Resident Evil Requiem (Switch2) – I have a couple misgivings, but overall this is a fantastic video game. I will someday say more. Much more. Probably.
Pokémon Pokopia (Switch2) – What can I say about this other than it’s what I spent like 70% of March doing? I guess that all I needed in life this whole time was a Pokémon-themed “cozy” game.
Continue reading MEVGWU: March 2026In recent years, I’ve fallen head over heels for Ys, a lesser-known series of action RPGs by Nihon Falcom. The Ys series has been around for nearly as long as I have, but I’ve never really known anything about Falcom as a developer. So at some point in the last 12-24 months, I looked up what they have on the Switch eShop besides a handful of Ys titles.
One of the things I found was The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails. It sparked my interest, so I looked a little closer, and my first reaction to seeing the screenshots was “Wow, this looks very similar to Ys!” And it is a lot like Ys! Nayuta is actually a spin-off of The Legend of Heroes, which is probably Falcom’s biggest franchise, but while the Heroes games are more traditional turn-based JRPGs (to my understanding), Nayuta is a side-scrolling(ish) action RPG.
And so I had placed The Legend of Nayuta on my wishlist for some time, waiting more for a time when I would actually play it than I was for a sale. Then January 2026 rolled around, and I was all like “Well, I just finished up Clair Obscur, what do I want to move onto next?” I think the writing is on the wall for what I chose.
Continue reading The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless TrailsMighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind (Switch) – I’d been listening to the (excellent) soundtrack lately, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed the game. So I gave it another run. Apparently it’s been significantly polished up since launch, but I didn’t notice much difference aside from the (seemingly pointless) new level-up system.
Resident Evil 3 (PS5) – Sometimes you’ve gotta set it to Assisted mode and just have a good time. Got myself an S rank, even. With a measly two minutes to spare!
The Last Train: Baquedano (Switch) – A surreal cat-and-mouse horror game where you’re trying to escape a train station while a killer stalks you. It’s strange and a little difficult at first because it doesn’t give you any direction, but once you figure out your goal, it’s actually pretty thrilling. Also, might just be a meme game – I’m not sure, I’m too old.
Continue reading MEVGWU: February 2026Ah, it’s a new year again. Seems like these keep coming around at fairly regular intervals. How odd…
Mega Man X (SNES) – The most important tradition, is that this is the first video game I play every year. Though I’ve written about it so many times now that there’s nothing left to say. I didn’t even attempt a PB this time around, as one try a year isn’t nearly enough practice for speedrunning.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (PS5) – It’s wild to me that somehow I dropped this game before beating it last year. It’s just so damned good. But, I finally resolved to pick it back up and actually finish it, and I’m glad I did. Just getting back into the world for a while (a long-ass while, since I did all the optional stuff too) was worth the time. Though I did end up kicking the difficulty down to Story while working my way through Verso’s Drafts. I never looked up any game-breaking character builds, and I was getting thoroughly ruined before I gave in to easy (well, easier) mode.
The Hungry Fly (PC) – Well this was an experience. You buzz around as a fly, looking for things to eat. Those things are… not what you’d expect, in most cases. It’s a very surreal kind of game, and I have no idea what, if anything, it was trying to say. Sadly, not engaging enough for me to have kept playing for all three endings.
Continue reading MEVGWU: January 2026It’s 2026 now. You know, a new year and all. You know what’s not new? Aggressive Inline for the GameCube. That’s kinda what I’ve been playing the most of over the last few days.
I don’t think I’ve ever really written about it at length, but I have a very strong proclivity for skate-based games. Whether said skates be of the board or inline variety, as long as I’m rolling around and flying off ramps and doing tricks and grinds and generally being a menace to society, I’m very happy. The very early 2000s soundtracks also help out a lot.
I loaded up Aggressive Inline just for a little taste the other night, and then ended up accidentally playing it until 2AM. I don’t stay up until 2AM anymore (on purpose). And I didn’t even get past the first stage.
Of course, a reasonable chunk of that time was spent on the rather robust tutorial, re-learning how to play the game and how the controls differ from Tony Hawk’s. I played dozens upon dozens of hours of this game back in the day -or at least that’s how I remember it- but my Pro Skater muscle memory is still much stronger, and the slightly different button layout really ended up throwing me for a loop. By the end of my first session, I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the control scheme, but I was getting there.
