Which games are keeping you busy this week? Let's share!
Oh, hey! The weekend has finally
arrived, which means it's time to chat about what we're playing! The
GameSpot team is usually busy keeping up with the biggest releases, but
other times we're catching up on games we missed, replaying old
favorites, experiencing classics for the first time, or just dabbling in
odds and ends for a spell. Below you can see a sampling of the games
that we're playing right now, the reasons we're playing them, and what
we love about them so far.
But don't just stop at reading our responses; we want to hear from you, too! Tell us all about what you're playing in the comments section below and what you're diggin' about them.
Join
us and ramble on about all the super cool video games you're playing!
We know you need to talk about it as much as we do. And if you're
playing the same games from previous weeks, that's fine too! Let us know
why you still love it!
BioShock 2 -- Lucy James, Senior Video Producer
I'm
unbelievably excited to play Animal Crossing. I cannot wait to start
banking Nook Miles, hanging out with my villager pals, and terraforming
my island. The problem is, I don't have Animal Crossing yet. So to try
and keep my mind off the decorating I could be doing, I started playing BioShock 2 again.
I'm
not sure why I landed on BioShock 2. I enjoyed it (and its fantastic
DLC, Minerva's Den) when it first launched, but despite a brief
dalliance with the original and Infinite when the remastered Collection
came out in 2016, replaying the second game hadn't crossed my mind.
But
there it was, installed on my PlayStation 4 as if it was waiting for me
to need a roughly 12-hour-long single-player game to take my mind off
Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
I'm kind of glad I waited
so long to replay it--the finer details of the game's story and
gameplay have faded, and it's almost as though I'm playing it fresh
again. As much as I love the destitute ruins of Rapture, I've played
BioShock so many times that it doesn't have the same impact. Seeing it
through the eyes of Subject Delta has reignited my love for that world.
Some
things bug me about the game, though. It's not the prettiest remaster
I've ever seen, it's relatively linear, and admittedly, it's crashed my
PS4 a couple of times. But the story has still gripped me, the weapon
variety is excellent, and man, it's just really fun to drill through
Splicers as a Big Daddy.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (After The Time-Skip) -- Dave Klein, Video Producer
Last week I started playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses,
and here's the deal: I have a problem. I have a lot of things I need to
get done in life, but I can't. Stop. Playing. I don't think this is a
major spoiler for anyone (as it was even mentioned at E3 2019), but
around halfway through, there's a significant time skip. Knowing this, I
was super curious to see what events would unfold, and ready for the
war to begin--and let me tell you--I'm not sure I was fully prepared for
the consequences.
My boys, the Blue Lions, had it
pretty rough. I don't want to get into any spoilers, but the time skip
really took a toll on its members. As much as I'm enjoying the game,
some things are a little strange to me post-time skip. You still operate
out of the monastery (at least within my route), where, as a professor,
you trained all of your students before the war. But, in the main
campaign, you're supposed to be traveling around fighting a war--so it's
a little jarring every time I get to an exciting story beat and then
fall right back into the monastery cycle for another month. I think it's
mostly skippable if you want, as you can auto-complete sections, but
then you don't get the support or custom-exp and renown that help within
the game.
Saints Row: The Third (On Switch) -- Mat Elfring, News Editor of Entertainment
I
was in a "between two games" period on my Switch. I had been running
through Dragon Quest 11, but I was waiting for the release of Two Point
Hospital. Thankfully, Saints Row: The Third was on sale in the Eshop--which is still missing some shopping music--and the rest is history.
I
only played the first Saints Row when it initially launched and blew it
off as a Grand Theft Auto clone. Saints Row: The Third does have a lot
of the elements from Grand Theft Auto that I love, but it's more of a
parody of that series. Sure, I may find more of the humor utterly
juvenile, but it's nice to play something that doesn't take itself so
seriously.
Regardless, Saints Row gives me a Grand Theft
Auto-like experience that I so desperately want and deserve on my
Nintendo Switch. I get to steal cars from random motorists that in no
way have done my character any harm. I get to fight rival gangs and the
police to prove my worth as a bad guy. Essentially, I get to pretend to
be a sociopath while causing no real-world drama--which I save for my
mama.
It's just fun to drive around the city, buy
buildings, put on silly costumes, and slip into the role of a gang
member who has the means and funds to own a purple harrier jet, complete
with heat-seeking missiles. I have no clue what the actual story is
because I skip the vast majority of cutscenes--I'm much more interested
in driving around and shooting people. If I want a story, I'll go back
to Dragon Quest 11, because that story is a banger. Saints Row: The
Third gets me right into the action, and that's all I want on my Switch.
It's a solid port, but it just makes me want a GTA game on the console
so much more.| Twitter: @ImMatElfring
Rocket League -- Peter Brown, Managing Editor
Rocket League is
my go-to game. It's my pick-me-up. It's also the game that brought me
closer to one of my best friends, Rob Handlery. Does that name sound
familiar? He's GameSpot's head of video production. While we've had fun
working on countless projects over the years, there's nothing quite like
hitting the court for five minutes to score goals and make fools of
ourselves writing garbage messages through predictive text.
