Mister Jack

Donkey Kong Bananza Okay, I get the hype. This game is hands down the best in the entire DK series. Not only that but it has one of the best finales out of any Nintendo game ever. Top 5 at least. Holy hell, the Odyssey team was cooking on this one. They said "It's time to return to monke" and locked the hell in. A-freaking-plus.

Pokemon Legends Z-A Borrowed this one. I swear, Pokemon is such a frustrating franchise. They often introduce or refine one thing that's great and then surround it with a bunch of half-assed crap. This game is a prime example. The real time battles are great, probably the best the franchise has ever been. It completely cuts out all the tedious text boxes that I've been griping about for literally decades now. Battles are quick and snappy and don't waste your time with a bunch of popups you have to go through by mashing the A button. Not only that but the real-time aspect means you not only have to keep your positioning in mind but you will probably find yourself using moves you never used in older games based on their cast time or area of effect. This is probably the first Pokemon game since I was a kid to give me a decent challenge at more than one point in the story, though I did deliberately avoid doing a bunch of the side missions so I wouldn't be overleveled. Battles are just about what I always wanted them to be. There's room for improvement, but this is a tremendous step forward for battles in the same way Legends Arceus was for catching and if you put both of those together you could end up with the perfect Pokemon game. Too bad the rest of it is so lazy. Yes, the whole game takes place inside of Lumiose City and there is no going outside of it at any point, not even in the postgame. The city doesn't even feel alive. You can't enter most of the buildings except for Pokemon centers and a few story related locations. Hell, most of the citizens don't even walk around the streets. They just awkwardly stand in the middle of the road, radiating the kind of NPC energy I haven't seen since the Gen 1 days. Performance is pretty good, at least on Switch 2, but the environments are straight out of the Wii. Also, the lack of any voice acting whatsoever in a full priced game in 2025 is inexcusable. There is nothing that feels more awkward than watching a dramatic animated cutscene play out where everybody is just silently flapping their lips while you have to read subtitles at the bottom. This game costs 70 dollars. Enough is enough. The story isn't really anything to write home about either, though it does try to put a band-aid over some of the stuff in X/Y that people found to be stupid or shallow. Honestly if this was a 40, maybe even a 50 dollar game I could give it a soft recommendation just because the battling is so good and the battles are definitely where this game has its focus, but 70? No way. Just another case of Nintendo's eyes being bigger than their stomach.

I should be set for a while. Might get Splatoon Raiders if it turns out good and the Tears of the Kingdom upgrade since I already own it. Other than that I'm good on Nintendo games until they unveil something new. I got no interest in Metroid Prime 4.

Mouse PI for Hire I'm aware that IGN gave this a 6 and got torn apart for it while most people are giving it an 8. I'd probably give it a 7. It's a competent enough shooter but doesn't really set itself apart through anything but the visuals. The detective aspects are basically nonexistent in gameplay outside of pinning stuff to a board and automatically making connections by hitting a button. The guns are also pretty unbalanced. The paint thinner gun is so strong that the only real reason to use anything else is because you ran out of paint thinner for the paint thinner gun. You also can't replay levels so if you missed something after finishing one then too bad, you're locked out for the rest of the game. I can't help feeling like this team may not have made an FPS before because it's missing some QoL stuff I've come to expect. What they made here is decent but I wouldn't say it's amazing. Plus, outside of some death animations and a spinach powerup it doesn't lean into the cartoon wackiness nearly as much as I hoped. An FPS where you use a bunch of toon gags to kill enemies sounds like a hoot but that's not really what they did here.

I got one used. Originally I wasn't planning to get one at all but that was before the entire world economy lit on fire and every console started to go up in price instead of down. I'm not going to bother waiting for an OLED model because I'm mostly going to be playing this thing on my OLED TV anyway and an OLED model will be even more fucking unaffordable by the time it comes out. I only plan on playing first party exclusives on this thing, preferably used when I can get them. I still hate a lot of Nintendo's business practices but frankly 5 years from now I don't know if I will even be able to afford consoles anymore so I'm just going to get while the getting is good.

Every open world game where you have to walk and talk with NPCs needs a follow button. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 had one and I'm pretty sure RDR2 had it and every time it's not present I hate it. I hate having to slowly push the stick and stop and start so I don't accidentally overtake the NPC. Just let me push a button and forget about it. My input really isn't needed here.

