The Games You Should Play This Weekend – December 5

Though I’m familiar with Routine’s long journey to launch, I wasn’t too keyed into what the actual game was at all before hopping into it this week to review it for Game Informer. I’ll have a review up next week for it – I believe I’m nearing the end – but I just want to take this article to gush a bit about it. It is loosely a survival-horror game that really places you into the shoes of the engineer you control, who must discover what disturbing and mysterious event has taken place on a now-defunct lunar station. Unlike other games in this genre, you’re not really there to fight back against whatever lurks in this space station’s empty hallways – and there are certainly things lurking – but instead, you’re there to tinker with computers, open doors, read documents and emails, and use your C.A.T. handheld device to learn more about the station and maybe, just maybe, escape, too. 

I can’t overstate how tactile Routine is – you walk around and tinker with computers, your C.A.T. device, documents, buttons, and more. And everything in Routine is obscured in mystery and bathed in a beautiful 1970s visual style reminiscent of Alien, with the crunchiest film grain you’ve ever seen. If you like being afraid and alone in space, and if you also like tinkering with an intensely detailed environment around you to solve puzzles and progress deeper into the location, Routine is a game you should check out this weekend. 

Eighteen years after the release of Metroid Prime 3 and eight years after the announcement of Metroid Prime 4, the game is finally here. The wait has been long, but the resulting experience is worthwhile. It does not radically reimagine what has, frankly, worked about series since the original Metroid Prime, but it delivers what I wanted from a Metroid Prime experience. I actually ended up playing it through twice back-to-back – an extreme rarity for me. Make sure to back up your save at the point of no return if you haven’t achieved 100% (and you want to), and make sure to grab as many green crystals as possible over the course of the game, so you don’t have to spend time building your bank right at the end. But otherwise, you are in for a classic search-action experience absolutely dripping with alien atmosphere. Read my review here. 

It’s Friday, which means you may be calling up the homies to plan some weekend gaming. If your friend group adores comics and the act of relentlessly punching things in the face, Marvel Comic Invasion is a strong recommendation. The four-player retro-inspired beat ‘em up spices up the genre with fun tag-team gameplay, in which each player controls two heroes they swap between à la Marvel vs. Capcom. With deeper combat mechanics than most brawlers, beautiful sprite work, and a great soundtrack, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a great excuse to catch up with friends while blasting through the video game equivalent of a good Saturday morning superhero cartoon.

Getting friends together on the couch for a local co-op session rocks, but if that’s not an option, the excellent drop-in/drop-out online play is a great alternative. Plus, even if the person hosting the online lobby needs to exit the game, the session continues uninterrupted. This is perfect for dealing with any unexpected adult responsibilities that arise, like teaching your dog how to read or taking your child to the vet. For a better idea of what Marvel Cosmic Invasion has to offer, you can read my review of the game here. 

Kirby Air Riders is a fascinating game that more closely follows the footsteps of Super Smash Bros than Mario Kart. Director Masahiro Sakurai’s distinctive style, complete with hundreds of achievements, bright animations, and familiar menu designs will bombard players from the game’s opening moments. Once you actually get in a race, you’ll find that the game is far more complex than at first glance. Its two button control scheme masks the extremely varied riders and machines, each with nine stats that add together when you pick one of each. It also has a wealth of modes, from the standard Air Ride to the party-friendly City Trial to the solo Road Trip. It’s not a game for everyone, as it’s a bit of an acquired taste, but coffee is an acquired taste and I drink it every day; if the game sounds appealing to you, you’re going to love it.

