What are we all playing this weekend?

Well? Do tell!

We're heading into our last full week before Christmas and I can almost hear the hellish jangle of Saint Nick's sled bells in the night air. But I shan't spend too long thinking about that red-suited home invader. Not when there are weekends to be had and games to be played.

This is what the team will be playing this weekend.

Ollie
This weekend I'll hopefully be able to get stuck into the new PUBG: Black Budget extraction shooter playtest, which has intrigued me enough that I'm likely to end up disappointed. Still, if PUBG does anything well it's gunplay, so hopefully the moment-to-moment feel of the playtest will be pretty good. It's just going to take a very special kind of extraction shooter to look good in the face of Arc Raiders' ever-present grip on my free time.

Jeremy
This week I'll continue charting a path through Final Fantasy XII while slicing some heads in Ninja Gaiden 4, whose praises I managed to sing this past week in its advent calendar entry. I will also catch up on sleep and move furniture around as we prepare for the end of what I like to call Phase One of our "getting the new house mostly liveable" journey - a custom L-shaped bench and storage shelves that will be built on-site and installed on Monday. I'd say that I hope everything goes well, but that's pointless as the last few weeks have taught me that homeowner life is just a real world version of a Souls game.

Mark
I've finally got around to trying JDM: Japanese Drift Master, and it's gotten its car slidey hooks into me. As Brenday said in his review, the story's fairly cringe-inducing, but the sliding around vibrantly-bordered Japanese mountain switchbacks and urban grids is brill.

Julian
While predominantly I will be playing the game of Catching Up On Sleep After Covering A Showcase All Night, I did also complete the first mission of Skin Deep this afternoon, Blendo Games' imsim. I hadn't realised how compelling it would be to rescue a cat held hostage on a spaceship, so I can see myself doing that all weekend. Though, on the flipside of that coin, after last night's Ace Combat 8 reveal, I'm also tempted to reinstall Skies Unknown and spend some time with its JPEG dog. I'll have to be careful, because if I play too much I start giving everyone bird-related call signs.

Edwin
The last I saw of Edwin he was making his way to the Treehouse hatch, bleary-eyed from covering Geoff-fest. I yelled after him "Eagle…" – that's what we call him round these parts – "Hey Eagle, what are you playing this weekend?" He looked back with bloodshot eyes and simply let out a caw before climbing down the ladder.

James
I looked at Jabiru – that's what we call… you get the bit – for an explanation of what Eagle meant. He flipped me the double bird while walking backwards to the Treehouse hatch. With a backwards hop, he jumped through the aperture, not for a moment breaking eye contact. Look, Geoff-fest takes a toll on us all.

Callum
"Cockatoo, Cockatoo, what's going on?" I said, panic edging into my voice. But Cockatoo looked strange. He was flat and low resolution, like he had been compressed at 80% to save on file size and increase page load. In a glitching voice he said "Stall Warning. Stall Warning. Stall warning".

And you, reader dear, what are you playing this weekend?...