Kingdom Come Deliverance II Holy shit, this game is a masterpiece. It feels criminal that this game isn't more popular in the mainstream. I don't know how it flew under my radar last year but if I had played it back when it came out it would have been my GOTY for 2025 easily. Yes, even over Clair Obscur. I was already a big fan of the first game even though it had a few rough edges since Warhorse had never made a game before. Even for a first time developer, the original Kingdom Come was a damn good debut. This time, however, they clearly learned from their experience making the last game because this one improved pretty much everything and feels so much better to play. Despite coming out just last year the performance is significantly smoother than the original 2018 game. The story is downright epic and I use that word in the classical sense. It took me 112 hours to finish, although part of that includes DLC since I bought the Royal Edition that came with it. Combat has been completely reworked to feel much smoother and more technical, giving you the tools to take on large groups of enemies if you're skilled enough while not making it too easy for you to do so. In addition to alchemy they've added a new blacksmithing mechanic where you can not only make weapons and armor for yourself but also start your own forge and run a business to fund your adventuring. Horse riding is better, archery is better, alchemy is better. Hell, even training your dog is better this time. It's chock full of memorable characters, lines, and moments that are going to stick with me for a good while. I honestly can't think of a lot to complain about here. Manual saves (minus exit saves) are still limited by a consumable potion, I guess, but just spend ten minutes at an alchemist's table every so often and you'll never have to worry about it. This is about as close to a 10/10 as it gets for me. This isn't merely Skyrim good. This is Witcher 3 good.

And now I have the platinum for Honkai Star Rail, which makes it my second gacha platinum. I started Neverness to Everness today after it launched so I'd better pump the brakes and make this my last one unless I end up dropping it.

I was going to wait on this one but it was 10 bucks off for the Capcom sale.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance My god, what a gem this turned out to be. I never played it back when it came out because at the time it was getting kind of a mixed reception, partly for performance reasons which have since been patched. I saw it on CDkeys for 5 bucks though and thought I'd take a chance and I'm so glad I did. A medieval game completely based in historical events with no magic or dragons or elves or any of that stuff might seem like a hard sell. Even i wasn't sure if I would gel with it but if you give it a chance this game really sucks you in. I wouldn't even call this an action rpg as much as a medieval life simulator or an immersion rpg. The first few hours are rough, deliberately so. Henry, the peasant player character, starts off as a completely useless bitch. He can't win a single fistfight, let alone a swordfight. He can't handle a horse. He can't even read. You're likely to die a lot in those opening hours because getting into a fight with even a mere two people is practically a death sentence. However, as the game progresses he learns whatever skills you're willing to practice with him. His abilities level up Skyrim style, meaning you have to actually do things to get better at them. You can even help Henry learn how to read which not only has gameplay benefits with being able to study books but also elevates his social status. By the end of my game my Henry had gone from a pathetic wimp to a truly formidable knight. I know that power fantasies and building up characters are common in RPGs but it felt more special here because there are so many disciplines you can educate yourself in. You can perform alchemy at a table where you manually mix and brew potions every step of the way. You can train a dog to help you with hunting and combat. You can learn arts of thievery. You can really build Henry up the way you want him to be, but what separates Kingdom Come from Skyrim is that it is very much NOT a power fantasy. You can't just go around hacking people up and expect to get away with it. If you steal shit, you WILL get caught eventually unless you find someone willing to buy stolen goods and if you misbehave too much you'll start getting a negative reputation in the area that will come back to haunt you. No matter how good you are at combat trying to take on 5 or more men at a time is a losing proposition. Is it POSSIBLE to come out on top? Maybe in the endgame but even if you do it will be a struggle. The combat system with its direction based swings and forced lock-on is very much meant for you to engage one, maybe two opponents at a time tops. This, I think, might be the biggest thing that made some people bounce off this game. Enemies are extremely aggressive and breaking through their guard, especially if they have a shield, is tough. In fact, I started succeeding a lot more when I focused on stabbing rather than trying to break through with sword swings. On top of that, there is no reticle for using a bow. You have to learn how to aim by sight alone and until you get in enough practice with the bow Henry's hands are going to be shaking all over the place. Once you figure it out, however, a bow is a lethal force to be reckoned with even for armored opponents just like it was in real life. In short, this game asks a lot of you in the beginning and you have to be willing to approach it on its own terms. If you can do that, however, you're in for something special. I already bought the sequel before I had even finished this one so it could be ready to go as soon as the credits rolled.