Hayes Madsen published a piece on Inverse the other day recommending a game I had never heard of, but as soon as he used the words “Ace Attorney,” something dormant in my brain activated and I purchased it without a second thought. Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved is a game very much inspired by my favorite capcom series, with DS-era pixel art and a mystery-driven narrative, but it’s very much its own concept. As a college student on a study trip in a foreign country, your classmate befriends a mysterious woman on the 3-day train ride home, only for that woman to disappear hours later. Nobody claims to know who she is, so the two of you investigate. What follows isn’t as gripping as my favorite Ace Attorney cases, especially since the stakes are relatively low at the outset, but like any good mystery, it grows over time. By the end of my 4-hour playthrough, it was a train ride I was glad to have embarked upon, and certainly scratched the investigative itch I’d been hoping for. It’s currently available on Steam and Switch.

I never really got the chance to play MMOs when I was younger. Sure, I spent a lot of time on the PC, but it’s easier to convince your parents to buy a single Battle Chest or multi-disc box than a regular subscription. So when ArenaNet suddenly dropped an updated version of the original Guild Wars via Reforged, I was curious to see what I’d missed.

In the span of an hour or two, I undertook menial tasks of heroism that would be better described as mutual charity. I fought worms and crawlers for eggs. I escorted NPCs through dangerous areas. In the starting town, I partied up with someone named “Zerosugar Bajablast” to complete a quest.

There is a quaint simplicity to this era of MMORPG, where a combination of scale and open skies communicates grandeur where tangible objects cannot. Interfaces seem intentionally minute and finicky. Compared to my hours upon hours in Final Fantasy XIV’s Eorzea, it is quaint. But quaint’s what I want right now, to be honest; a world that’s just a little sandbox of adventures to explore with friends. And seeing so many people logging on and talking about how excited they are to start anew, with all these new players flooding in, is heartwarming. The years may have passed on by, but Guild Wars has retained the charm and warmth, thanks in large part to its community, including Zerosugar Bajablast.

Don’t be put off by the fact that Octopath Traveler 0 is a rebuild of content that originally appeared as part of a gacha-oriented mobile title. The developers leveraged the vast amount of content created for that mobile iteration, but reworked the entire experience to be a premium JRPG game that offers many dozens of hours of turn-based battles, gorgeous retro visuals, and incredible flexibility to customize and build both a party of characters and a town that acts as home base. This is a rewarding and fun experience that advances many of the ideas that were already strong in prior Octopath games. If you’ve been hungry for a throwback to the days of Chrono Trigger or the early Final Fantasy games, this should be on your radar.

MotionRec is a 1-bit puzzle platformer that has quickly become one of my favorite 2025 games. Playing as a small, adorable robot, you solve puzzles by pressing a record button, capturing a string of motions, and then playing back your movements from a different point of origin, often in succession to bypass spikes, lasers, or particularly long gaps. MotionRec is full of tricky puzzles and ample light-bulb moments as you collect a series of musical notes throughout any one level. It’s an amazing little game. Don’t miss it!

You already know Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a fun game (and if you don’t, read Brian Shea’s review here), and I’m not here to repeat that sentiment. However, I do want to take this article to highlight some of the things I recommend hopping back into the game to complete if you haven’t touched it in a minute. 

If you connect to the internet to receive Mystery Gifts, you can claim a Diancite Stone, a Mewtwonite X stone, and a Mewtwonite Y stone. Once you’ve claimed those two Mystery Gifts (you receive the Mewtwo stones at the same time), two new side missions will be added to Lumiose: Shine Bright Like A Gemstone and Project M. Complete the former to encounter Diancie, and complete the latter to encounter Mewtwo, allowing you to add both of these legendary Pokémon to your party. And with the stones you received from Mystery Gift, you can Mega Evolve both of them! 

Elsewhere in the game, if you haven’t hopped into the online ranked mode battling yet, you should! You don’t even have to be good – just play 5 to 10 rounds until you reach Rank S, and by that point, you will have received the Greninjite, Delphoxite, and Chesnaughtite stones as rewards for ranking up. These allow you to Mega Evolve Greninja, Delphox, and Chesnaught, respectively. There’s no word on whether these rank rewards will remain after the current Season 3 of ranked battling, so I recommend hopping in asap to win these stones.