And then there was the “difficult” choice of choosing a skater to play as. The game comes loaded with something like a dozen facsimiles of real-life roller-blade mans, and I don’t know a single one of them. My passion for skating lies entirely in the video games and the general culture, not the athletes. But for the sake of “diversity” (oh and how that has changed in the last 20 years), there are also two playable female characters, both of them custom-made for the game. Because there were no real girls that rollerbladed in 2002, of course. And one of those fictional girls, Chrissy, I’m sure exists solely as a showcase for Z-Axis’ then-innovative boob-jiggling physics technology. And oh lordy, do those boobs a-jiggle. Like, way way too much.
So of course I was playing as Chrissy. I always did. It’s tradition.
There isn’t really a ton I can say about my actual experience with the game, other than I forgot how different it is from the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise. Yeah, it’s the same in that you pick a stage and then complete challenges, but you’re not on a hard timer in Aggressive Inline. Instead, you have a juice meter that’s very slowly running down. You can refill it by doing tricks and collecting gigantic, glowing juice boxes that are scattered about the stages. And it really doesn’t take a lot of tricking to get it back to full, either, so it’s very easy to end up playing a single session for, well, hours. While it does lose that “just one more run” effect by essentially giving you unlimited time to play, it’s maybe even harder to put down because you basically need to choose when you’re going to end your session. I suppose bad players could, in theory, actually run out of juice, but I’m not exactly a super star myself and I was never once in danger of a Game Over.
My one real true beef with Aggressive Inline is the soundtrack. But not for the choice of music. Perish the thought! I’ve regularly listened to it as a YouTube playlist over the years. No, I hate how short it is. In my couple hours of play, I must have cycled through the entire track list at least three times. Maybe even four. I wasn’t exactly counting. I’m not going to look it up or anything, but I think that a generous guess would place it at thirteen songs. For a PS1 game, okay, maybe that would have been sufficient. But this is PS2 era! They could have easily fit double that amount in there. I’m sure it’s was more of a licensing limitation though; Acclaim folded in 2004, so I doubt that in 2002 they were just throwing around bags of money. Or maybe they were and that’s exactly why they went defunct. Who knows? Not I. For whatever reason, there’s just not nearly enough music in this game.
Oh, and also someone really dropped the ball on balancing the audio levels for the music. Some songs are significantly louder than others, and there’s at least one in there that you can barely even hear over the clack-clack-clack of your skates.
So yeah! It’s been great fun! I don’t know how much I’ll really end up playing, but I do want to at least unlock all the levels to get the full breadth of the experience. Completing all the objectives and finding all the collectibles is… maybe not as high up there on the priority list, but we’ll see! If I continue having as much fun as I have been so far, I might finally finish the game for the first time ever. It’s weird that I played it as much as I did but never truly beat it, right?
This is the last game on this list that was made before the year 2000, I swear.
Silent Hill. It’s iconic. Maybe less so than its sequel, but I’ve always preferred the original, myself. Yes, I’ve played it before. Just like Donkey Kong ’94, I’ve played it many times. Maybe even dozens of times, as there was a point in my life where I was trying to speedrun it and get a perfect 10-star ending. And if you don’t really know what that means, don’t worry about it. It’s not relevant to normal people.
I think we all kinda know the broad strokes of the story here: Harry Mason and his daughter Cheryl are heading off on a vacation to the town of Silent Hill, when a ghostly figure suddenly appears from the fog, causing Harry to swerve and crash his car. When he comes to, Cheryl has disappeared, and he finds himself in a town that is mostly vacant, save for a handful of random oddball characters and a legion of monsters.
I picked this one up again to play on Halloween night, and, uh… mostly made it all the way through in one go. It seems that in the few years since I had last played it, my memory of what to do and where to go had eroded a bit more than I’d expected. Most notably, I completely forgot where the rifle is picked up, missed it, and then realized that you’re unable to ever go back for it. Fortunately, it’s not really required to finish the game, but watching those rifle bullets stack up in my inventory, forever unused, really broke my heart.
