Oh yes. “What Are You Playing This Weekend?” is back.
Since I started as editor here at Kotaku Australia, I haven’t had time to play many games, if I’m honest. It’s been all about getting up to speed with the day-to-day operation of the site. And then, almost before I knew it, I had too many games to play and no time to play them.
Just this week, we had a three night review event for Battlefield 2042 to attend that ran until about 11pm each night. The only time left over was in the short gap between waking up in the morning and beginning work again. I doing my best to use that time for exercise. And then I’m writing all day, and by the time I clock off for the night, I’ve felt too wiped to play anything.
Don’t get me wrong, taking over the site has been a wonderful experience. I just haven’t had many chances to take an inward breath yet.
Which is why this weekend I’m carving out a little time to play something for myself again. And that game is Jurassic World Evolution 2.
The original Jurassic World Evolution is one of those games I absolutely cannot shut up about. A park builder with the Jurassic Park license on it has been an idle dream since I was a kid, and while I few tried, no-one managed to hit the bullseye the way Frontier Developments did. I’m no fan of the modern Jurassic World films, I find them wildly out of step with what Crichton’s original novel and the 1993 film were trying to say. But I’m willing to forgive all that when the tie-in games are this good.
For the record, these games shouldn’t be good. They’d shouldn’t even be half this good. It’s a long-held maxim of the video game industry that movie tie-in games be cheap, rushed garbage. But Frontier, like John Hammond, spared no expense. I’ve played through the original multiple times since it launched in 2018. Its sandbox mode became a kind of zen garden I could escape to when I wanted a game I could play while listening to music or podcasts.
If you grabbed the original while it was free on Epic a while back but never fired it up, give it a go. It’ll impress you, I promise.
Anyway, I have been waiting since June to get stuck into this one.
What else am I playing? I want to finish off the Sea of Thieves Season 4 battle pass before the season ends. I haven’t been for a sail with my regular crew for a minute so that’s on the docket. We all live in different states so it presents a great opportunity to hang out and enjoy a beer together.
If I’ve got some extra time left over, I’d also love to finally dip a toe into Inscyption, which I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about.
And that’s me sorted. How about you? I want to hear what you’ll be playing this weekend!
Leave a Reply