die twenty times to the barrel of some Bangalore's shotgun, just to do some more giddy level tourism, so be it.
Dave
This weekend I will be heading back to the late 1990s, delving further into that Geocities/Papers Please combination that is Hypnospace Outlaw. I didn't get on with it when I played it at Rezzed, but that's because it was the wrong setting to play it. Having a lot more fun with it now I'm not anxious to the amount of time I'd have spent on playing it. There will also potentially be some old retro PC games that I'd like to talk about in upcoming HYPs, but I won't divulge as to which ones just yet.
Graham
I'm still playing Mario Tennis Aces. I have written about it exactly once, last week, and after 40 words or so I must say: there is nothing else to say about Mario Tennis Aces. It's a tennis game with Mario in it. He plays tennis. It's good though obviously I wish I was instead playing Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis on the PS1.
John
John has been fired.
Katharine
It's more Octopath Traveller for me this weekend. I finally discovered you could assign everyone a second job class earlier in the week, which after 30 hours of play was both a wonderful surprise and something of a sweet relief. I know it's incredibly repetitive, with each of its eight characters' story chapters very much like the last, but man alive has this thing sunk its hooks into me good.
Matt
I'll be playing more Apelegs, obvs, and probably pottering through Devil May Cry 5's new game plus mode. There are bound to be a few ways of chopping up demons that I haven't thought of yet.
Matthew
A couple of days off is giving me that rarest of opportunities: a chance to play something that isn't for work. But I'm frozen with indecision. I've been eyeing up Mutant Year Zero for a while, but I've also got a mountain of Sierra games from a Humble Bundle I bought three year ago and I should really play Subnautica at some point. Oh god, I'm just going to end up hitting men with bikes in Yakuza Zero some more, aren't I?
Ollie
What else but Apex Legends? Well actually, I do have a "what else" this time, seeing as I've got a key for the Satisfactory alpha test weekend between Friday and Monday. I've been itching to try out "Factorio-but-first-person" since it was announced, so I'm pretty hyped for that. I hope it's well optimised, because my factories tend to get fairly... busy.
But you, dearest reader, what are you playing?
