Weekend Warrior 01/30/2015

Dying Light is set to dominate the downtime of most of the editorial staff this weekend, Jeff Cork doesn't want his birthday-cake-infested progeny near his controllers, Matthew Kato and a pair of the new interns are busy channeling their inner 18-year-old girls in preparation for the first episode of Dontnod's new game Life Is Strange, and Futter is getting a whole shipment of board games. What are your plans for the weekend?

Dan Tack (@dantack): Darkest Dungeon. That is all. (It’s really dark in those dungeons.)

Jeff Marchiafava (@GIJeffM): I have temporarily shelved Far Cry 4 in favor of Dying Light, which I devoted some time to this week and will likely continue playing this weekend. It’s basically exactly what I wanted it to be: A prettier and more stable version of Dead Island. I also want to play some more Hand of Fate, which is a cool mixture of Arkham-style brawler and a collectible card game. And it’s even simple enough to run on my laptop!

Matthew Kato (@MattKato): Going to be playing the first episode of Life is Strange. Intrigued by the story-based, Heavy Rain-esque vibe of the game, although I'm not really sure what to expect in the gameplay. At least the episodic structure lets me buy and try the first one before committing to the whole thing. With the big Man City/Chelsea match this weekend, I expect I'll also be playing some FIFA as well.

Jeff Cork (@gijeff): It's my son's birthday this weekend, and while I'd love to play Super Smash Bros. with him and his friends, I don't want any kindergartner's cake-coated hands anywhere near my controllers. Once all that's out of the way, I'm hoping to get a few hours into Dying Light. Someone in my Twitter feed bragged about getting 50 million points on the Han Solo table in Star Wars Pinball. I'll have to check and see if that's better than my high score. If it is, GAME ON!

Mike Futter (@futterish): This weekend, I’ll be finishing up my gaming goals for the week. This includes raiding in Destiny, playing some Dragon Age: Inquisition, and dabbling in something new. I also have a shipment of board games coming in. Yes, a shipment. Hopefully that means playing the XCOM board game, King of Tokyo, and more Golem Arcana (which is pretty fantastic).

Andrew Reiner (@Andrew_Reiner): With Far Cry 4 finally behind me (that game is huge), I’m diving into Dying Light. If all goes as planned, my time in this zombie apocalypse will be spent with friends. I had a great time with the first Dead Island game, and I like what I’ve seen of this spiritual successor. TV watching consists of The Strain (one of the best shows out there, IMO) and I hope to watch the first episode of Extant. 

Joe Juba (@Joejuba): I was waiting to play Assassin's Creed Unity until all of the problems were smoothed over. It seems like things are as good as they're going to get now, so I'll probably fire that up this weekend. I'm also partway through Cave Story (on 3DSware), so I'm hoping to finish that off and get another Metroid-style game going on the side. 

Ben Hanson (@yozetty): This weekend I'm going to play more Grim Fandango. I'm very curious to see how well my memory of some of these puzzles holds up. There's also a good chance that I'll start playing Dying Light on PC, I'm hoping that it's still fun if you're just playing it by yourself. It seems like Brian Shea is enjoying it so far, so I'm looking forward to checking it out. Other than that, there's always the Jackbox Party Pack and Smash Bros to occupy too much time.

Matt Bertz (@mattbertz): Now that Dragon Age Inquisition is in the rear-view mirror (fantastic game) I'm turning my attention to Assassin's Creed Unity. I've also started playing GTA Online again in anticipation of the heists. I'm also eager to play more #IDARB, which is an early candidate for sports game of the year.

Brian Shea (@BrianPShea): This weekend, I’ll be revisiting Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer in order to keep my girlfriend company while she gets her Galactic Readiness rating as high as possible before making her final push against the Reapers. Outside of that, I’ll likely continue slowly making my way through Grand Theft Auto V on PS4, and I may finally start Sunset Overdrive. Also, Smash Bros. Always Smash Bros.

Wade Wojcik (@WadeWojcik): I’ll be taking on Crota’s End in Destiny with five other friends for another chance at epic loot/gear. Last time I got the Hunger of Crota rocket launcher!

Ben Reeves (@BenjaminReeves): I’ll be taking my nieces ice skating on Saturday, so that should be fun. They like Mario Kart, so I know they’re cool. After that I plan to head out to BWW to watch the UFC event with a couple other peeps from the office. Sunday looks pretty uneventful, which should give me plenty of time to play Grim Fandango: Remastered, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Infamous 2 (thought I’d go back to that for some reason).

Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard): My whole family has been sick the last few days, so we're hoping to ride that out this weekend. Otherwise I've got some 3DS reviews I am working on and I am considering downloading the Metroid Prime Trilogy on Wii U because I never got around to beating the first two games – just played them a lot.

Justin Mikos (@JustinMikos): I’m going to play more Assassin’s Creed Unity this weekend. The first Helix mission was incredible, so I’m eager to get further and see more of them; but most of the other side content isn’t grabbing me so I’ll probably stick to the critical path. I’m also planning on watching more of Durarara!! season 2 and starting the second half of Aldnoah.Zero.

Elise Favis (@elisefavis): I’ll be spending most of my time finishing Dragon Age: Inqusition (I’ve spent more than enough hours on it) and checking out Life Is Strange Episode One. I might dive into Transistor periodically as well.

Jon Gregory (@JMan240): One of the weird things about me is that I have an inhuman capacity to set down a game and come back to it, which means I always have a metric ton of gaming stuff going on. The big ticket items on my plate for this weekend are Life Is Strange, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered and Dragons Dogma (which I absolutely adore but for which had not previously experienced the Dark Arisen content).

I don't expect any of those will take up too much of my time, so I'll probably play some Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, finish a playthrough of Final Fantasy X: HD that's been sitting for a couple months at the Sin fight (because Dark Aeons are super dumb), continue on my second playthrough of Inquisition (just did the Templar side for the first time a couple days ago), continue playing through Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD Remix so I can finally get to Birth By Sleep, do another couple missions in the PC port of Valykyria Chronicles, and play some of my optimal social link run through Persona 4 Golden. Also, I dare you to read all of that without taking a breath.