Weekend Playlist, 10/23/2009
10/23/2009 3:03 PM | 21 Comments | Page 1 of 1
James Fudge: More NPC killing as filler, but by week's end I should be playing through
Torchlight,
Marvel Super Hero Squad and
SmackDown vs. RAW 2010 -- all at the same time. I know, what a strange mix of games, but hey, it's a living. I played a little
Fallout and
Gothic for a side project last night, (GOG.com is awesome for this stuff -- and it doesn't crash! Yay!),and I suspect I'll finally be able to play some
Realms of Arkania. You can't beat the classics -- for murder!
Gus Mastrapa: I'm off to Minneapolis for a weekend-long board-gaming orgy. We're going to try out the new
Seaside expansion for
Dominion and crack open
Warhammer: Chaos in the Old World. I'm towing my Xbox 360 Hard Drive with me so we can play Rock Band. And I've smuggled a copy of
Borderlands so folks can try out the split-screen. Finally, I have
James Patterson's Women's Murder Club: Crimes of Passion in my DS. Don't ask. OK, do ask. It has mahjong.
Jason McMaster: Like James, I should be playing
Torchlight by the end of the week. I'm looking forward to it! With any luck I'll be receiving
Forza Motorsport 3 and
Dragon Age: Origins, which will demand my time for weeks to come. Gus and I have been spending a good amount of time kicking dudes in the face in the Borderlands, and that might carry over into the weekend for me. It's a really good co-op game. Still plugging on
Dragon Quest IX.
William Abner: Let's see, I finished
Batman: Arkham Asylum Sunday night. I started playing
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves immediately afterward and it cannot compare, although I guess I'll keep playing it this weekend just to finish it. My daughter had her ninth birthday yesterday and I bought her
Scribblenauts. We kept taking turns deciding how to eradicate various obstacles. It was her idea to summon a king cobra to bite the boy playing goalie so he'd forfeit the ball. So that will certainly get playtime this weekend. Finally, we'll be jamming to the Abbey Road DLC, as the medley is the best 14 minutes of gaming this year.
Ryan Kuo: I'm still poking around in
Beneath a Steel Sky. Poke, poke. I really like the game's mix of steely '80s cyberpunk and ... is it tropicalia? And some more
Hook Champ and
Skullpogo. Not up to much else at the moment.
Chris Buecheler: I forgot that I was spending last weekend in Lexington, KY, so no game playing got done. This week I'm looking at finishing
Shadow Complex and then making the decision about what game will occupy my time for the next few months. I've written off
Brütal Legend -- too much negative gameplay press -- but
Arkham Asylum seems very likely.
Scott Jones: Brütal Legend is kind of terrible, CWB. I loved AND I MEAN LOVED the first hour, then it gets kind of blehhhhh. It broke my heart, if you want the truth.
I love Tim dearly, and I think it's well worth a playthrough, but the game, she has problems, she does.
Chris Buecheler: Yeah. It's not worth 60 bucks to me to play a game that's funny but has many gameplay issues that sound like the exact sort of thing that I don't enjoy.
Besides, I don't like heavy metal, I don't like beat-'em-ups, I don't like RTS games, and I don't really care about comedy, so it's not really calling my name.
Tom Chick: That's a shame, Chris. I'm not into heavy metal either. In fact, I can't really stomach Jack Black. And I've never been a huge Tim Schafer fan. But
Brütal Legend is one of those rare collaborations among writing, game design, animation, graphics and voice acting. It's easy got the best writing I've seen in a videogame since
BioShock and
Portal. It's one of those games that takes you someplace you've never been and leaves you wanting more. It's furthermore a fantastic RTS, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Oh, and just a quick addendum. I would argue that
Brütal Legend isn't comedy in the conventional sense. It's about how you see the world when you're 14, impressionable, and having your mind blown by girls, music and cars. That happens to be inherently funny, much more so than someone consciously trying to write comedy.
Harold Goldberg: Looks like it's the
Nostalgia RPG for the DS and more
Fairytale Fights for me. I've been really jonesing to download the AFL add-on for
Madden 10 and play the Buffalo Bills to see how the great Elbert Dubenion plays, so that's a possibility, too. If he's not in it -- man, I will be annoyed.
Marc Saltzman: This weekend I'll be playing a bit more
DJ Hero (single-player), which I find refreshingly challenging, and
Uncharted 2 (multiplayer), which is just fun; but also want to spend some time with the new
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, though it seems like more of the same.
Paul Semel: I just started playing
Borderlands, so I expect that will be the whole weekend. If not, though, then I might play a bit of
Guitar Hero 5 or some
Wipeout.
Evan Narcisse: I finally gave up my wait for
Uncharted 2 and picked it up earlier this week. I'm still early on, but I'm struck by how familiar the tone of this game feels. It's one of the few games where the cut scenes actually feel like rewards, I'm playing to hear what the characters say to each other. And even though I've got a good inkling of where this is all going in terms of plot, I'm still eager to see how they get there.
Elise Vogel: I bought
Brütal Legend last weekend -- you should trust Gus, Buecheler!
And I'll be back in
Fallout 3. This weekend, I'm heading to the Oasis.
Scott Jones: I basically burned out my iPhone playing
Canabalt on my flight last night. Excitement! Thrills! I'd downloaded
Tomb Raider: Anniversary to my PSP Go, which fits really well on PSP Go, and also served as a reminder of the great debt Uncharted owes to the Tomb Raider games. (It's a very great debt. Lara Croft should be thanked in the credits.)
All I have access to in NYC is my PS2, so I'll be exploring lots of older stuff like
Tekken 5,
We Love Katamari,
Burnout Dominator and the terrific
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (which I played about an hour of at 4 a.m. last night, because I couldn't sleep). That game HAS A TURTLE IN A WHEELCHAIR WHO DRIVES AROUND AND LEAVES BOMBS ON ENEMIES.
Radical.
What's on your own playlist this weekend? Inquiring Game Trusters want to know. Leave a comment below.