That
bit about "writing" dumb messages may not sound particularly enjoyable,
but consistent themes and inside jokes form from match to match and
sometimes take on a life of their own outside the game. You'd think this
would only be funny to Rob and me, yet there are literal crowds that
gather when we get into the thick of it at the office--who knows what
the text-prediction AI will suggest next? I suppose, to our opponents,
it may feel like trolling ("yo stfu," they'll say), but once in a while,
someone on the other end of the game recognizes what we're doing and
joins in, dishing out their own brand of absurdity. Rocket League
doesn't need any of this to be fun or exciting, but you better believe
an average match is made a little bit better with a dash of nonsense and
a barrel of laughs. | Twitter: @pcbrown
Slay The Spire -- Edmond Tran, Senior Editor and Producer
I'm not a fan of deck building games at all. But man, why didn't I start playing Slay The Spire
earlier? If I had listened to everyone harping on about Slay The Spire
last year and actually tried it, it would have probably been high on my
game of the year list. I've been finding myself trying to squeeze in a
bit of it on my Switch every day for the last couple of months--whether
that be on the commute to work or in small pockets of downtime at home.
It's one of those games.
If you're unfamiliar, Slay The
Spire is a class-based roguelike where you play cards to defeat enemies.
You use them to attack, defend, and perform special abilities unique to
each character. There's more to it, of course. But what made it so
accessible for me is the fact that you start fresh with a basic hand
each time, and the deckbuilding part is something you only need to
consider as you progress. You have the chance to add one of three cards
to your deck as you beat each fight, and you can even choose not to take
one if you wish--having a small hand can be pretty advantageous. I love
that you're not asked to mull over a deck composition and strategy
before playing, you just go with the flow and shift your approach based
on the cards offered.
The other part that makes it super easy to
get your head around Slay the Spire is that you discard your entire hand
and draw new cards each turn--so you're just choosing the best cards to
play for your situation without having to think too much about whether
to hold onto something--use it or lose it. These design choices really
make Slay The Spire a satisfying, fast-paced game that's easy to play in
bursts or to fill in hours with. I love the game so much that after
about 100 hours of the Switch version, I bought it on PC too, in order
to get access to the new features and character class that hasn't quite
made its way to the console versions. Even if you hate card games, give
Slay The Spire a shot. It's phenomenal. I can't recommend it enough. | Twitter: @EdmondTran
Coffee Talk -- Kurt Indovina, Host/Writer
Coffee Talk
has had an unsuspecting impact on me these past few days. Before it was
my full-time job to talk about video games and Jackie Chan, I was a
servant to spreading the caffeine gospel--better known as a barista. I
spent many years behind a counter swinging coffee grounds and creating
latte art. I got to know a lot about my customers: their occupations,
personal lives, problems, accomplishments. I met good friends that way
and even made connections that eventually led to my first newspaper job.
Coffee Talk encapsulates my exact experience as a barista eerily well.
In
Coffee Talk, you play as a barista running a late-night coffee shop in a
fantastical alternate reality Seattle, where elves, vampires,
werewolves, and the rest of the bunch live among humans. As a barista,
you meet customers, make drinks, get to know your regulars, and
sometimes give advice on big life decisions. The fantasy element only
seems to exist as symbolism for race and class--which is a concept
that's been done to hell, but it doesn't distract me enough that it
takes away from the core value of this game: the stories of your
customers.
I have vivid memories of opening shop,
listening to calm beats, dialing in the espresso, and watching the
sunrise as the city came alive and the morning regulars began to stroll
in. Coffee Talk captures that same feeling. It's comforting and sad the
way nostalgia tends to be. Also, Coffee Talk is just a peaceful change
of pace until Doom Eternal comes out. | Twitter: @KURT_INDOVINA
Final Fantasy Tactics -- Phil Hornshaw, Editor
I'm
continuing my kick of playing PlayStation games on my PS Vita, and
since I just finished Vagrant Story, I decided to head back to Ivalice
to take on Final Fantasy Tactics, a game I'd never finished in my youth.
It has big Vagrant Story energy: Very little is explained about how to
play the game, and I'm spending a lot of time wandering menus, trying to
learn out how things work and what does what. I figured out which
button shows tooltips, so I at least now know what an ability is
supposed to do before I commit one of my characters to learning it.
Frustrating as it can be--and Tactics is definitely
frustrating, especially during those missions where you have to protect
an AI character who decides to sprint into a crowd of enemies and die
before the end of the first turn--I'm enjoying delving into the game's
story. I've never gotten far enough into Tactics to glean what it was
all about, so playing it now is revealing an overlooked gem of game
writing, and I love the game's presentation as a depiction of the past
that's possibly been misremembered by history. Plus, Ivalice, as
presented in Tactics, is just as political and dastardly as it is in
Vagrant Story, but it's also not nearly so dark and foreboding.
