What We're Playing

What you should play this weekend

Tell us what you are playing in the comments
By Graham Smith
Storybook cut-out characters standing in a drab office. "Uh oh, looks like someone has a serious case of the Mondays!" says a unicorn.
Escape From Ever After released last week and is a fairytale Paper Mario-like.

The weekend approacheth, which means a long languorous release from work for some, and brief stolen moments of respite for those with young children (hi). Either way, you may choose, as we do, to fill your downtime with videogames.

Here's what you should - or at least, could - be playing. Tell us what you actually are in the comments.

A person dives while swinging a sword as the player fires akimbo pistols at them.
Best take your keys out your pockets before you land on them mate.

Out Of Action

This cyberpunk first-person shooter seems less like the live service hero shooters of the moment, and more like the Half-Life mods of my youth. A bit Action Half-Life, a bit NeoTokyo, as you bumslide, back-dive and bullet dodge in PvP shootouts. It's also got an offline mode and promises "deep progression", so not strictly retro, but one for the lovers of ghosts and/or shells.

Two sad robots look at each other in MIO: Memories In Orbit.
You can tell these robots are sad, yes?

MIO: Memories In Orbit

I've become a metroidvania guy in recent years, which is unfortunate because most of the genre's best entries are behemoths that take 30 hours or more to finish. MIO, which released a little over a week ago, is getting lots of praise but apparently won't take me more than a month to finish, coming in at around 15 hours. That makes its story of sad and lonely robots all the more appealing.

A dragon and skeleton wizard face-off against a Cthulhu-ish monster in a 2D turn-based battle.
Wait, which fairytale is this guy from?

Escape From Ever After

I've never played a Paper Mario or a Paper Mario-like, but I think Escape From Ever After might be my entry point. It's about a "greedy megacorp" - never met him - taking over fairytales and employing their characters as cheap labour. You form a rag-tag team of storybook heroes and villains to fight back. The art and humour look adorable.

I can't believe it's only the end of January and already there's been all of the above, plus Perfect Tides: Station To Station, Big Hops, TR-49 and so many others to play. I am drowning.

Drown me more. Tell us what you'll be playing this weekend in the comments below, whether old or new.

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What We're Playing
Graham Smith

Graham Smith

Graham is a former editorial director of Rock Paper Shotgun and editor-in-chief of PC Gamer. He has now been a games journalist for over twenty years, and retains a bottomless appetite for playing new games and tinkering with old ones.