What are you playing this weekend?
The weekend is upon us, and that means, hopefully, you will have plenty of time to play some games.
Some of us are doing adult things over the weekend, like putting together new recliner chairs, laying laminate, cleaning the house, and even giving the dogs a bath. But in between, we are definitely going to find time to play some games.
That's right: adulting the entire weekend be damned because there are orcs to slay, turnips to buy, bad guys to shoot, and a couple's marriage to save.
With that said, here's what we've been playing and are planning to play this weekend.
Dorrani Williams, Video Producer - Apex Legends, It Takes Two
There are so many games in my backlog I need to play, It Takes Two, Disco Elysium, The Life is Strange games and I should probably dust off my Oculus Rift and give Half-life: Alyx another go.
But it's unlikely that I'll get around to those games anytime soon when Apex Legends has me in a headlock. Love it or hate it is still the game I grind every day with my friends. But Sunday morning, I'm going to try my hardest to pry myself away from Apex and relax on some It Takes Two. Hopefully, it will teach me a thing or two on how to fix my toxic relationship with Apex legends.
James Billcliffe, Guides Editor - Fantasian
Adulting beckons, so I was tempted to say I’d be playing Tetris this weekend while I lay a laminate floor. But really, I’ll be relaxing in the evenings with Fantasian, the new JRPG from the creator of the original Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi.
I somehow managed to redeem my phone’s free Apple Arcade sub on precisely the same day that maybe the best game to ever drop on the service came out, and it’s lived up to the billing so far.
The music is chill, the environment art - where characters are layered over pictures of hand-built models - is beautiful, and the Final Fantasy rip-offs are frequent. The bartender is even called Cid!
Alex Donaldson, Assistant Editor - Final Fantasy 7, Fantasian
Yeah, there are loads of new games out. So what? I'm currently part-way through a replay of Final Fantasy 7 - the original, not the remake - and I intend to spend much of this weekend polishing that off. Even though I own these games on countless platforms, for some reason I've found myself attracted back to the Final Fantasy games that have entered Xbox Game Pass. I finished Final Fantasy 8 last week, and then my thoughts immediately turned to 7 and 9.
I reckon I'll eventually do both, but I've chosen 7 first because the PS5 release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is near, so by replaying now it'll be nice and fresh in my mind when I sit down to play that. I'm going for the full 1000 achievement points, because why not - so I've been doing a lot of grinding to unlock Great Gospel before that thing happens. More than anything, playing FF7 and FF8 back-to-back really drives home how stunningly impressive a step-up FF8 was, despite all its flaws.
Aside from that, like James I intend to give Fantasian a look - I just purchased an Apple TV 4K for this express purpose - so it'd better be worth the investment! I'm also working on reviews for a few games that... I can't talk about it yet. But if you look at the upcoming release schedule for this month, you can probably guess.
Rebecca Jones, Guides Writer - Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Not to sound like a stuck record, but this weekend I'll be playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. No please, wait, hear me out.
Admittedly, I've played at least half an hour of ACNH every single day since I finally got my copy an astounding 345 days ago. By now I feel like I've seen almost everything I'm going to see. But because I was ever so slightly late to the desert island paradise party, I have yet to experience the Spring Fishing Tourney or witness the end of Cherry Blossom Season — both of which, quite conveniently, take place this Saturday. So that's what I'll be playing this weekend. After that, I'll start trying to cut back a bit.
Probably.
Maybe sometime in May.
Stephany Nunneley, News Editor - The Lord of the Rings Online
My always go-to game when it comes to getting my Tolkien fix is what I am diving into this weekend. I finally convinced two of my friends, who quit the game years ago, to come back and play with me now that they have disowned WoW. So far, we dabbled in the Spring Festival which ended in the wee hours on Wednesday and gave the Red Maid and a bunch of flower-eating goats the what for on multiple occasions. Now that the shrew stomping and maze running is over, it's time to get back to business.
This weekend, we will be trying to level some lower-level characters and do a couple of Garth Agarwen runs over in Agamaur. Here, we will do our very best to fight the massive tree gone mad, Grimbark; fight Temair the Devoted, a priestess of the Creoth tribe of Hill-men; and show the Gaunt-lord Ivar the Blood-hand and his army of the Dead who's boss. Wish us luck, these three instances can be a bit tricky. I could just bring my level 130 hunter into the group instead of my level 35 minstrel and one-shot everything to get my friends in and out alive. But what's the fun in that?
Tom Orry, Editor-in-chief - Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
I had some extra time off following the long Easter weekend, so I had a look in my library for a co-op game I could tackle with my son. We'd just finished the superb It Takes Two, so finding something as good was always going to be a tough ask, but I think we got close with Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.
In this 2D space shooter of sorts, playable by up to four people locally, you each take control of a single character who can run about inside a spaceship. This spaceship (of which more can be unlocked) has stations that operate the guns, the shield, the thruster, and the map. You must work with your fellow player(s) to jump around and operate each of these as you navigate round the levels, shoot enemies, and eventually take on huge bosses.
It's fair to say that Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is one of the most argument-inducing games I've ever played. I had to take breaks to calm down after suffering relentless screams from my seven-year-old to "get on the shield" even though I was the only person operating a gun and he was busy applying upgrade gems. Let's not get into it again. I'm over it. We both had a great time, but this isn't a game to play through in one sitting unless you want to teach your children some words you won't want them to repeat on the school playground.
These are definitely some interesting and varied choices, which leads us to ask: what are you playing this weekend? We'd love to know.