Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (December 9-10)

This is really ironic but I'm not playing anything this weekend.

With that said I plan to jump into both Alan Wake 2 and BG3 next week.

I’m afraid to say our initial experience of Baldur’s Gate 3 online multiplayer has been a poor one on Xbox.

Over a 3 hr session we had many glitches including having to restart the game just to get a session started. On getting defeated my wife got booted to her own single player game. I had to invite her back in again. At one point her controller stopped allowing her to loot stuff. Combat on her side had been fairly glitchy too.

Some of this you could put down to our inexperience with the genre but a lot of it was straight issues with the game.

Generally compared to single player it was a less than ideal experience. Waiting for party members to take turns. Missing the character speak in cutscenes (despite listening in). It’s just not quite as good as playing solo.

We're considering playing split screen for a little bit to see if that helps. At least we’ll be in the same room. I chose online multiplayer for extra screen space but I think I’ll just end up playing the game solo eventually.

Other than that? Halo Infinite probably. Firefight is amazing! Just got my first perfection with top damage too. Love that mode so much.

Baldurs Gate 3 for the rest of eternity.

I am having my usual problem that I have with these sort of games which I call class paralysis.

So many options of race, class, sub class and multiclass that it takes me a while to figure out what to play on my first run at it.

I have created 4 characters so far so see if anything feels good. Monk or Bard are the front runners so far. I want to try a couple of the casters for a bit before I make my final choice & push on with the story.

As a fan of this sort of game from what I have seen so far it's going to be a fun ride. No bugs or issues in single player (have zero interest in multiplayer so can't speak on that.)

Finishing off some Borderlands 3 DLC, and probably some Darktide (for the emperor)

@BBB I’ve played ranger and rogue myself. I’d like to give Bard a go too.

Problem is I’ve been through the initial ship starting area twice. Not sure I can do it again any time soon.

BG3 hit at the worst possible time, I'm not going to have any free money now until after Christmas.

Last week would have been fine.

My solo gaming plan: try some cities builders i haven't played.
2 player coop plan: dungeons 4
3 player coop: reminant 2

Ive caught the dreadded lurgies so Im not sure if I can play anything right now. I had planned on moving away from the crew motorfest and checking the new season in FH5 this weekend, and I have to admit my head has been turned by the Avatar game and my wife was encouraging me to buy it last night. I guess the illness has saved me some cash!

Whatever you are playing this weekend, I hope you have a great one. 👍

Gears of war 4
Just downloading Avatar.

Finished Like A Dragon: Gaiden and am about to start Cocoon. Also bought Divinity OS 1 and 2 in the Black Friday sales to play over the Christmas break as a warm up for BG3.

Just about to finish shadow of the tomb raider, which i got for £8 in the recent sales. Really enjoyed it to be honest and finally finished the trilogy.

Can't decide if I should play Cyberpunk since the recent updates or FF16 next

This weekend I'm wrapping up Trails to Azure after a few days of intense gaming.
Had I known the final chapter would be as long as it has been, I would have spaced out my sessions a bit.

After that?
I dunno honestly, might continue with Metroid Remastered just to switch genres.
Debating on whether I should start Avatar on PS5 or continue Teardown.

Playing gta 5 campaign the trailer for the new one got me in the humour of playing and I own the upgraded version ages time to do that might play some goat simulatior 3 and might buy the high on knife dlc for high on life and give that ago balders gate doesn't appeal to me they are not my type of game

I bought Baldur’s Gate 3 but the 137gb download took a while so played some Goat Sim 3. Also redownloaded Red Dead 2 and GTA V as I never finished either. Such clunky games.

Ice Age Village (Windows Phone) - My wife is mostly playing this with me in tandem.

Chickens Can't Fly (Windows Phone) - Slowly nearing the end now.

Plants vs. Zombies (Windows Phone) - One of my all time favourite phone games right here! Made it to the roof levels now.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and get some good gaming in. Heading to a friend's house and will get some remote play in for gta5.

