What Are You Playing This Weekend?

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one feeling a bit smug when I found out that Australia would be getting a release of Xenoblade Chronicles when the US would be left without, so this weekend I’m going to be sitting around looking smug whilst smugly playing this critically acclaimed JRPG. What will you be smugly or not-so-smugly playing this weekend?

I must admit that for a while I’d given up on JRPGs. Growing up, I’d devoted hundreds of hours to them — there was just something incredibly gripping about the stories they told, and I don’t remember ever forming such strong attachments to the characters I played. Every day I’d turn up at school ready tell my friends of the quests I went on, and we’d compare the HP of our characters and discuss how long it took each of us to defeat certain bosses (as you can probably tell, I was really cool at school). But the more I played the more I found that newer JRPGs lacked the spark that games like Final Fantasy VII and VIII had — after 10 hours of linear corridors in Final Fantasy XIII, I decided that I couldn’t handle any more of it.

So I’m excited about giving Xenoblade a go, especially since it has been so well received by critics. It feels like the promise of meeting an ex who went and got really interesting and attractive after the break-up, although hopefully it won’t be nearly as awkward.

Anyway, enough about my life story. What are you playing this weekend?