Welcome all to the first What Are You Playing This Weekend of 2022, where we can discuss all the latest and greatest games that will be taking up our time this weekend. From big AAA titles, to lesser known indie games, we want to know from all of you what will you be playing this weekend?
Of course, this week marks the official release of the extremely anticipated Elden Ring by From Software, so we have an inkling that most of you will be playing that this weekend. Then again, there are loads of other games that just recently came out, and plenty more from previous months! 2022 is looking to be a pretty good year for gaming.
But first, here's what our very own GD staff will be playing this weekend...
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Chad - As someone who generally doesn't enjoy MMOs but does enjoy ARPGs, I've been surprised as to how much I've been playing Lost Ark recently even though it's more MMO than ARPG. It was free and thought 'what the heck' and gave it a go. Now I'm 15 hours in and still enjoying it mostly.
However, over the past few weeks I have also been dropping in and out of the various Soulslike games by From Software like the Dark Souls series as well as Sekiro, just to get a feeling for the obvious big release of the weekend: Elden Ring, which will definitely be consuming most of my time for the next few weeks.
Stuart - So for me, it’s been Crusader Kings 3 and a smattering of Elite: Dangerous, plus a half-hearted campaign for perhaps the game that lives in the exact midpoint between these two…. Sid Meier’s Alien Crossfire. I’m also definitely what the kids these days might describe as ‘Elden-curious’, and I’d also like to see if Total War-Hammer 3 is as bad as half the Internet is saying, or as good as the other half reckons.
Felix - Hey all, I have been mostly playing Total War Warhammer 3. It's fun and surprise, surprise… chaotic. As you may know, this final version of the juggernaut Total War game has a focus on the 4 chaos gods and lets you lead their demonic denizens. And as you might expect, it's a total mess when you line up your dark forces and send them in to tear apart the opposite army. In the past you would clearly get a rock paper scissors kind of unit roster, with some units being heavy hitters, some being melee focused or perhaps were fast and ideal for flanking or maybe able to fly behind enemy lines to attack archers and so on.
Each chaos unit seems to have a bit of everything, so for example, making it tricky to know if you put your “sort-of” melee units at the front but they can also discharge poison, and are pretty quick and capable of vanguard but not really excellent at melee or really fast etc. So it makes you think about it a bit, until eventually you just charge them all in and enjoy the carnage. It is also really fun stomping around as a demonic prince of Khorne, where you are positively encouraged to run head first into all enemies, as quickly as possible.
Before that I was having a blast in co-op on Dying Light 2. It somewhat surprised me at how many puerile chuckles me and my co-op buddy had in this game. One such incident was when a nasty looking, brain eating zombie ran towards me and I booted it in the face, sending it stumbling backwards towards my fellow player, who had dropped down behind it just in time to kick it back towards me for an ongoing game of Zombie tennis.
Ok and despite those two great games, the day has come for Elden Ring, lauded as the most anticipated game of the year. Perhaps interestingly to some, I am in the camp of players that have never played one of the Soulslike titles. This time though the hype and incredible review scores are too hard to ignore. So I am hella excited to go and give it a blast, as soon as I finish writing this senten….(It seems Felix couldn't bother finishing the sentence, but he assures us that he will return later to finish it off and maybe tell us if Elden is any good on PC or not?).
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And there you have it, that's what we're up to this weekend, now it's over to you guys to tell us what you'll be playing this weekend! As always, you can vote for the genre of game you'll be playing the most this weekend. Of course, some games like Elden Ring encompass several genres at once, so just pick the closest one you think fits the game's description best!
(If your particular niche of genre isn't covered in the polls below, then just vote for whatever's the closest!)
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PC Specs
I played a bit of Factorio but then decided to start Elden Ring. As others have noted it does have some performance issues but with couple of fixes it's running ok (but definitely could be better). As for the gameplay it feels very similar to previous souls games, especially DS3. Open world and horse feel amazing though, I'm already hooked on it.
PC Specs
Been playing Celeste lately. I'm glad they have the assist mode in the game. With game speed set to 80%, it's still a challenge, but at least it feels like I have a fighting chance now.
