The weekend playlist

It's April already? How did this happen? That means we're even closer to great upcoming releases like Portal 2. What's more, it's the weekend as well! Everything's turning out well. But now we have a dilemma. What on earth are we going to play? We've done hard thinking, and set forth a plan for the weekend. Here's what we're playing, and why.

Assassin's Creed II - Dan

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is finally out on PC and looking great, but I haven't gotten around to finishing the last one yet. My Twitter followers tell me I would miss out on much of the story by diving into Brotherhood without wrapping up number two—and you don't argue with Twitter. So, to Venice I go!

Dragon Age 2 - Tom Francis

Finally got this yesterday but haven't had a chance to play yet. It's been so weirdly controversial that at this point part of the appeal is just the mystery of how it can divide opinion so dramatically.

The demo is the first time I've actually had fun playing a straight warrior in an RPG for years, and the mage is even more satisfying. But the writing and acting both felt off, to me, and there was a painful disparity between the dialogue options I picked and what my character actually said. I ended up hating her.

If it turns out BioWare have become great at action and bad at story, that'll be a weird twist.

Planetside - Graham

My entire Counter-Strike clan was enthralled by the prospect of Planetside. As soon as it was released, we were going to move inside the first-person MMO, form a pirate crew, and cause havoc in our future-jeeps. We would occasionally head into a city to get a player-created mission from the central computer, but only those that required assassination or other dastardly deeds. We spent months typing missives on our messageboard about how great it would be.

No game has ever excited me as much as Planetside. Then it was delayed, delayed again, features were cut, and it was delayed some more. I've still never played it.

I'm going to change that this weekend. Last night, I bought Planetside: Aftershock from Direct2Drive , and with Owen and Rich I'm going to explore this game which has existed in my imagination as pure potential for almost ten years. We'll let you know how it goes.

Dawn of War 2: Retribution Last Stand - Tom Senior

Last Stand mode is my favourite part of Dawn of War 2: Retribution. This weekend I'll be returning to the small oval arena to fend off waves of enemies with a couple of friends. But which characters should we pick? We were initially tempted to take three Lord Generals. They can call down an turrets and guardsmen in vast numbers. If you call in enough Imperial armour, it's possible to reach wave seven without moving a muscle.

But there are so many other toys to play with. Tyranid generals can summon minions and are big enough to tread on most enemies. Space Marine captains are really, really hard to kill and the Ork hero can teleport around with a shoulder cannon and call down meteor strikes.

My favourite so far has been the Chaos Lord. He can clone enemy units, and with a couple of upgrades under his belt, enemy heroes too. That means we could end up with a human general, a towering alien monster and a corrupt demonic sorcerer with a pet cloned Space Marine captain working together. The alliances that you form in Last Stand make no sense in the context of the Warhammer Universe, but that's quickly forgiven when the explosions start.

Playing very few games - Ed

I have a terrible secret, worse than that of Rich's difficulty to get his APM up. I haven't played that broad a spectrum of games. However, I gladly read about them.

Sometimes it's because I don't have a copy of the game, or it's on another platform. The more genuine reason though is often they'd be a bastard to get working and my free time is too full of microwaving pizzas.

So what do I do? Thanks to the Let's Play Archive I can pick a game, or maybe a favourite LPer and enjoy the game from an experienced or humorous eye. This weekend I'll be reading about what Knights of the Old Republic II might've been like uncut and unrushed . It's a pretty phenomenal thing.

Shift 2: Unleashed - Owen

Aside from going back in time to play Planetside for the first time with Graham and Rich, I'm also hoping to indulge in some satisfying racing action this weekend. Shift II just popped up on Steam, and after seeing Rich review it, I'm intrigued to see how the constant levelling up and (love it or hate it) helmet cam will work out.

Autolog sounds great in theory, but it doesn't use my Steam friends list which, annoyingly, is where all my friends seem to hang out. How silly.

What are you going to play this weekend?