I'm playing Kingdom Come Deliverance (the first one) and holy shit this game is awesome. I hear the sequel is even better so I'm really looking forward to that when I finish. I wouldn't have thought a medieval game based in realism with no magic or fantasy elements whatsoever would grip me as much as it has but damned if it's not one of the best games I've played in some time.

Death Stranding 2 It's pretty much an improvement on the original in every way that matters. There's more weapons that are non-lethal now so you don't need to worry about accidentally killing humans nearly as much, which also means much more focus on combat. There's also a bunch more tools and toys to play with and managing cargo has been streamlined to be less cumbersome. I still really like the first game but it feels like this one is the fully realized idea of Kojima's vision of a "strand game." The plot is as insane as you'd expect from a Kojima game and there are a few moments I think I'm going to remember forever. I found it easier to get S-ranks in this game too, though I'm not sure if they deliberately made it easier or if I just got better at the game after playing the last one. Either way I really got sucked into this one. I'll probably be going back to it at some point to polish off the last few deliveries I didn't get around to.

It took this long to have shared storage?!

Witchfire Well, I beat all the currently available content which is everything except the actual witch at the very end. Still took me 60 hours so I'm counting this one as beaten for now. This one started off rough for me but that may be partially my own eagerness to push forward as soon as I could. There's no recommended level for each map in the game and I was getting ground into dust for a good while at the beginning. It's not completely my fault though since your movement speed is also tied to a stat so when you're just starting out you straight up will not be fast enough to evade some enemies, which kind of sucks if you ask me. It's also much more efficient to pick the perk that makes enemies drop increased temporary exp rather than the one that makes them drop more exp crystals, which took me a while to figure out. However, once you're over that hurdle and you start to understand what the game expects from you it becomes really addictive. There's always some new mechanic, weapon, or item to discover as well as hidden areas and subquests within the currently five available maps. This isn't a cover or arcade shooter either. You absolutely must get good at dodging bullets and melee strikes with the dash if you're going to survive, but all the enemies telegraph their attacks pretty clearly so it's a matter of learning what to look for and not letting yourself get too distracted by an enemy right in front of you. God knows it took me a lot of practice and frustration but eventually it just clicked and I started taking out whole groups in a matter of seconds. The payoff for your investment of time and resources is very satisfying. The variety of weapons and spells gives you the opportunity to try a lot of unique builds too. I tried out everything but eventually favored a poison build with a summon that draws aggro. It must also be said that with so much buildup and effort to reach the witch's mountain lair, the actual labyrinth at the end did not disappoint. It felt appropriately epic for a confrontation that the game spent 60 hours hyping up. Of course, the actual boss isn't out yet so we'll see what comes of that, but everything leading up to her at the end was great. If I have one major criticism I hope they address it's that the balance of some weapons is definitely off. Some guns stand head and shoulders above the others and a few are barely even worth using. The crossbow with the seeker arrows that take out multiple targets is hands down the best heavy weapon in the game by a country mile. Compared to that, the stun gun that can temporarily stun bosses isn't even worth mentioning, especially when several bosses will summon mooks during their fight. Hopefully they can address that, but either way I can see this one really taking off when it hits version 1.0.

I too have beaten Resident Evil Requiem and I feel pretty much the same about it. Really good game, although sometimes during the Grace bits it feels like you almost have no choice but to take a hit because of ammo scarcity and a lack of evasive options. Even the original RE gave you a shotgun for when you really needed it. It's manageable enough on the default mode but I'm replaying it now in Classic mode where you need to carry ink ribbons to save and it's downright painful. It's always bugged me in this series that a measly key takes up a whole slot in your already limited inventory. "Oh no I can't pick up this box of bullets because there's a key in my pocket." Come on now. But that's really more of a gripe with the series as a whole than this game in particular. I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

Nioh 3 complete!

The first Nioh is definitely the hardest. I actually think it gets progressively easier as the series goes along. The best tip I can give you is not to try to play it like Dark Souls. Dodging is possible but blocking is your friend.

