What we've been playing - advent calendars, tricksy trials, and ages of dragons

A few of the things that have us hooked this week.

13th December

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we admire temporary rule-changes in a game, we play a real-life advent calendar somehow, and we push to the end of a long fantasy adventure.

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Xbox Series X

This week I've been looking at my Xbox version of Spotify Wrapped - the thing that lets you see how much time you've spent playing games this year and which games you played the most - and while my favourites weren't too much of a surprise (an egregious amount of Fortnite and another 90 hours of Baldur's Gate 3, standard) I was taken aback by the amount of time I'd already put into Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

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To be clear, I have not yet finished The Veilguard. I fully intend to, and maybe next week when I have some time off I finally will, but right now, going by Eurogamer's handy list of main missions, I think I'm only probably around half-way. And I'm already at 45 hours. Have I really spent nearly two days playing? I mean I guess so - I've put in an hour or so a night for a lot of the past month. But what have I actually been doing? Is everyone else taking this long?

I think I'm playing The Veilguard slowly, not just in the short length of my play sessions squeezed around life's other bits and bobs, but also physically in how I move around its world. I do fast travel, obviously, because actually going through the Crossroads and finding the right Eluvian portal to each area would be ridiculous. But when I do find myself walking through those areas, I am actually walking, compared to so many other games where I feel compelled to run.

The Veilguard is beautiful, and its large areas are smartly designed to funnel players to specific places while maintaining a sense of freedom. This isn't open-world, or whatever Inquisition was, where you can run up a hill and find nothing much worth your time when you get there. The Veilguard's areas feel curated, their limited spaces enhanced by a great view whenever you're on the way to something specific.

Plus, of course, I'm doing all the sidequests. I have a fairly good idea where the game is heading - I can see the faction reputation bars that need filling and I am something of a completionist, especially when it comes to BioWare games. So, yes, 45 hours in and probably another 45 to go. But that's fine - I'm enjoying my walking! I don't really want it to end.

-Tom

Path of Exile 2, PC

In I go. Wish me luck? | Image credit: Eurogamer / Grinding Gear Games

I'm smitten by Path of Exile 2 (as you'll no doubt have gathered from my Path of Exile 2 early access review). There's so much good thinking across the game. Something I'm currently alternating between loving and being frustrated by are the Trials of the Sekhemas, which are trials you must complete in order to earn your ascendancy - your class specialisation - because they show so much of what the game is about.

Number one: they have a cool setting. The Trials are housed in a mysterious temple that's carved into a dark canyon, the braziers of which light up as you walk past, as all furnishings in cool temples are wont to do. There's little to no explanation of how it works when you get there, which is maybe an early access thing or maybe a Path of Exile 2 thing - it's hard to tell (I'm totally okay with it being the latter). You just talk to an equally mysterious NPC - who you recently fought in battle - and head in. It's eerie, it's dark, it's foreboding.

Number two: the Trials change the rules, and I adore this. ARPGs can become switch-off games when things get too repetitive, so finding a way to mix things up works really well.

The Trials flip the game into a kind of Roguelike where you have to complete alternating trial-types across a series of rooms, that you plot your route through on an adjoining map, all of it culminating with a boss fight at the end. But here, instead of losing only health in the normal way, you also lose Honour, which is a resource specific to the Trials. And should your Honour reach zero, you will fail. It doesn't matter if you have a full health bar - you will fail and have to start again.

Therefore, you have to be much more careful and respectful of enemies. You can't rely on recharging shields or health potions to get you through; once Honour depletes, it's very hard to top back up, and you'll need as much of it as possible to take on the boss at the end.

I still haven't beaten the first trial - these things scale right up into the endgame by the way. It's taken me numerous runs to really understand how it works and how best to approach each room and what the boons (buffs) do and what the afflictions (debuffs) do, and something about being a melee character makes the final boss encounter really tricky. But I'm getting closer - it's slow going but I'm getting there.

But I'm enjoying it - that's the key thing. I'm learning, and that's what Path of Exile 2 is about. I've been forced to learn more about how enemies work and where I'm taking damage - damage I didn't even used to notice. In essence, the game has found a way to teach me more, and I love that.

-Bertie

Advent calendar, cardboard

I am a small elf, working hard to get everything ready for Christmas - I can't let everyone on the Nice List down. But, oh no! In a bid to get things just so, I accidentally locked myself inside a cupboard in Santa's Workshop, and now I must find my way back out again before Christmas Day.

Image credit: Eurogamer

This is the premise of my advent calendar this year. It is an escape room, and every day I must solve a puzzle which will lead me to the next door (and a rewarding square of chocolate). There are no numbers on the outside of the advent calendar, which adds an extra thrill to the puzzle solving process. The only way to know if I have solved the puzzle correctly is by opening a door and seeing if the number on the inside lines up with the date.

So far, the puzzles have seen me cutting up one door and rearranging the pieces to form a word, which led to the next door. Another puzzle saw me flipping the whole calendar over and using a previously removed door as a compass of sorts, which then pointed to some flags that related to different letters of the alphabet. When I found all of the letters, they spelled out a word which led me back to the front of the calendar, and to the correct door. I definitely felt like I had earned my chocolate that day.

This year's advent calendar is easily my favourite advent calendar to date. It even trumps last year's coffee one, which is something I never thought I would say. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a rather curious image of a checkers board that needs my attention. Byeee!

-Victoria