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 2026Mighty 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 2026Every once in a while, one of the videos I create gets a little bit of traction (for me, that means double-digit views), and I don’t know why. Here’s the latest example:
Why has this most basic of games been the magic catalyst for engagement? I have a hypothesis, but I really don’t know enough about YouTube’s algorithm to be at all confident in it.
Anyway, it clearly won’t be long now before I’m a world-famous influencer, so this is your chance to get in on the bottom level so you can say “I was watching his videos before it was cool.”
I’ll also be posting some written content soon. I haven’t forgotten about that. It’s just that after the Top 25 of 25, I really didn’t want to have anything to do with writing or recording videos for a while. That project was too big and too last-minute, and not quite as much fun as I thought it would be.
I published my very first YouTube short today. Your lack of respect for me is now entirely valid.
This was mostly a “how does this work?” kind of thing, both on the YouTube and WordPress sides. And now I know that shorts don’t embed nicely. Why is it so gigantic? And why can’t I (easily) resize it?
Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Switch2) – The Mega Dimension DLC is a little repetitive, but good gravy did it ever rope me in good. The new mega evolutions are also awesome and wild, with many of them being for Pokémon you really wouldn’t have expected to get a mega. I just really like this game in general, and I’m happy for additional content, even if it was muy expensivo.
Kirby Air Riders (Switch2) – Cleared the Road Trip mode, but will be playing it more to unlock the true ending. Also just played a bunch in general, both on my own and online multiplayer. This game is the most fun 🙂
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch2) – Been waiting for this one for what, like 20 years? Maybe it’s more like 17 or 18, but man… It was worth it. While it’s a bit too linear and doesn’t top the heights of Prime 1, in my opinion, it’s still really good. It still gives you the opportunity to explore a Metroid game in first-person, and that’s all I really want in life. Now, to replay it on hard mode…
Continue reading Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: December 2025If you didn’t see this one coming… I wouldn’t blame you. I didn’t either.
I wrote out a love letter to Lorelei and the Laser Eyes back in January. And it’s not quite as long as I remember it being, so rather than try to come up with fresh words about it, I will just point to that link at the top of the paragraph and say “read that, won’t you?”
And if you don’t read it, well… there’s not much I can do about that.
At the end of the day, I think it says a lot about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes that I wish I could scrub my memory so that I could play it fresh all over again. This is, unfortunately the kind of game you can only properly experience once, as you solve the puzzles and try to piece together the story. It was a masterclass in both adventure and puzzle games, and I still find myself thinking about it sometimes as I’m drifting off to sleep. Or daydreaming at my desk. Or cooking. Or doing pretty much anything. This game left a mark on me, is what I’m saying.
Look, I said that the last one would be the last indie horror game, and what I meant was, it was the last horror game with no budget. Steel Wool Studios is an independent developer, but they’ve got Scott Cawthon money to make their games with.
No lies, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool FNAF fanboy. This was always going to happen. But I think, more than anything, the leap in quality over Security Breach is what is securing Secret of the Mimic‘s place on this list. I don’t even have words for how much better this game is than its older brother. Like, Security Breach was almost as much of a dumpster fire as Cyberpunk 2077, and Secret of the Mimic is improved significantly in every single way.
Secret of the Mimic does a very ballsy thing and strips away years upon years of FNAF lore to take place as the very first game in the timeline. You play as a poorly-treated Fazbear Entertainment technician, assigned to retrieve something seemingly quite valuable from the run-down old headquarters of a competing mascot company, Murray’s Costume Manor. Over the course of the game, you’ll learn that the place isn’t quite as abandoned as it first seems, and slowly unravel what happened to MCM and how it ties into the greater FNAF canon.
The gameplay is kind of like a Metroidvania Lite, with a little bit of puzzle solving, a sprinkle of mini-games, several hide-and-seek sections, and a number of harrowing chase sequences. So, Resident Evil 7 without any guns. It keeps things fresh by always throwing something new at you, and I appreciate that you’re generally pretty free to explore the Manor at your leisure. It’s a pretty small map, but it never feels that way because it’s very tightly designed, and there are so many details and secrets to find all over the place.
Now, let’s talk lore. That’s what you come to the FNAF series for more than anything, right? Don’t get me wrong, Secret of the Mimic was a blast to play, but this is the kind of game where I’m much more invested in the audio logs and documents scattered about. And Secret of the Mimic does not disappoint! Where Security Breach barely told a story at all, Secret of the Mimic nails it, and re-contextualizes so many things that to call it mind-blowing would be an understatement. And the penultimate sequence, when you find yourself in the you-know-where? Muah! The fanservice is strong with this one.
All in all, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic was a very satisfying game. The world was interesting and fun to explore, the story was as wild as ever, and the animatronics became genuinely terrifying again. It was more than I expected, though to be fair, my expectations weren’t exactly high. But it was a great time, and I look forward to someday finally taking the time to find all the collectibles and get the secret ending.
