What's Your Hangout Game of Choice?
COMMUNITY QUESTION | What game has been maintaining your now-digital friend gatherings?
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It's the end of USgamer's Play Together week, our themed week about all things multiplayer. Over these past five days, we relished the pain of raids in MMOs, and celebrated Jackbox Party Pack games by ranking them. We praised the underrated Nintendo game that brought Gamer Network HQ together, and looked back on the communal experiences of accessing rental game save files. You can read all our great stories from the week here.
To cap off Play Together Week, for this week's Community Question, we're asking this: What's been your go-to hangout game? Let us know in the comments!
Eric Van Allen, News Editor
The actual answer is Jackbox, because it's the universal thing everyone can easily access and play right now. But some of my favorite hangouts in years past have been in Rock Band, a game I sadly can't play anymore. It's basically karaoke for people who don't want to sing. Lately, I've honestly fallen down a deep rabbit hole with Modern Warfare. Not even Warzone, which most people are on, but the regular ol' multiplayer. Working on camos and levelling up guns feels good in a way it hasn't in Call of Duty for quite some time. I'm the proud owner of a gold pistol, and I'm working on my second golden gun right now.
Mathew Olson, Reporter
Jackbox games—in particular Quiplash 2 and Tee K.O.—are the clear winners for me here if we're adhering to a limited definition of "video game." Here's something I've recently come to realize, though: the New York Times Crossword is really fun to complete with friends over Discord. Since going into quarantine, one of my close friends has started looping people in on the daily crossword, streaming her screen to the rest of the chat channel. I'm sure crossword purists would hate the crosstalk and chaos, but it's fast becoming one of my favorite parts of the day.
Caty McCarthy, Senior Editor
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (and by extension, Warzone) has been my main "playing with pals" game these past couple months. Thanks to Warzone being free-to-play, most of my friends who barely play games otherwise have been playing it, so it's as if our pub nights never truly went away. It's funny—I gave Modern Warfare a pretty middling score last year, but as the months have gone on, it's only gotten better and better thanks to its drastically improved new maps and Warzone. I bet Modern Warfare will keep me occupied through summer too.