Bosses with kill counters in online games. Nioh 3 has a thing where the spirits of dead players coalesce into a tough as nails boss that spawns randomly in the open world and drops really good loot if you manage to kill it. That's already neat but something I got a kick out of was that it displays how many players it kills until someone eventually takes it down. I managed to take one down earlier with a player kill count of over 61,000. Is it completely cosmetic? Yeah. Did it feel cool as hell to be the one who ended his reign of terror? Hell yeah.

Nioh 3 Boy, I really binged this one. 43 hours over six days to beat the main story, which for me is a lot. So yeah, I liked this one. Nioh 2 is one of my favorite action games ever and this one went in a pretty different direction, though a lot of the familiar series staples are there. Yokai transformations from 2 are gone since your character isn't a half-breed, which means the soul cores are used for summons and magic spells rather than transformations. The living weapon mode from Nioh 1 is back to make up for it. The two biggest changes, however, have got to be the ninja style and the open world. Older Nioh games had ninja abilities, but they were a specific subclass you had to devote points into leveling and the ninja items were consumable. It could be pretty powerful if you devoted yourself to it but I never really did much with it outside of a few ninja tools that were useful for my playstyle. This time around, you shift between ninja style and samurai style at the push of a button. Each style gets its own weapons and equipment and, importantly, ninja items recharge while you're in samurai style rather than being used up until you get to a shrine. Ninja style doesn't have the stance system samurai weapons get and you take more damage while in ninja style, but it has a better dodge and you do double damage with any back attacks you land. Swapping styles is also how you parry heavy attacks so you'll be switching between them frequently no matter what. Technically you can also parry with your guardian spirit attacks, but those need to be charged up by doing damage so you can't guarantee you'll always have one available when a heavy attack is coming your way. Putting together both a ninja and a samurai build is mandatory. Losing a few weapons to ninja style stings a bit since you only get one stance as a ninja, but you can now equip four melee weapons at once so that helps make up for it a bit. I might slightly prefer the yokai shift abilities from 2 but I also gotta admit that they were pretty overpowered once you mastered them. The samurai/ninja swapping feels a bit more balanced. Either way I appreciate that it's not just doing the same thing again and both games have their own distinct feel. This game also feels easier to me than 2 but I don't know how much of that is the open world design allowing you to overlevel and how much of it is me having played Nioh 2 for hundreds of hours. The open world was a change I wasn't sure I'd like but it actually worked out fairly well. It's nothing mind blowing, this isn't Elden Ring, but the world is just large enough to feel dense and full of things to find while not being so huge that it feels bloated or padded. The amount of collectibles and side activities here is generous without being overwhelming and the map size reflects that. It feels more like a Metroidvania than a Ghost of Tsushima to me and I'm perfectly fine with that. It's as big as it needed to be and no more. Plus, hey, we get a jump button now! It's fine for platforming but also opens up a whole new set of strategies for combat so that's nice. I gotta ding one aspect though and that's the PC performance. Don't get me wrong, the game works. I could run it at 60 FPS, but I could run Nioh 2 at 120 FPS and this game really doesn't look that different from 2. Yeah, I know it has an open world, but it's not like it's a visually stunning open world. It just felt like this game is a lot more demanding on my CPU than it needed to be. I have a midrange CPU (Ryzen 5 5600X) but I still don't think this should be the game that makes it struggle. I've seen worse ports, it only crashed once, but I've certainly seen better. I'm on the fence about whether I like 2 or 3 more but this one at least feels on par with 2 in its own way. I can easily see myself playing it for hundreds of hours just like its predecessor.

Absolutely obsessed with Nioh 3 right now, which is no surprise since it's one of my favorite game series of all time. They made it open world this time so all those people complaining about the mission based structure of the last two games can finally quit bitching about it. It kinda feels more like a Metroidvania than an Assassin's Creed or a Ghost of Tsushima because the map has a good bit of platforming as well as areas you can't access until you acquire the right spirit guardian to help you through.

One of the more tedious parts of Soulslike games is using consumable resources to top off however much exp you need to level up, especially in the early days when you had to use these items one at a time. Nioh 3 finally streamlined that process. When you're at the level up screen you can hit a single button and it will ask if you want to use however many items you need to reach your next level up. You hit yes and you're DONE. Can every soulslike do this from now on, please?

Was there ever any doubt?