14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: There aren't too many new videogames hitting us during this period of the year, so I will fall back on some trusty well-known titles to get me through the weekend. My first choice for free time will be Hearts of Iron 3, the grand strategy World War II-focused game from Paradox Interactive.
I bought the Semper Fi expansion, which makes the game a lot better, and am currently playing with the 2.01 patch beta files and a mod called the Historical Plausibility Project, which is aiming to make the whole experience more realistic by introducing a War Exhaustion concept and by making changes to the way the technology progress affects the combat. It's a very good mod and it will tie over veterans of the series until the launch of favorites like CORE and Total Realism Project.
For those moments when grand strategy is just too much, I also plan to take a look at Singularity, the Raven made shooter that relies on Russian experiments with a strange element and time manipulation to create a dark experience.
Mihail Cernea: My weekend will be spent somewhere out of the city, so I'll have to rely on my iPhone and laptop to do a bit of proper gaming. I will surely engage in some Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the iPhone. It's a great game, well designed to take advantage of the touchscreen interface of the device. The gameplay itself is everything you would expect from the GTA series, with well written dialogue, a nice sandbox to have fun in and good mission design.
Another title I'll surely play on my smartphone is Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, a first person shooter with incredible graphics and controls that work great using the touchscreen. It's some kind of a Halo clone for the iPhone, sporting insane production values, fully voiced dialogue and impressive weapon design.