14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: It might be time to create a well-designed game-related elaborate joke, but this weekend I plan to ditch modern video games altogether and go back to some older releases for some modding-powered video gaming.
My first stop is Middle Earth during the War of the Ring, with Sauron and his allies poised to strike and the Elves and nations of Gondor and Rohan ready to resist.
The Third Age: Total War mod and its various sub-mods are a superb total conversion for Medieval 2: Total War and manage to translate the world of Tolkien very well, with some complex game mechanics and tactical battles that, on Very Hard, really test the skills of the gamer.
After taking out my share of ugly Uruk Hai with my Rohan riders, I plan to go back even more and reinstall Rome: Total War in order to play the Europa Barbarorum mod, one of my favorite of all time, in order to prepare for the possible 2011 launch of EB II for Medieval 2.
Andrei Dobra: Crysis 2 will be occupying most of my weekend playtime, largely because I want to experience its single-player campaign by going into every firefight guns blazing and trying to stay protected with the special armor mode, instead of my usual, stealth approach, which I used during my first playthrough.
When I won't be killing AI-controlled opponents, I'll probably jump into some multiplayer matches, as the team at Crytek has just released a new patch for the game which, hopefully, will eliminate the big number of cheaters that were disrupting practically every multiplayer match.
When I won't be using a Nanosuit to defeat waves of mercenaries or various alien creatures, I'll probably indulge in a bit of Yakuza 4, continuing the playthrough I started a few weeks ago.
The game is quite out of the ordinary, at least in my Western point of view, as you can't help but be amazed at some of the events that are portrayed on screen, like a chunky little Army sergeant training you in hand-to-hand combat on the roof of a building by firing a machine gun filled with rubber bullets at you.