How's that gaming backlog treating you?
Hello and welcome back to another edition of ‘What Are We Playing This Week’, our weekly series where we go over some of the things we’re most excited to watch and play over the coming week. While the first two weeks of January are starkly empty as far as new game releases go, there are quite a few TV shows to keep an eye out for this week!
What are we playing?
Honestly, not much! Next week brings new games (find a full list of 2024 games here), but the first two weeks of January this year are largely empty and perfect for completing those pesky backlogs. To that end, I picked up Disco Elysium from a holiday sale in December and have been thoroughly enjoying it! It’s a fantastic choice-filled RPG that tasks the player with solving a crime in a small town by collecting evidence and talking to the colourful townsfolk. So far, I’ve been ignoring the central crime to tick off sidequests all these townspeople have been giving me - ranging from replacing a boule I threw into the sea to finding out who owned a shockingly racist mug - and doing my best to keep the detective on the straight and narrow.
I’m sure this will have consequences on my playthrough eventually, but I’m just going to keep on trucking. I’ve also been playing Mass Effect: Legendary Edition for the first time, because you know what’s better than one RPG? Four RPGs. I don’t expect to finish any of them anytime soon, but that’s what the backlog is all about.
What are we watching?
The Golden Globes took place over the weekend, giving the year’s best movies and shows their flowers and leading to already-iconic pop culture moments like Succession’s Kieran Culkin telling The Last of Us’ Pedro Pascal to suck it. If you’re not interested in that, Marvel Studios’ Echo premieres on January 9 as the first TV-MA-rated series on Disney+, which presumably means that it’s going to be pretty violent for a change. The show spins out of Hawkeye (2021), following Maya Lopez’s complex relationship with her adoptive uncle Wilson Fisk/Kingpin. She also fights Daredevil at some point, so that’s something to look forward to!
If you liked True Detective, here’s some good news: the show’s fourth season Night Country hits HBO on January 14, set in a fictional town in Alaska where eight men have disappeared from a research station. Two detectives (Jodie Foster and Kali Reis) partner up to investigate the disappearances, which will likely lead to a complex conspiracy if this show’s history is anything to go by.
For something a little more lighthearted, try out Delicious in Dungeon. This anime premiered just last week, and it follows a party of adventurers who have to dive deep into a dungeon and eat the monsters they find along the way for sustenance. It’s presented as a cooking show despite the fantastical setting of its story, and seems like good fun so far.