The thing I like most about Silent Hill is how absolutely weird and mysterious it is. I did a lot of unnecessary exploring during this run, and noticed a lot of hidden details that I don’t remember ever seeing before, which helped to clarify a few parts of the story a little, but so much still remains up to the player’s imagination. I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life, if not more, researching the Silent Hill lore, and the fact that I still can’t explain everything about the game makes me happy.
While it was a revisit of a well-worn classic, it was one that filled my heart. I only wish that Konami would port it to more machines, because the knockoff PS3 controller I used to play it is not great and caused great cramping in my thumb-parts. And even though a big-budget remake is right around the corner, even if Bloober Team completely nails it, I don’t think the janky ol’ PS1 version will ever be dethroned as my very favourite Silent Hill.
I honestly don’t know if this one is cheating or not. I guess it doesn’t really matter.
UFO 50 is, indeed, a collection of 50 different video games. And to be quite honest, I haven’t even played all of them yet. maybe about half, if I’m being generous. But what I’ve played has generally been quite good! Since these games are all very retro-styled and distinct from each other, it’s quite a diverse grab bag, which is good because anyone should be able to find at least one game that really works for them, but also bad because there are few real stinkers.
The collection itself tells the story of a made-up game development studio, as each game in the collection is one of their releases over however many years. But unlike Retro Game Challenge, the framing device isn’t very substantial, and while it offers some nice extra flavour that ties everything together, the real focus here is are the actual games within.
Off the top of my head, I think probably the game that I’ve spent the most time with so far is Barbuta, which is a side-scrolling platformer of sort, with some puzzle and action elements. It’s slow, and difficult, and gives you absolutely no help in figuring out where to go or what to do, but that’s actually what I like about it. I’ve spent a ton of time mapping out the game’s world and trying to piece together how to complete it, but still haven’t actually managed to get to the end. But one day I will. Probably not until I’m retired and actually have time for games like this, but one day…
The game I’ve had the most fun with, on the other hand, is Velgress. This is another platformer, but this time it’s vertically-scrolling. Velgress looks a lot like Kid Icarus at first, but then you start playing it and realize that it’s much less forgiving and will require much more practice and patience to finish. Velgress also sticks to the vertical-scrolling stages and never gives you the dungeons or side-scrollers that Kid Icarus offers, but that’s fine. What’s there is plenty entertaining on its own and even though it’s only four stages long, it kept me busy for hours. Even after I managed to beat it, I just kept playing because it’s so much fun.
Some other games that I really liked in the collection include: Magic Garden, a game about moving about a checkerboard while saving slimes and avoiding mushrooms. Ninpek is an action-heavy auto-scrolling platformer about ninjas and sandwiches. Kick Club feels a lot like Bubble Bobble, but instead of shooting bubbles at enemies, you’re kicking around a soccer ball. Camouflage is a brilliant puzzle game where you play as a chameleon trying to save its babies by using the different environment tiles to avoid predators. And lastly, Block Koala, which looks like The Adventures of Lolo, but is made even harder by incorporating math.
All the games I’ve mentioned so far have made UFO 50 worth playing, and I probably would have played them all a ton if they had been real NES games that I’d owned back in the day. But that’s also kind of a curse because it’s hard to stick to any one of these games for too long when you have 49 more right there vying for your attention. Suffice it to say, I have a very high opinion of UFO 50 as a collection, and there’s still so many games in it that I haven’t even tried yet. This is a must-buy for anyone who likes retro games and hates how expensive modern games are getting.
While most of my top 25 games of 2025 were actually released in 2025, some of them were not. The oldest on the list by a country mile is Donkey Kong ’94.
Okay, so right off the bat, let’s cover the big questions on everyone’s mind: yes, I have played this game before. I’ve played this game many times before, in fact. I had the original Game Boy cartridge as a kid, and it was one of my absolute favourites on the system. Right up there with Pokémon Blue and Wario Land 2. The last time I had played it was, I believe, in 2011 when it was released as a Virtual console title on 3DS, and this year, it was added to Nintendo Switch Online’s Game Boy library, so it was definitely time for another run.
What is, at first, seemingly just a remake of the classic arcade Donkey Kong game, is in fact a massively expanded version of said game. You’ll play as Mario, climbing the the four classic stages that you know so well to rescue the fair lady Pauline from her captor, the titular gorilla, Donkey Kong. But then, just when it seems that you’ve defeated DK, he hops back up, snatches Pauline again, and runs off toward a whole new set of stages.