PC Specs
I wanted to get dying light 2 but since I haven't played the first game i bought dying light 1 instead and i'm having a great time
PC Specs
What's with the popularity of "fight bosses in wild environments" types of games? Never quite understood why somebody would like to spend hours fighting one boss (if I've understood "Souls" games correctly). Can anyone explain the appeal in such games?
PC Specs
Simple, it's got excellent gameplay and mechanics with great depth, which when you learn, you can predict what is happening in real time, but not completely accurately, which is unlike many games where the prediction is spot on, and it's extremely satisfying to play.
Also very few people spend literal hours on a boss. A boss takes 1-3 minutes to beat, even if you die 10 times, that's no more than 30 minutes spent.
Also open world to me is usually a negative, so far Elden Ring's open world is great and I like that there is a lot less HUD indicators and progress trackers and so on. It's very minimal, so you have to remember most of the stuff you've done and most of the places you've gone to.
PC Specs
i am pretty sure that bosses do take about couple of hours to beat, atleast based on what i saw from others,
i am only at Dark Souls 1 and i am scared to get to the Elden Rings because its much more open world, thats my biggest issue with this game, to big open world and lack of indications of what you are supposed to and where should the required item be
PC Specs
the thing that should scare you the most of elden ring are the much more complex and deep mechanics and primarily timings. Dark Souls 1 is the easiest, DS2 is about the same, a bit harder by the end and the DLCs, DS3 and Bloodborne were quite harder, but still easy, Elden Ring puts up a fair challenge, though probably I have to get better at it, and it's been quite easy actually after I explored the areas a bit and upgraded.
Also it's simple, the sites of grace(bonefires) that are from the main story also point towards where you should be going to complete the main story, the ones that don't point, are side activities/quests/areas/bosses.
Also the world is quite compact in terms of where you can go and has a nice flow to it. They've done their job pretty excellently.
PC Specs
bosses can take hours to beat but it's mostly because it takes time to get used to boss' moveset. If your weapon is appropriately upgraded/you're high enough level, it takes 2-3 minutes to beat a boss in most cases.
PC Specs
I was tempted by Elden Ring but given the problems with the PC version, I'll wait.
I discovered Edge of Eternity thanks to the Game Pass, it's an RPG, a kind of French Final Fantasy and it's pretty good.
After that I'm thinking of re-launching Cyberpunk 2077 on Series X to take advantage of the improvements of the next gen patch.
PC Specs
I finished every game I had before Elden Ring and it's what I'll be playing for the next couple of weeks , I want to explore everything the game has to offer , I hope Fromsoftware release more Patches/Updates to fix the performance issues.
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Lost Ark, Elden Ring.
PC Specs
Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time ever and enjoying it quite a bit.
PC Specs
I'm playing Everspace this weekend. Cool Sci-Fi game.
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Fable III
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Sifu! Its so hard, but so much fun!
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X4 Foundations
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Ah, I see you're a man of culture.
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Elden Ring, but im not sure. Its the same as the other souls games. Very hard if you havent played the other games. So im gonna try saturday and maybe sunday but if i keep dying a lot or lose all my souls when i have a lot ill quit.
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Death Stranding.
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giving Dark Souls 1 a try once again for the 4th time but this time with guide, as this games biggest enemy are not the monsters but the world/terrain i hate it so much and i am pretty sure that i wouldnt get anywhere without the guids
PC Specs
For sure it's gonna be Lost Ark, been grinding for a week with a friend now and not seeing me stopping for a while.
PC Specs
pretty cool game isn't it. playing a gunslinger ATM and loving the 3 guns with 8 skills each idea. put about 30hrs in so far, and my 1 grip with the game? fricking feet sliding along the floor when people walk like they are ice skating, you could get away with that back in the day of games live Icewind Dale, but com'on its 2022!!. pretty good if that's the only complaint I can come up with in 30hrs
PC Specs
Played 9 hours of Elden Ring today and you can bet I'll be playing even more during the weekend.
PC Specs
Full time on dying light 2.
PC Specs
enjoy bro
PC Specs
Before I do any gaming I'll change my laptop fan today and then Convoy and Haven are going to receive my undivided attention.