A few of the things that have us hooked this week.
24th October
Hello, it is me, your regular weekend host Mertie and I am here once again to guide you gently into Saturday with our usual feature What We've Been Playing, where we write a little about the games we've been, yes, playing. This week, Bertie - before fleeing for a well-deserved break and leaving me with the keys to the place - runs a one-on-one D&D game; Connor plays with his Moon Flesh in Warframe, and I've been serenely gallivanting over yonder hills.
But enough about us, what about you? What have you been playing this week? Do tell all! And don't forget we have an entire archive of previous What We've Been Playings for your leisurely perusal, just in case you forgot what you were playing a year or a month or a week ago.
One-on-one Dungeons & Dragons, tabletop
I'm a little busy outside of work at the moment with rehearsals for a play I'm in (The Importance of Being Ernest), but I did find time for another Dungeons & Dragons first: a one-on-one game. I've been wanting to do one of these for a while, and, as I discovered recently, one-on-one games are a whole thing. Duets, they're called, rather poetically. You need to modify campaigns a bit to be playable this way, because most are designed for groups of four or five people, and you probably need to give a player a companion character as backup. But otherwise, it's totally doable. Some people make adventures exclusively for one-on-one games.
I ran a mini-adventure called D8 Night, created by the now-closed dice shop Dakota Irish. It's a nice, warm two-hour-or-so affair, where the player is caught in a time-stilled village and tasked by some magical mischief maker to retrieve the components of a romantic meal before being allowed to leave. It's a simple enough set-up, and as with a lot of things D&D, the set-up doesn't really matter so much as the playing of it and the unexpected things that happen. And unexpected things did happen. I played with my partner so I know her likes pretty well, I like to think - that's the attraction of a one-on-one set-up like this - but I didn't expect her to connect so strongly with some of the incidental characters. This resulted in entire areas being imagined-to-life that weren't written on paper. The imagination never ceases to amaze me.
Anyway, I'm off to Comic Con this weekend to celebrate my birthday - it'll be my birthday when you're reading this. I'm off to geek-out about Critical Role and watch the new Laika animated film, and to stuff my face with food.
-Bertie
Over the Hill, PC
I had a lovely time playing developer Funselektor's Art of Rally follow-up Over the Hill last week, roaming its beautifully stylised wilderness expanses in my cheerful 4x4 so I could write some words about it all. But it clearly got its hooks into me, and I went on to spend pretty much my entire Saturday just pootling around the Canadian Valhallas, the Algerian desert, thoroughly transfixed by the tranquil rhythms of it all.
It really is a game for the curious - and the infinitely patient. As the old meme goes: See that mountain?, you can climb it. Just be prepared for a lot of slow-going, a lot of trial-and-error, and a lot of determination. But while it should be frustrating, the opposite somehow ends up being true, and it's easy to feel at peace in this striking wilderness, guitars strumming gentle encouragement as you become one with the world.
-Matt
Warframe, PS5
You haven't experienced FOMO until you've experienced MMO do-this-or-you'll-never-be-able-to-do-it-again FOMO: The once-in-a-lifetime grinds, the cosmetics that may be vaguely impressive to onlookers in a decade's time, and the first-thing-in-the-morning, last-thing-at-night routines of logging on and doing busywork.
For those unaware, Warframe is currently bracing for a journey into a whole new galaxy. The trip requires fuel, but given we're talking about the big-red-number-loving, fashion-forward, weirdly wonderful Warframe here, this fuel isn't diesel. No, Warframe players in their thousands are currently shoving Moon Flesh into an alien grandma's mouth.
We're taking parts of Eris - a grim petri dish home to countless infested ghouls - and, fouler still, the Mesa warframe. Like a ripe cheese, its stink is what meemaw craves, and providing it brings great rewards. These include weapons and dead-handy consumables like Legendary Cores and Archon Shards, but perhaps more delectable are the cosmetics. Some must be unlocked through a community-wide effort, while others are available to buy with Moon Flesh from the jump. And, of course, once the event ends, these will never return. Never ever.
I've been waking up at 6am everyday and doing missions for this Moon Flesh, and I've been doing it before bed as well. I, like many hopeless MMO/-live service players, am petrified that something in the game may never be mine to hoard. It has cut into my gym time, my morning coffee time, and indeed my sleep time. I owe my recent spree of unsubtle yawns in morning team meetings to Warframe. That's either a glowing endorsement, or a sign I need to ease up on this stuff. Who knows?
-Connor
Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, Switch 2
Am I allowed two entries? I'm not actually sure, but Bertie's not here to stop me so... ALSO, I have found myself consumed by Switch Sports Resort this week in a way I absolutely wasn't expecting to be when I fired it up for review. In my head, Nintendo's long-running series has always very much been a party game first, and an engaging solo endeavour a distant second.
But Switch Sports Resort is a bit of a treasure, and I've been having a great time with it on my own: taking it online for a bit of ranked or casual play, working through some achievements, or just firing up one of its fantastic open-world sightseeing modes for a leisurely explore. I hope Nintendo's got some post-launch plans in the works, because I'd love for it to go a little bit harder with the open-world stuff, particularly where flying is concerned. But until then there's skateboarding, which is bloody brilliant, and I'm already craving more.
-Matt