It’s the Freakin’ Weekend! So What are You Playing?

Friday! Video games! Let’s talk!

I’ve been mentally exhausted these last few weeks, which has unfortunately hindered my desire to play anything. I’m still at the same spot in Final Fantasy XIII that I was during last week’s post (just arrived in the open-world of Gran Pulse) and haven’t played anything else in the meantime. Stress sucks.

If you’re looking for something new (well, new to you) to play this weekend, there’s a great Flash Sale going on over at the PlayStation Store. There are quite a few PSone classics, like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Silent Hill, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, and the Suikoden series, for $5 USD or less.

If you’re a fan of the weirdness that NieR Automata provides, Drakengard 3 is only $10 on PS3 — it’s more linear and nowhere near as polished, but it’s a good time.

Vita owners should also consider picking up the first two Danganronpa titles (unless you have the PS4 re-release), which are down to $7.50.

Instead of actually playing anything, I’ve just been watching a few different Let’s Plays on YouTube. I just finished up Cryaotic’s excellent/hilarious run through one of my favorite games of all time, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and started up his blind run (meaning he’s never played the game before, not that he’s actually playing it while blindfolded) of another favorite, Silent Hill 2.

Cry has a great voice, isn’t one of the annoying screamers, and has a ton of other Let’s Plays I’d like to check out in the future, like Clock Tower 3 and Asura’s Wrath.

I was scouring the internet for a good Let’s Play of the PSone horror title Clock Tower (an old point-and-click game where you avoid a guy murdering people with giant scissors) and found GG Gab’s channel. She has a ton of horror Let’s Plays uploaded, but the version of Clock Tower she played through was actually the SNES original… in Japanese. Turns out she lives in Japan, can speak and read fluent Japanese, and has all sorts of Japanese-only games on her channel that she translates while playing (sometimes subtitling them!).

Very rad stuff.

In an odd turn of events, I came to her channel ready to watch Clock Tower but ended up watching her play through Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I was still on a Metal Gear kick after watching Cryaotic take out Snake Eater, but he didn’t have any of the other games on his channel. Meanwhile, GG Gab has Metal Gear Solid 1-4, Peace Walker, and V: Ground Zeroes, so I’ll be busy for quite a while.

Although I’ve played through many of these games on my own, I’m always interested in watching other people experience them for the first time. It reminds me of watching my friends play through games while growing up, which happened a lot with single-player things like Resident Evil and Parasite Eve. There was just something cool about knowing a “certain part” was coming soon and wondering how they’d react, or if they’ll even enjoy it as much as I did when I played it.

But anyway, that’s my weekend in a nutshell. If I’m not doing homework, I’ll probably keep juggling Cryaotic’s Silent Hill 2 run and GG Gab’s playthrough of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. If I get out of this mental funk I’ll try and jump back into Final Fantasy XIII. I’ll also be reviewing the upcoming Nintendo Switch release of Azure Striker Gunvolt’s Striker Pack (the first two 3DS games ported to Switch, essentially), but I won’t have time for that until Tuesday at the earliest.

What about you, folks? What are you getting into this weekend?