I am playing the RPG everyone is talking about aka Dragon's Dogma!

Sonic 06 Xbox 360

Persona 5 Strikers on PS4

Been enjoying Soul Hackers 2 on Xbox.

Also a little of Project x Zone 2 on 3DS.

Halo infinite campaign for me. Then may take a break until after Xmas.

Street Fighter 6, King of Fighters 15 and Control.

I decided to hold off buying baldur's gate for now. 100 Canadian dollars is quite a lot and I bought alan wake 2 not so long ago.
In the meanwhile I'm playing rise of tomb raider. Im gonna also start battlechasers , heard very good things about it and it was on sale at the store for 7$

Well not BG3 I can say that much. There's a few Gamepass downloads I have been meaning to try.

Think I'll continue my Deas Space 2 endeavour. Once finished I'd start on Dead Space 3. Otherwise Alien Isolation (just got it during the blk-fri weeks).
For casual gaming I'd navigate back to something less deadly: Cities Skylines

P5T, and Dead Space Remake on Xbox. Super Mario RPG on switch.

This weekend I’ll be out of town. Last Sunday was my one year anniversary with my wife, and even though we celebrated, my gift is taking place this weekend. I have a surprise Christmas oriented trip for us planned.

As for what I’ve played throughout the week, I completed my New Game run in Lies of P and got the “best” ending. I’m currently working on NG+ and should get the platinum trophy.

Surprisingly, I’m still enthralled just as much as I was from the beginning. And since I never replay games unless it’s years down the line, I think that says something. I also don’t have to fight the Nameless Puppet anymore, so that’s a huge plus. Overall, LoP has solidified itself as my GOTY.

I also purchased RoboCop: Rogue City, and it’s definitely AA at its finest. It’s arcade-y, totally late 80s, features a plethora of quirky one-liners, and actually not half bad. It’s the epitome of a 6-7/10 game. The game is a total fan service, and if you’re not a fan of the franchise I wouldn’t recommend it. Personally, I’m enjoying the game so much I decided to buy Terminator Resistance since the enhanced edition is on sale.

The game operates best when you’re in tight spaces and corridors, primarily because Old Detroit seems more alive. There are buildings overrun by “criminal scum”, and walls littered with graffiti and bullet holes. It reminds me of Fallout 3, with its color palette and moment to moment gunplay which is quite visceral.

I was hoping to have the game beaten before leaving on my trip, but that didn’t pan out. I tend to play games very slow and diligently — searching every nook and cranny, and not sprinting to objective after objective, so the game is taking me longer than your average person. With that being said, all I have to do is finish the main story and I’ll get the platinum trophy.

Mostly Alan Wake 2. I'm right around the halfway mark now. What an incredible game. I played a couple rounds of The Finals with the guys last night. Seems a little stingy on the cosmetics. I refuse to purchase mirco-transactions (with my own money) so I'll probably look like a white-flagging noob for a long while. Maybe I'll spend some MS reward points on a Xbox gift card and nab a new shirt at least. Maybe.

I've been a huge rpg fan for decades, but as I found both Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 disappointingly mediocre entries into the rpg category, I'm just not ready to jump on the Baldur's Gate 3 bandwagon at this time. Will I try it at some point to give it a fair assessment myself? Absolutely. You know, long after the loud bandwagon hoopla parade passes by and the crowds move on to whatever the next hype as high as an elephant's eye game happens to be, and the price drops to twenty bucks or less. In the meantime, I'll be quietly enjoying SpirTTea this weekend. Cheers!

Baldurs Gate 3 is now consuming my life. I had planned on playing the Dead Space remake but gaming time is in limited supply.

Yikes I got a bit of that lethargy’s as well … my backlog is so big I’m frozen at the menu deciding what to do … Borderlands 2 to kill Handsome Jack but maybe Batman Arkham Nights….

I finished the Assassin's Creed Odyssey main game this week, and am planning to start the DLCs this weekend. They seem to have taken after the main game in being overly long (apparently around 40 hours for both), so this is still going to take a while. I also started replaying Arkham Origins after buying it on Steam with the DLC, so I'm looking forward to spending some more time on that.

