Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (January 23rd)

It wasn’t the busiest of weeks this week, with our most popular headlines revolving around an accusation against Apex Legends and Starter Pokémon fan rankings, but we’re still ever grateful for a chance to relax and chat about our weekend gaming plans.

Members of the Nintendo Life team have done just that below, so feel free to give our entries a read and then join in with your own via our comment section. Enjoy!

Gavin Lane, features editor

I made a solemn vow at the start of the year to not buy more games off my eShop wishlist just because they’re cheap. Within a week I had broken that loosest of resolutions and piled another half dozen games into my Switch Home screen, one of which (Octahedron) I already own in physical form. I know, I know — I’m weak, but it seemed rude not to for 1,29€! I have played one of my recent purchases, though! 51 Worldwide Games has been perfect to chill out with for half an hour in the evenings. Perhaps I’ll get to Urban Flow, DERU, AER: Memories of Old and Luigi’s Mansion 3 sometime over the weekend… though probably not.

You see, I’ve also been playing Metroid: Samus Returns on my new New 3DS XL. At least, I was until I got side-tracked by the truly brilliant Pocket Card Jockey. What can I say? ‘One quick go’ turned into ‘fourteen not-so-quick goes’ and a very late night. I know I said Fire Emblem Awakening was my Game of the (previous) Decade, but I must have been lying.

I can only hope Pocket Card Jockey never comes to Switch; I don’t think I’d play another game again.

PJ O’Reilly, reviewer

Hello. This weekend I’m gonna be spending the majority of my time getting stuck into Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy for my upcoming review. I was a pretty big fan of the first instalment of Ryza’s story and it’s pretty neat to see her return for a second game, the first time a lead character has returned for another spin in the franchise’s history as far as I’m aware. Any spare time I manage to eek out after that will be dedicated to racking up more kills in Hitman 3 – Cloud Version and attempting to blast my way further up the online leaderboards in the absolutely excellent twin-stick shooter, Bezier, which I highly recommend everyone jump right into as it’s 75% off right now! Have a good weekend, whatever you’re up to and stay safe!

Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer

Every weekend is a GameCube weekend and this one is filled with the epic adventures of Ike in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, a world at war in Battalion Wars and some truly dubious Donkey Kong handballs in Mario Smash Football. But lots of Switch action as well since packages from the East delivered an assortment of import goodies including Touhou Spell Academy, Kamen Rider: Memory of Heroez and pure 8-bit shmup bliss from Aleste Collection.

My game of the week is Wrestling Empire! Again! Every day I put in another career month with my avatar so I’m looking forward to playing December 2021 and January 2022 and see whatever new insanity my Weekend Warriors promotion throws my way… but I must admit I’m not too keen on the new handle that was imposed on me: “Major Boy”.

Ryan Craddock, news editor

I’m hoping (but also sort of not hoping) that I’ll wrap up Pokémon Trading Card Game on Game Boy this weekend as I’m currently battling my way through the Grand Masters. As I spoke about at length yesterday I’d give almost anything for a reboot on Switch, but with that feeling unlikely, I’ll try to make it drag out a little longer by collecting cards I’m missing and making my deck that bit stronger.

Speaking of Switch, I haven’t touched any games on there for a strangely long time. I genuinely can’t remember the last thing I played on it, it’s been so long, so perhaps I should rectify that by going back to a classic. Our YouTube team’s recent video on Zelda: Breath of the Wild did make me want to boot that up again, but if anything, I’ll probably end up going back to either Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, because you just can’t go wrong with either of them. Have a good one, folks.

As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to leave us a comment below with your gaming choices over the next few days…