What
I'm digging most is how Tactics and Vagrant Story feel like remixes of
one another--as if a batch of similar ingredients were cooked at a
different heat; one slow-baked, the other grilled over an open flame.
Both games are about the way the rich exploit the poor in their
struggles for power, but presented from two vastly different viewpoints:
Tactics' Ramza is a disillusioned member of the aristocracy, while
Vagrant's Ashley is a pawn in a game he doesn't know is being played.
And while their gameplay approaches are very different, both games share
a lot in terms of preparation, tactical thinking, and analyzing a
battle as it's happening. I'm having a great time seeing director
Yatsumi Matsuno and his team explore a bunch of the same ideas across
two games, approaching mechanics and story beats from two very different
angles.
I'm trucking along in Tactics for now, but I've
already decided that I'm going to make this an Ivalice trilogy--my next
stop is Final Fantasy XII. | Twitter: @philhornshaw
Luigi's Mansion 3 -- Kevin Knezevic, Associate Editor
With Luigi's Mansion 3's first DLC pack now available,
I decided to revisit the game this past week to check out the new
additions. This pack and the one to follow later this year both
introduce new content to the game's two multiplayer modes, ScareScraper
and ScreamPark, which I thought were amusing diversions but not nearly
as compelling as the main adventure. After a little time with the new
content, that opinion still stands.
The biggest
additions to ScareScraper are three new costumes for Luigi: Mummigi, the
Green Knight, and my favorite of the bunch, the disco-themed Groovigi.
Luigi, of course, looks ridiculous in each one, but there's an added
benefit to wearing them; by donning a costume, there's a chance you'll
encounter a similarly themed floor while working your way up the
ScareScraper. Unfortunately, I haven't yet happened upon these new
floors in the brief time I played this week, so I can't comment on
whether they change the game up substantially, but ScareScraper remains a
good time.
More substantial are the three new
mini-games for ScreamPark, Luigi's Mansion 3's local-only party mode.
The first, Tricky Ghost Hunt, tasks you with sucking up more ghosts than
the opposing team while avoiding electric floor tiles that periodically
flip over throughout the match. The second mini-game, Dodgebrawl, is
Luigi's Mansion's take on dodgeball. Using the Poltergust, you must suck
up dodgeballs that fall around the court and fire them at the other
team to knock them out. The final new mini-game is called River Bank,
and it's probably the most frantic of the bunch. The object here is to
float around a running river collecting coins, all the while avoiding
mines, logs, and other hazards that threaten to pop your floaties or
push you over the waterfall.
Altogether, the new DLC for
Luigi's Mansion 3 is undoubtedly fun and helps flesh out the game's
slight multiplayer offerings. Over the weekend, I'll be fiddling around
with both modes a bit more. Even with these additions, though, it's hard
to see ScareScraper or ScreamPark ever becoming a regular part of my
multiplayer sessions in the same way that Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon 2
are.
Bloodborne (Again) -- Tamoor Hussain, Senior Editor
Hello,
it's me, Tamoor, GameSpot's resident broken record. Have you heard the
good word? Bloodborne is a fantastic game! A few weeks ago I wrote about
how I was playing through it yet again and loving it, and wouldn't you
know it, I'm still doing that. Bloodborne has become so core to my
identity of late that I suspect more than a few of my friends are
secretly making fun of me because it's all I can talk about.
I
just reached The Hunter's Nightmare, which is part of The Old Hunters
DLC. To this day, this is the bit I dread the most. It doesn't sound
like I should be excited about that, but I am. After playing Bloodborne
as much as I have, there aren't many reasons for me to fear the Old
Blood anymore--Master Willem would be disappointed. As I said a few
weeks ago, the world of Bloodborne is familiar and safe--it's home. The
Hunter's Nightmare, however, is like experiencing a home invasion.
Its
opening lulls me into a false sense of comfort by taking to the
familiar locale of Cathedral Ward, but as I venture forth I begin to
notice things aren't quite how I remember them. Like furniture that has
been slightly moved by an unknown party, everything is a bit askew. It's
just a little to begin with, but enough to be unsettling.
Discomfort
turns to dread as the home invaders reveal they're still there; crazed
Hunters descend upon me, bellowing madly and lashing out with strange
weapons that I haven't seen up until this point. Their blades move like
frenzied snakes, wildly whipping around, poised to sink their teeth into
me at any moment. Were this the version of the world I knew, instinct
and muscle memory would have carried me to safety, but it's all wrong.
It isn't right. And I'm afraid again. There are obstacles where there
shouldn't be; doors that should open block my retreats, pathways no
longer lead to where they should; and unfamiliar monsters step out from
the shadows.
The Old Hunters is perhaps the only part of
Bloodborne that still has the ability instil a sense of terror and
evoke exhilaration from me. And it serves as the most potent reminder of
why I love the game so much because of this. Twitter: @tamoorh