Pc- just cause 2, stalker
Xbox- Halo Infinite, dark pictures the devil in me
Ps5 - forspoken

Bought Return to Arkham for £5.99 so I'm going to play that never really got into the Arkham games but I've enjoyed what I've played of Arkham Asylum so far. Also trying to finish Alan Wake 2 on PS5.

@FraserG I ended up going with a Gnome Druid. Had some funny conversations with the animals I have found so far.

Not knowing what you are doing in your first playthrough is the best part of these sort of games.

Played a bit more Remnant 2 which I'm really liking - so visceral. Then had a quick dabble with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 which has really piqued my interest in all things JRPG.

The Finals and Dragon Ball FighterZ. The latter seems to pretty popular when I stream it on TikTok

Picked up XIII on the Original Xbox so giving that ago.
Just downloaded Lies of P from Game pass.
And some multiplayer Mario Kart on Switch.

Been playing through Halo Combat Evolved again with my son. After we are planning on playing through the rest. He's never played through them and it has been a blast.

@FraserG Thanks! I tend to play some off the wall stuff sometimes

I think I'll dive into Twerk City Productions presents Big Dave's Twerkathon 2023.

Well this has been one heck of a week I’ll tell ya what. Thinking this is gonna be a big entry this week in more ways then one. Well to start with similar to Jim I have also been on a video game wrap up spree. In the past week I beat Warioware Move It, Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Wonder, Pikmin 4 and The Teal Mask DLC. Not to mention as a preview of the upcoming gaming plans I got close to the end of Alan Wake II and Final Fantasy XVI. So this week I’m thinking of taking a break from the switch. I did play some Super Mario RPG on Friday and am probably closing in on the end of that game too but I’m thinking of devoting more time to the PS5 this week. Work on beating my top two GOTYs, Alan Wake II and FFXVI and definitely try out some new games I got this week like Assassins Creed Mirage and a special game I’ll mention later. Tho I am thinking of tackling the Sonic Frontiers DLC today since they apparently patched it to make it easier. Oh i also do wanna give the Indigo Disk DLC that comes out this week for Scarlet and Violet a look too. I definitely wanna be able to put together my GOTY list, my movies list and my animes list by Christmas. Also no lie not picky on the platform but I definitely wanna look at getting a copy of Dave the Diver. I went from not really caring about it to thinking it’s kinda cool and I wanna play. But oh man the big news of the week sure we’re those game awards huh? I won’t blab on and on but I would say it was a A- this year seriously some great things there. For me personally I loved the FFXVI and FFVII Rebirth Trailers, the Blade Trailer, SEGA IS BACK, the Alan Wake performance and of course number bloody one the ELPHELT VALENTINE TRAILER MY BABY IS BACK. Of course there were some out now trailers there and that leads to the pickups of the week with that special game I mentioned. I of course grabbed the FFXVI Echoes of the Fallen DLC and my babygirl Elphelt but I also snagged the Deluxe Edition of Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising. Won’t have to think about buying DLC for that game for a while yessir. Excited for that game and it’s early access starting tomorrow. Of course anime of the week gotta go to Jujutsu Kaisen and Eminence in Shadow for continuing to just absolutely kill it. Podcasts of course are same as usual Castle Superbeast, Big Think Dimension, Remap Radio, RPGsites Tetracast, Nextlander and Into The Aether. But with the Jirard the Completionist accusations cleared in his innocence I can now also go back to shouting out Friends Per Second again. Speaking of shoutouts last but absolutely certainly not least I wanna give a big and special shout-out to a friend of mine. Anyone reading this who sees this before December 14th please please go to twitch.tv/akibread my friend is having a 12 hour redebut stream please go show them some love. As always y’all have a excellent week, best of luck with y’all own GOTY lists and Happy Gaming.

Finals, Balders Gate 3, both very enjoyable

Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen/Jedi: Survivor