What Are We All Playing This Weekend?
WELL?
Hello again, chums! Just to let you know, we'll be a bit quiet on Monday as it's a bank holiday in most of the UK. For non-United Kingdomeers, I'll explain: we have eight holidays each year dedicated to those lovely, lovely bankers who do so much for us all. Children parade giant papier mâché pound coins through the streets, adults gather to sing banking songs, and the Queen spends an entire day queuing outside the Bank of England carrying her penny jar. Oh, we'll be right bankers this weekend! But we'll still make time for video games - mostly Deus Ex. How about yourself?
Adam: I'll probably play some Deus Ex because, heck, it's stealth and cyber-stabbing. I'm tempted to shrug off the whole "non-lethal no-kill playthrough" approach and just straight up murder everything between me and the end of the game. Might make a nice change of pace.
Mostly, I'll be playing The Curious Expedition though. The 1.0 release is just around the corner and my latest group of explorers found something that looks very much like The Lament Configuration. This is a very good game. Between the dinosaurs and the [REDACTED], there's plenty of fun to be had simply watching the world collapse or burn as you pilfer idols.
Alec: I am going to continue trying to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and hope that I find a point where I don't keep quitting in frustration every 45 minutes, irritated by the janky controls and bored by the listeless dialogue and nobody protagonist. I didn't as... no, let's not go there, eh? If I still can't crack that nut, I might go back to Witcher 3: a world-weary gruffman with soul, as opposed to one with complete disinterest in everything.
Alice: Well, shoot. Last weekend I managed to topple my one Steam Friend above me on the Devil Daggers leaderboard (I got heavily into it again after the RPS Summer Games). And then he beat me. And then I beat him. And then... jesus, he's got a stonker of a time. But we've both finally broken into gold tier, so that's grand. It's nice to have friendly competition. This run is my current best - 283 seconds - and I'm still embarrassed that my highest times tend to start so sloppily. Skip the first 50 seconds, okay?
Brendan: I'm going to stab some people in Deus Ex: Heavy-Handed Segregation. But only the ones who deserve it. I’ve seen some friends completing pacifist runs, having murdered not one pawn of the illuminati. But I hate Batmanism, so my Jensen is going to kill a few people. I've already offed one fraudster who I decided Jensen didn't like. So let's see who else qualifies. Other than that I will probably appear in the middle of your Overwatch match, wander around pointlessly as Mei, and accidentally wall you into our own spawn point. Sorry.
Graham: I started Hyper Light Drifter this week and even after just 15 minutes I'm already entranced. I previously played the 'heck' out of a preview build of the game, but the release of the final thing came while I was on paternity leave, meaning I'm only getting to it now. I love its world, its music, its movement, its combat. I just hope John is wrong about the difficulty spikes.
John: This weekend I hope to be playing... oh this gets more demoralising every week. I don't get to play games at the weekend any more, unless it's a big review, okay? I've a toddler to entertain, and there's only so much watching daddy play a game he can take before he needs to "press buttons" finding the unique combination that causes my PC to erase all data from all hard drives and most of the internet.
Although I hope to sneak in a fair bit of Deus Ex Go as and when, on my phone. Sadly this is the lovely and smart puzzle game, rather than going around with my phone camera out trying to identify augmented humans in the street.
Philippa: This weekend I will be playing the game of trying to find space in a pub garden so I can enjoy a lager shandy in the sunshine. Should that fail I will trudge home and boot up some game or other. Possibly No Man's Sky, although the pull of that has been waning pretty quickly. Maybe I'll go back to Stephen's Sausage Roll and chip away at some more of those puzzles. Or maybe this Bank Holiday weekend is finally going to see me start Bound By Flame.
But you, dearest reader, what are you playing?