Final indie horror game on the list here, but I promise to you it’s a good one. Maybe even the best of the bunch (depending on your tastes).
Listen, we all know I’ve got a thing about old-school survival horror games. I’ve already done a whole spiel about the original Silent Hill, and as good as (most of) the Resident Evil remakes are, my heart will always pull me towards the PS1 originals. And so while it has nicer graphics than those classics, The Mute House really won me over by being very much made in the same vein as them. It’s even got the fixed camera angles!
The story follows a young police officer, searching a spooky old mansion for her missing sister. However, what she finds there is much more deadly: zombies! And also some other random mutants and monsters. You know, the usual. There’s also a mysterious fellow lurking about in the shadows, and it’s unclear whether he’s here to help or hinder your quest. All you can know for sure is whatever is written down in the notes you find that tell the backstory of the manor and the folks who used to live there.
Gameplay is… well, it’s classic survival horror. Run around the mansion, looking for keys to unlock doors, items and clues to solve puzzles, and whatever meager scraps of ammo you can find. As always, unraveling the giant puzzle box that is the game is the most satisfying part, but having to deal with all the monsters in your way can be good fun too. Especially if you pay attention to the tutorial! There’s actually button you can use to free-aim so you can target monsters’ weak points, but I did not realize that until I had finished the game and started a second run, and it made life so much easier. Not like too easy or anything, but way less frustrating!
Speaking of frustrating, that’s a good way to describe most of the bosses. Each one has its own gimmick, which is exactly how bosses should be, but they are all absolute units and will chew through your stocks of ammo. One boss you can actually beat without firing a shot if you’re clever, but I can’t say that any of the others have much more to them than to unload all your bullets into them and hope they die before you run out of heals. But hey, that’s part of the challenge, right?
Aside from the whole free-aim thing, I don’t think that The Mute House really does anything especially unique with its premise, but it’s does everything well. The puzzles are good, there are a handful of cool secrets to find, it has some genuinely frightening moments, and the difficulty is balanced very well. There’s even an unlockable hard mode, which I did play immediately after finishing the game, because I liked it so much.
Honestly, I would like nothing more than to get a console port of The Mute House so I could play it in an environment that’s not my computer desk. It’s a great little game that you can run in around two hours, and I absolutely would if I could do so from the comfort of my couch. Yeah, the free-aiming would be a little harder to implement for controller, but that’s exactly what Switch 2’s mouse controls are for! Anyway, I really adored this game, and I would recommend it to anyone who even a faint appreciation for old-school survival horror.
While it’s not the only VR game I’ve played this year, it’s the only one I’ve spent more than like an hour with.
Vampire Survivors is nothing new; it’s been out for a few years, have been ported to almost everything under the sun, and has spawned a fair number of copycats. However! In 2025, it mysteriously got a VR version, which is not something that I ever really knew I wanted, until one day when I put on my headset and it was all like “Hey we’ve got Vampire Survivors now!” And because I am more than happy to own Vampire Survivors on as many machines as possible, I bought it right away.
Now, we all know how the game works, right? You pick a character and a stage, which then has you fending off never-ending waves of monsters for as long as you can. Defeated monsters drop experience points, and when you level up, you get to choose from a new weapon or item that will help you keep fighting the good fight. Your gear can level up to become more effective, and eventually you’ll even be able to evolve your weapons, which will make them even better at slaying hundreds of thousands of monsters. Then if you manage to survive for 30 minutes, the grim reaper shows up to kill you instantly and the game is over.
There is a little more to it than that, and Vampire Survivors has a lot of secrets to discover, but that’s the gist of it. In between rounds you can use coins you earn in battle to upgrade your stats permanently and unlock new characters, each with his or her or its own special trait. There’s a bestiary where you can read about all the monsters you’ve slain, and a compendium of all the items, weapons, and evolved weapons you’ve discovered. Maybe there’s even more buried in there, I don’t know. For all the hours I’ve spent playing different ports of this game, I’ve never unlocked everything.
Sadly, the VR version doesn’t add a whole lot to the mix. Mostly you just get to look around 3D environments while you’re poking around the menus. The actual gameplay takes place in a 3D area based on the stage you’re on, but the game is played on something of a tabletop within that area, so it’s exactly the same as you’re used to. The one really nice touch is that all the sprites and environments are in three dimensions on that tabletop, which gives the game at least a little more depth than the flat versions we’ve all become accustomed to. And maybe there’s more to it as you progress, I don’t know, but I do hope there are at least a couple more surprises that make use of the VR setting.
So while the core gameplay of Vampire Survivors hasn’t changed in its transition to virtual reality, it has done at least one very important thing: made me spend dozens more hours playing Vampire Survivors. And hey, as a little bonus, since the Quest 3’s battery life is so ass, I only end up playing for about two hours at a time, and don’t lose entire days to it. Which I absolutely would if I were given my way, because one of the hardest things to do in life is to stop playing Vampire Survivors.