Nine new sets of stages, to be precise. Mario will chase DK all across the lands, through biomes such as the big city, a jungle, an airplane, and an iceberg, all culminating in a final battle atop a giant tower that is adorned by a massive statue of DK’s head. I don’t know when DK got this tower canonically or where in the Super Mario World it’s located, but I’ve certainly never seen it on DK Island.
Unlike the raw action of the original Donkey Kong game, this one is a puzzle-platformer, with each stage requiring you to find a key and then bring it to a locked door to continue your chase. Mario has like a billion different jump techniques in his arsenal, and he can pick up and toss enemies and objects, much like in Super Mario Bros 2. The puzzle elements often show up in levers that change the way platforms move or open doors, and blocks that temporarily create floors and ladders. Sometimes just getting from one end of the stage to the other is the challenge, and other times you have a strict time limit to deal with. Each world has not one, but two face-offs against the big ape himself, usually requiring you to dodge junk that DK throws at you and then chuck it back at him.
Like I said before, this is one of my all-time favourite Game Boy games, and coming back to it after so long did not disappoint. It’s honestly a little bit easier than I remember, but I do have many, many more years of video game experience under my belt at this point. Playing through this one again made me really happy, and also made me consider giving the GBA sequel, Mario vs Donkey Kong, another shot as well. But that’s a story for another day…
Some retro games are just retro as an aesthetic. Other retro games are retro because they are top-down love letters to the 80s. The next entry on my list, Prison City, rests firmly in the latter camp.
Prison City, as per the Steam store’s description, is a “dystopian, action-packed side-scroller with tight mechanics and intricate level design.” That’s all 100% true. It’s also more or less Escape From New York but with the serial numbers filed off. And I adore that about it.
You play as Hal Bruzer, a retired solider who has been called back to duty to infiltrate Detroit, which has been turned into a gigantic prison colony, and take down the techno-terrorists who have taken over the city and are presumably plotting something nefarious. The game opens with eight stages that you get to choose from freely, and then gives you a few more stages that serve as the finale, Mega Man-style.
The initial eight stages can be explored rather freely, and your goal is typically to find one of Hal’s allies, then locate and defeat the boss. Each stage also has a hidden power-up that will improve Hal’s abilities permanently, and a mini-game that you can play afterward to earn extra lives. One of the final stages is a huge map that you can roam around freely, where your objective is to place a number of bombs in specific locations. It reminded me strongly of the NES G.I. Joe game that I had as a kid and could never beat.
There’s also a ton of replay value in this one, with several different difficulty levels, a rather large list of achievements to earn, and even an extra “bomber mode” that unlocks once you beat the game.
Obviously the old-school action-platformer gameplay is the main thing that caught my attention, but I also ended up being completely charmed by the 80s aesthetic and references to movies and games of the era. Each boss is radically different, and quite honestly, I accidentally started with the hardest one, and it almost frustrated me enough that I was going to quit the game. But I pressed on, and I’m so glad that I did, because everything that came afterward seemed as if it was crafted specifically to my tastes.
The thing that really won me over, though, was the fact that there’s a cheesy (but incredible) rap song that plays over the credits. Which is just so very 80s, in all the ways. The whole soundtrack is pretty damn good, actually, and it’s available on Bandcamp. I played this game all the way back in January and I still listen to the soundtrack all the time while working, drawing, and driving.
So yeah, there’s no question here. Prison City is absolutely one of the best games I’ve played this year. It’s a rock-solid platformer that boasts a killer soundtrack and has character to spare. What else could you even ask for? …Some spare time to play through it again, would be my answer.
The Trees Holding Heaven (PC) – A teeny-tiny “horror” game, which is mostly just a parable about not disposing of science water in the forest. It did legitimately cause me to scream, so that’s a thing.
Ramona – Play With Me demo (PC) – You ought to know how I feel about Doesn’t Matter Games by now. This is the demo for an upcoming title. It’s… exactly what you’d expect if you’re familiar with the developer. I liked it!
The Moth Inside Me (PC) – A horror game made for the “2024 LSD Game Jam”, which should tell you all you need to know. Great atmosphere, and some parts definitely resonated with me. While I think it was often a little too hard to figure out what to do next, I did enjoy it overall.
Continue reading Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: October 2025