Here’s what the Heave staff has been into this week:

William Jones

Despite the death toll numbering in the thousands, I still haven’t been able to quench my thirst for zombie blood. I picked up both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and while I still enjoy the Sony hardware more, I’ve been finding myself spending more time with the games on Microsoft’s console. That’s in large part thanks to Capcom’s Dead Rising 3. I could never get into the first two games because of the time element. I just never understood why the game provided a fun world populated with zombies and then made you rush to get through things. Dead Rising 3 doesn’t completely get rid of that element, but mostly restricts it to a “Nightmare Mode,” leaving gamers a lot more free time to explore in the “Story Mode.” Though, I also haven’t played a whole bunch of the story, to be honest, because I’ve been too occupied hunting down weapons blueprints and crafting ridiculous super combos. Many have fallen over countless hours to my Ultimate Mecha Dragon and the turret of my vehicle combo.

Amy Dittmeier

Home Alone.

With.

Pugs.

DONE.

Meghan Bongartz

Because point and click games from the mid ’90s are a good use of my time, I’ve been playing Beneath a Steel Sky. Like a lot of games from that era, it’s surprisingly difficult despite the fact that it’s not a skill-based game, and I’ve died in some spectacularly stupid ways. It took me several minutes when I started playing to figure out that you can pick objects up, so instead I just walked into a line of fire over and over again. Also, fun fact: the game was drawn by Dave Gibbons, one of the co-creators of Watchmen.

Anthony Hoffman

It’s Christmas (uh, Xmas) time. And if you’re an MST3K fan, you’re very familiar with the Santa Claus Versus the Martians episode, which also features Joel and the bots’ rendition of “Patrick Swayze Christmas.” Now the song gets the full choir treatment, with a Joel Hodgson cameo.

Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

I’ve been working through my musical to-do list for 2013 with vigor this week, and out of everything I’ve listened to so far, my favorite has to be the Haim record. Days Are Gonemay be a throwback to an at-the-time-uncool, very early ’90s form of R&B/pop, but something about it just works. Really, really well.