Tomorrow is Sunday, for many a day of praise and penance. A day when you can tell the Lord what you have done wrong during the week, ask for forgiveness and say a few prayers before going home to eat a hearty lunch and a good nap. For some, there is no better start to the week than a Sunday with a clear conscience.
For others, there will be no Hail Mary or Our Father, well, at least in the traditional sense. Instead there will be cheers. They will go along the lines of: “Dear God in heaven!” and “Holy Mother of God, stop it!” and there may even be “fucking hell!” thrown in for good measure.
Lamentations like this come from a group that was completely wiped out on St. Patrick's Eve. Paddy and turned their Sunday into an entirely different ecumenical affair, hovering over the gaping maw of the porcelain throne to exorcise the evil from their stomachs.
I hope I won't be part of that particular club this year. Although I plan to meet friends at McCarthy's Pub tonight to celebrate the small amount of Byrne's blood I have left after five generations of dilutions, I don't want to spend Sunday drinking horse aspirin and Pepto.
Of course I'll take a few! Maybe more. I won't order a pint of the black stuff either. NO. I can not stand it. I was born a cider lover and I will die a cider lover. There's a reason I got the nickname Cider Cat, that's all I'll say. But despite my current bravado, as the night goes on, I anticipate my resolve will weaken. There will be many, many clinks of the glass followed by the words sláinte, leading to more pints being thrown away than planned. My mates and I start singing Luke Kelly's rendition of Dirty Old Town at the top of our lungs, despite the 'No Singing' signs in the pub, and after some very loud impressions from Father Jack Hackett, we are asked to leave.
It seems St. Paddy's Day is a loophole through which I can convince myself that it's healthy to eat clover-shaped cookies with green icing the size of dinner plates and down the last barrel of Bulmer's at the pub before switching to bottled Angry Orchard. I'm sure by the end of the night I'll only be able to converse in leprechaun limericks about questionable life choices, and my liver will be seeking political asylum in Switzerland.
I can now hear my great-grandmother Mary Alice saying, “Look at the state you're in!” before shaking her head and muttering “eejit” as she walked away. And she wouldn't be wrong.
But not everyone here on the website will feel stupid this weekend. They are the smart ones to stay home and play games. One of us even flies to the US to play on the west coast for a while.
Here's what's happening this weekend in games:
Connor Makar, screenwriter – will be on the plane
I'm going to GDC this weekend! I'll be talking to the developers and trying out a few games, and you can expect coverage of all of them in the coming weeks (if the Boeing I'm flying in doesn't lose a wing, killing me and 150 members of the British gaming industry).
Therefore, I will not play any video games for fun. It's full business mode. The beard is trimmed, my hair is combed, I bought new running shoes to run between calls and new jeans that fit.
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Jim Trinca, Video Producer – Life in a Taxi: City Driving Simulator
I love riding. There is something deeply, spiritually kinetic about being wrapped in a ton of steel that is an extension of yourself. A docking station for your butt that makes it move fast thanks to the magic of exploding liquid made from corpses. This is real magic. So why are we so busy pretending to be wizards or astronauts in this hobby? There's certainly a lot of admiration to be found in the everyday grind of cruising around town in a crappy little hatchback, doing odd jobs, carving out a slice of life in a surprisingly authentic recreation of… let's say… downtown. Barcelona?
Fortunately, someone made just this kind of fantasy possible in form Life in a taxi: city driving simulator, and I'm having a lot of fun with digital tourism. It's more than a little jerky, and the driving model with the controller seems to work together, so using the steering wheel is highly recommended – I'll break out my trusty Thrustmaster as a result – but it's unrivaled as an urban driving sim that's all about the kind of driving which most of us actually do, as opposed to transporting wooden pallets from a shopping estate in Manchester to an identical shopping estate in Leipzig.
Plus I'll be playing that big RPG game you've been waiting for that I can't talk about. No, the other one.
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Rebecca Jones, author of guides – Danganronpa Next episode: Girls from Ultra Despair
During a time-sensitive break from the usual 9-5 hours, my partner works most of the weekend; and as much as I'd love to say that I'll throw myself into spring cleaning my house in an act of solidarity, I'll probably do everything in my power to not live the rest of it Danganronpa Next episode: Ultra Despair Girls.
Beating this slightly crazy third-person shooter based on one of my favorite visual novel series has been an on-and-off project of mine for the past six months. It's not that I don't like the game or that I have a problem with it; the problem is that you can only save at fixed locations, which are not marked on the map and appear anywhere from five minutes to an hour and a half apart. It just means that I only get to play once or twice a week at most, because while it's great on Steam Deck, it's not a game you can just pick up when you find yourself with 20 minutes to kill – that's the real deal “clean your evening” type. Or in this case, “clean your weekend.”
This is us. Are you staying this weekend? If so, what game do you play? If you decide to go out to celebrate the holiday: Éirinn go Brách and may your hangover be mild.