14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: This week I have been mostly playing the new South Park-themed table for Zen Pinball, enjoying once more some very solid mechanics and accurate use of the theme, trying to constantly improve my scores while also discovering more of what the new content has to offer in terms of mechanics.
Pinball is very interesting on a console because there’s no need to constantly feed quarters into the game, which both creates a more relaxed atmosphere for the player and seems to take a little bit of the excitement out of the experience.
I am also spending more time with the Charlemagne expansion for Crusader Kings II, trying to make Christianity the dominating religion in Europe, which seems to be a challenge despite my powerful military because I cannot bring any kind of order to the empire I am currently building.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is also on my list for the weekend for some short play sessions and I must admit that I like what the developers have managed to create with the new shooter, mainly because the moon-based environments introduce some interesting moments to the combat, although the need for O2 might become frustrating most of the time.
The fall launch season is in full swing and that means that I am also making my first forays into Civilization: Beyond Earth.
The new Firaxis turn-based strategy experience is a complex one and it has enough innovative elements to occupy tens if not hundreds of hours of play in the near future.
The only problem is that there’s so much variety here that it’s often hard to know when a game is going well or badly before the situation becomes untenable.
Andrei Dobra
This weekend, I'll be getting into the Halloween mood by playing Costume Quest 2 on the PC. I liked the original that was released several years ago and I'm more than eager to see what Double Fine has managed to come up with this time around.
When I won't be using all sorts of crazy costumes to defeat enemies, I'll probably jump back into Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I loved Borderlands 2 and quite a few of its expansions, so I'm more than eager to go back to shooting and looting. I've yet to actually start the campaign due to some other things taking priority, but I plan on allocating at least a few hours this weekend to the dungeon crawling shooter.