Over on this side of the Atlantic, in the wonky world of tea swigging, ale chugging top-hatted men we like to call Britain, today marks start of a three day weekend, which many Britons will spend riding around on penny farthings because the football season is over. We won't be doing any of that stuff. We'll be enjoying the finest in PC gaming entertainment on our future-machines. But what will we be playing? Find out below.
Tom Francis - Frozen Synapse
I've been reviewing this in the office, but it's not going to stop me playing it at the weekend too. The beta was a hit when we first started playing it in the office about a year ago, and the official release yesterday has caused a relapse.
You tell your men where to go and where to aim for the next five seconds, then test out your plan to see if it works. Once you've tweaked it and committed, the only thing that can go wrong is the enemy not doing what you expect.
I have now formed The Bros In Synapse, not so much a guild as bunch of people who know each other well enough to hold a grudge. We will fight, slowly and without skill.
The thing I love about Frozen Synapse's multiplayer is the lack of time pressure. Games have a turn limit, but you can take as long as you like over each turn. Not just ten minutes, but three days if you need it. Your partner generally doesn't get pissed off, because they've got other games on the go at the same time. You end up feeling like a grand chess master, flitting between a dozen different opponents and outwitting them all.
When you win.
$20 gets you two copies over at the official site , and you can enter those CD keys into Steam to add it to your collection there.
Tom Senior - Terraria
This weekend I will be playing Terraria. It's initially quite a challenging game because instead of a tutorial or a FAQ, there's a man in a beige shirt who wanders around the world like he's escaped from a mental asylum saying things like "Smashing a shadow orb will cause a meteor to fall out of the sky. Shadow orbs can usually be found in the chasms around corrupt areas."
The trouble is, the Guide is invincible, and seems to be extremely inquisitive. I return to my hand crafted house after an adventuring trip undergound to find him standing in the middle of my front room.
"If you see a pot, be sure to smash it open. They contain all sorts of useful supplies," he says.
"Get out of my house," I say.
"There is treasure hidden all over the world. Some amazing things can be found deep underground!" he says.
I try to pickaxe him in the face, experimentally. It passes right through him. He doesn't even react.
That night he leaves the house for a stroll and lets in a horde of zombies. I hack four of them to death before managing to shut the door. This is the last straw.
I follow him out of my house the next morning. As soon as he stops I dig a hole beneath him. I keep digging as far down as I can go, he falls with me. Then, once I think I'm deep enough, I quickly bar wall him in with stone blocks. He's trapped.
He stands completely still, unconcerned.
The next day I emerge from another dungeon run and spot my impromptu prison. It's completely empty.
Suddenly worried, I rush to the surface. To My house.
He's in my kitchen, standing there like a beige Batman.
"For a nurse to move in, you might want to increase your maximum life," he says.
Is that a threat? I'll find out this weekend when I resume my attempts to get rid of the Guide once and for all.
Craig Pearson - Team Fortress 2
This weekend I can't talk about the sekrit game of Team Fortress 2 I've signed up to play in. But I'll probably be playing as *redacted* on the *redacted* server, stabbing *redacted* at least once.
Graham - Minecraft
When I first started playing, I'd spend four, five hours in Minecraft every night, but now I only return whenever Notch releases a significant new update. He's done that this past week, with 1.6's addition of maps and the multiplayer netherworld . So this weekend - in amongst Frozen Synapse, and maybe GTAIV, and maybe The Witcher 2 and Brink - I'll be playing on my "Home" saved game. This is a world I've spent months with, building a vast castle, on a beautiful coast line, and I've always got a few projects in progress. I'm currently expanding my farm to grow the amount of sugar cane I need to build the bookcases for my new cliffside study, and I'm waiting patiently for the trees in my underground garden to mature.
Owen Hill - Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is handsome and realistic, but it's also very silly. Ever since I jumped into an online Zombies lobby with a friend standard rallies just don't do it for me.
Two Ford Fiestas hide in a warehouse. They catch a glimpse of a green, zombified Impreza approaching and dive out the fifth floor window before scarpering in opposite directions. The Subaru is too eager to chase and ends up on its roof, rocking slowly from side to side. We offer some taunting toots of the horn – just for lols.
It's hard not to picture Thomas the Tank-style faces on the front of your motors when this kind of thing goes down. And there's nothing wrong with that.
But that's enough about us. What will you be playing this weekend?
