MEVGWU: January 2026

Ah, it’s a new year again. Seems like these keep coming around at fairly regular intervals. How odd…

~ Game Over ~

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 2026

TGISGF

Every 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.

New Year, Old Skates

It’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?

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: December 2025

~ Game Over ~

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 2025

Top 25 of ’25: Donkey Kong Bananza

If you’ve read all the entries thus far, this one shouldn’t surprise you. I mean, what was the high-profile Nintendo release that I hadn’t written about yet?

  • Release year: 2025
  • Developer: Nintendo
  • Platform: Switch2

While it was somewhat visible from the initial reveal and the marketing that came afterwards, I didn’t really realize until I started playing the game myself that Donkey Kong Bananza is effectively a spiritual sequel to Super Mario Odyssey. It’s got the same look, similar gameplay (at least at a very high level), and a surprisingly similar feel, considering how different Mario and Donkey Kong play. But it a very welcome surprise, and that’s a huge part of the game’s appeal, at least to me.

Donkey Kong Bananza opens with DK arriving at Ingot Isle, where a bunch of monkeys have started a large gold mining operation. Why DK is suddenly interested in gold is beyond me, but it might have something to do with the banandium gems that are also being excavated. Before long, a huge, ominous orb-thing appears in the sky and sinks Ingot Isle into the earth, sucking DK down along with it. Deep in the newly-formed crater, DK meets a small, purple rock creature, whose singing seems like it’ll come in handy for dispelling mysterious barriers that have appeared all around. And so the journey deep into the earth, to find out what’s going on and collect as many banandium gems as possible begins…

Though a lot of DK Bananza is structured much like Super Mario Odyssey, the main gameplay is definitely more akin to The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, as DK’s main method of doing just about anything is to punch. He can punch forwards, upwards, and downwards to destroy terrain, objects, and enemies, as well as perform his patented ground-slap that collects any nearby items. DK can tear chunks out of the ground (or walls, or ceilings), which he can then either throw, or simply use as a bat to destroy ever-more effectively. As a gorilla, DK is also able to scale just about any surface, so if punching isn’t getting you somewhere, you can just climb.

Very early on in the game, the purple rock character I mentioned before is revealed to actually be a cursed Pauline – you know, the woman that gets kidnapped in the original Donkey Kong arcade game? Except she’s a teen girl here, and she tags along with DK throughout the journey, using her ability to sing to unlock the path forward and special bonus challenge rooms. Eventually, her singing also allows DK to mega-evolve into multiple different animal forms, each with their own unique set of abilities. Having not paid attention to basically any of the pre-release hype, I had no idea about these transformations, and they were a wonderful surprise. So, sorry I spoiled them for you, I guess.

DK and Pauline will travel through plenty of different worlds throughout their journey, from a pleasant meadow, to a scenic chain of islands, to a fast-food theme park,and along the way they’ll meet plenty of other characters. Most of those characters will be fractones, a race of gem-people that can form into different colours and shapes, but you’ll also meet a bunch of animal tribes who’ve adapted to life underground, as well as some new simian antagonists and even a handful of familiar faces.

Playing this game, I think, would be roughly comparable to injecting pure joy directly into your brainy parts. Running around and smashing everything in sight feels wonderful, and while not every stage is massive, they’re all extremely fun to explore, with secrets and collectibles hidden literally everywhere. Exploring the worlds is generally pretty breezy, and bonus rooms that feel a lot like shrines from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, are where most of the game’s challenge lives, though some of the bosses can be surprisingly difficult. Possibly the most shocking thing of all is that collecting banandium gems is not required at all, and rather than gating progression, they’re used to power up DK’s abilities and grant him new ones.

I’ve heard people online complain that the Switch 2’s first big 3D platformer isn’t a Mario game, but man, I could not care less. DK Bananza ended up being so much more fun than I ever expected, and thinking about it does nothing but bring me joy. The goofy, expressive characters, the colourful worlds, the god-tier soundtrack, and the focus on pure fun make this unquestionably my favourite video game of 2025. And that’s not even mentioning the last two hours of the game, which are nothing but pure, amazing, fanservice. I felt it would be too hard to actually rate all of my top 25 against each other, which is why I didn’t officially number any of the other entries, but I’ve known in my heart all along that Donkey Kong Bananza was going to come out on top.

Top 25 of ’25: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

If I were giving out silly titles to each of the games on this list, as I’ve done before, this one would be something like the “masterpiece that came out of nowhere” award.

  • Release year: 2025
  • Developer: Sandfall Interactive
  • Platform: PlayStation, Xbox, PC

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is just about everything that I like about video games, all boiled down into a single product. It’s a French JRPG-styled game that blends modern and classic game design elements into what is, in a way, the most Final Fantasy game that’s been made since FF9. I think probably the greatest injustice that I’ve committed all year is having not actually finished this game yet. I got close, right up to the final boss’ door, but then got swept away in all the optional stuff and eventually lost track of it somewhere.

At the outset of the game, you’re cast as Gustave, a man who will be joining the latest expedition to set off from the city of Lumiere on a journey to slay an entity known as The Paintress. Roughly 67 years before the game began, there was some vague disaster that shattered the world, and now, each year, The Paintress marks a number on the obelisk that she sits under, and when she does, everyone of that age or older simply vanishes. The painted number decreases by one every year, so it’s only a matter of time before humanity is erased completely if she is not stopped.

A massive part of what makes the game so appealing to me is the storytelling. Within the first hour of play, it’s already tugging at your heartstrings and establishing mysteries upon mysteries. And you know how I do quite enjoy a good mystery! Watching things unfold as Gustave and his crew solider on in their quest is always exciting, and this is one of the few games that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time, constantly pushing forward because I just had to know what was going to happen next. It never once disappointed.

Gameplay here is exceptionally tight, and again, does a fantastic job of combining classic and modern mechanics to great effect. Battles are turn-based affairs, where you command party of three, each equipped with up to six unique skills. Skills cost points to use, which are regenerated slowly over time, or are earned through special effects like hitting an enemy’s weakness or dodging an attack. Speaking of dodging, Clair Obscur implements a fantastic action command system, where you can use one button to dodge attacks, or a second button to parry and counterattack, although the second has much more precise timing. There’s also an elemental system, limit breaks, and items that you can find to outfit your team with all sorts of powerful passive abilities. It’s all here! Everything one could hope for!

The world is also exactly what I want from an RPG: a classic world map that you run around on, from which you can enter discrete stages and towns. You really don’t see that kind of design in high-profile games too often anymore, outside of the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler series. The stages themselves aren’t too long, and while they’re fairly linear, they are packed with secrets and hidden treasures that encourage and reward exploration, and many have areas that you won’t be able to reach until you come back later with a new traversal ability. The world map is huge and also filled with secrets, and you progress the game, you’ll be able to explore it more and more freely as you find ways to overcome obstacles, cross over the water, and even fly. There’s also a metric buttload of optional content, most of which involves platforming challenges, environmental puzzles, and/or extra-tough battles.

Now if all of that sounds nostalgic to you, well I guess you’ve probably also played a heck of a lot of Super Nintendo and PS1 JRPGs. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the best of both worlds; a rewarding, interesting game that plays to old-school sensibilities but is fully decked out with modern production values. The world, characters, story, music, and gameplay are all top-notch in my book, and there is no question that it is one of the best games made this year, which I think is exceptionally high praise! I can already tell you that my new year’s resolution for 2026 is going to be to finally finish it.