What are you playing this weekend?
It's the weekend once again. Time to relax, forget about the week, and play some video games.
As usual, a few of us are doing things other than gaming, but we still plan to find an opportunity to indulge in our favorite pastime.
There are birthdays to attend, weeds to pull out of the flowerbeds, stinky dogs to bathe, kitchens to mop. The usual.
But in between chores, we plan to jump into a romantic sci-fi RPG, a block-breaking game, conquer civilizations in a classic strategy title, and play a bit of solider.
Here's what we’ve been playing and plan to dive into this weekend.
Dorrani Williams, Video Producer – Resident Evil 2 Remake, League of Legends
This week I do plan on starting the Resident Evil games, specifically Resident Evil 2 Remake, to prepare for Resident Evil Village. But, in a weird twist of events, I've somehow been roped back into playing League of Legends and you know what? I don't hate it.
For context, LoL was my favorite game for years until I finally burnt out two years or so ago (I say burnt out but I just couldn't stand the top laners feeeeeeding anymore), so I took a break and played other games but I'm back and so much has changed it almost feels like a new game but let's just see how long it takes for me to uninstall it again.
Rebecca Jones, Guides Writer – Haven
All being well, for me this weekend is going to involve at least some measure of going outdoors and interacting with real humans at a safe social distance. So that's going to be a nice change of pace. Around that, though, I'm still hoping to work in a little bit of gaming time.
For the past few weeks, my partner and I have been playing Haven in couch co-op. This romantic sci-fi RPG has so far been enjoyable, but not quite as good as our last big story-driven couch co-op adventure — which was the excellent A Way Out (and yes, part of me wants to rush to finish Haven already so we can move onto It Takes Two). This is mainly down to the controls: instead of each player simply moving one of the two playable characters, it's an often frustrating push-and-pull of partly shared control.
We're playing on Switch and actually had to take a break from the game for the past week to order a secondary "JoyCon Comfort Grip™" (the controller adaptor that comes with the console) because neither of us could cope properly holding an untethered pair of JoyCons during the game's flying and not-quite-turn-based combat sequences. Now though, our adorable new Animal Crossing themed adaptor has arrived; so hopefully, around this weekend's busy schedule of dental appointments, gardening, and family birthdays, we can get back to solving the mysteries of the allegedly abandoned (you reckon?) planet which our star-crossed protagonists have chosen to call home.
Sherif Saed, Staff Writer - Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Outriders
Things are a little quiet now on the game releases front, which is a good time to wrap up any unfinished business with existing games. I am fairly high up into Black Ops Cold War’s Season 2 battle pass, so I want to see if I can get it towards 100 while double everything is active.
Usually, FOMO gets to me in the final days of the season, and I end up biting the bullet and buying the $20 bundle that gets you 20 tier skip, just to get it over with. I am not thrilled about any of the skins or weapon blueprints, really, but I did play a lot of the Zombies Outbreak mode and it helped me get a fair ways into the pass, so I may as well finish it.
Zombies Outbreak, up to level 5 at least, is a good podcast game. You can just turn down most of it, and put on a podcast or some music and before you know it, you’re all caught up on your weekly podcasts.
Another game that can also be good with podcasts is Outriders. I want to bring one more character into the endgame. I am going to log in this weekend and hope my s**t isn’t gone, because I really want to mess around with a class other than the Pyromancer in the endgame.
Outriders is popular now, too, so I can easily find people to play with, which I can’t say about the multiplayer games I usually play.
Stephany Nunneley, News Editor - Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition
On Wednesday, my phone rings. I answer it and hear: "Wanna conquer something this weekend?" Of course, I do. I am always down to give the Aztecs the what-for - or any other civilization for that matter. I need a break from The Lord of the Rings Online anyway. Between crafting and trying to make it through Agamaur, a place full of great corruption and grave danger, I am a bit burned out.
Age of Empires 2, in my opinion, is the best entry in the franchise, and it's what I will mainly be playing this weekend. Two friends and I play the game on Steam and there are still a few cultures I need to play in order to earn some achievements. I also need to work on the "Hun, What Are You doing?," "Castle Crusher," and "Relic Hunter." The latter will probably take me a bit longer because the friends I play with tend to grab them before I can get ahold of one. Then, there's always the enemy civilization coming over into my area and bogarting one or two. Next time, I will build a wall up around a relic until I can create a monk.
We'll hopefully get our other friend to play with us this weekend too, so we can have a team of four. But, he's been really into Valheim of late and not giving us much of his time. Plus, he really needs to play with us, because he is a bit rusty at AOE 2 and needs to get back into the swing of things before Age of Empires 4 comes out and we force him to buy it.
Tom Orry, Editor-in-chief - Spire Blast Apple Arcade
Other than watching my son play the rather excellent Immortals Fenyx Rising and occasionally handle a timed challenge for him (I've still got it!), I've been dabbling with a few Apple Arcade games. The one that's stuck is Spire Blast, which may well have won through due to its simplicity and the ease to which I can just jump back in whenever I feel like it without having to acclimate myself to everything about it again.
Spire Blast is essentially a 3D colour-matching block-breaker in which you fling balls at a tower of bricks, with connected blocks of the same colour as the ball being removed. This can lead to physics-based tower collapses, and there are various power-ups to use to assist, plus a dragon that appears to munch on bricks as if they're misshapen Skittles. It's simple in the extreme, but the kind of game that's ideal for a quick 10-minute burst here and there.
We have varied tastes here at VG247. Surely our readers do as well, so we would love to hear about what you've been playing, or plan to play over the weekend. Hopefully, you will find plenty of time to game in between things, life, and whatnot.