My games that I played on Steam in 2025. Like last year I'm going to pick my favourite 5 games from what I first played this year, listed in playtime order (no bearing on quality): 1. Umamusume: Pretty Derby 2. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 3. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds 4. Tunic 5. Beyond Citadel One common theme of all of these games is that they were all sleeper hits for me and pretty much surpassed my expectations (I played E33 on release before it mega blew up). So to address the domineering game in the room. Umamusume is a very easy game to leave running in the background and I don't have a problem ok? We clear? Joking aside the game is very fun, but a good 1/3 - 1/2 of the playtime probably is the game running idle while I'm at work. Some honourable mentions of the lesser known games would be: - Crow Country - Alisa - Labyrinth of the Demon King All small scale indie horror games that I enjoyed a lot and more people should try out. Devil May Cry and Atelier Rorona are games I played years ago, just not on steam. Fantastic games obviously, but not the first time I played them so they don't count here. Rogue Trader and Star Ocean 2 are a couple of games I need to get back to. Both were pretty great, but I ended up getting distracted from them, so I never finished either. Now both are sat in the infinite backlog. To close out, looking back on these games, they're all pretty damn good to be honest. A grand majority of these games are worth looking at if any look interesting at a glance.

Reyn telling Shulk to stop being a retard about his visions is well deserved. Shulk may be trusted to take off his autism helmet yet.

Jesus Fucking Christ. Hang the lot at this point. The social services can swing with the rapists.

10 hours in xenoblade 1. Currently running around the Brionis leg, doing sidequests after rescuing Juju. So far Story: Pretty good, though Shulk is a bit annoying seeing the future and not telling anyone (especially when it involves them dying). Combat: I like it, however it's a bit on the slow/basic side atm. I expect it to improve with more characters and harder enemies (I've out levelled everything reasonable atm). Character building: I can see the potential with the arts, gem system and character skills. Music: Great. Sidequests: MMO tier (not good). Areas/locations: Personally I find them too big for what they offer so far. Exploration: somewhat non-existent. Unless you have a quest to go to a place, there's no reason to actually explore outside some exp or the odd side boss. Doing all the sidequests before moving on with the story is definitely slowing the pacing down, and they're not good enough to really justify it. But I want them all checked off anyway. I'm hoping they pick up as the game goes along.

Calling OoT Open World just shows how much the term "Open World" has been watered down. Open World has nothing to do with non-linearity, or even the freedom to go everywhere from the start. Early GTA's limited you to 1 island until you progressed the story (yes I know you can bypass this with glitches/skips but that's not the point). It's in the name Open "World". There needs to be a reactive world running in the background. Open World games are both a game that has an open map where the story takes place *and* a world which both reacts to your actions and NPC actions. To the point that the world will still react even when you're mid-mission or quest. There will be no, or extremely few areas, where the "world" doesn't apply. For example, if you run over a bunch of civilians mid-mission in GTA, the police will still arrive. NPC's in Bethesda games will die before you ever see them, because this time they decided to go through monster territory in search of a ham sandwich rather than staying in town. The world doesn't stop just because you're doing something else. That's Open World. Too many times people will conflate a game with just an open map with Open World, because Open World is a marketing tool.

Somewhat unrelated to the post, but the guard dying in the alleyway is a perfect encapsulation of why the darker atmosphere in OoT and MM works so well. Not particularly because characters die, but because the threat posed by the respective antagonists is treated with respect. The games show if Link doesn't stop them, there will be consequences. There's a certain biting realism to the danger. Obviously there are flaws such as the guard on the right just giving generic dialogue, but the existence of the left image is enough to stop you in your tracks and go "huh, didn't expect that". Compare this with Twilight Princess (I love TP as well), which while it's supposed to have a darker tone, the danger never feels real. Like there's a hidden line TP will never cross, which undermines the supposed darker tone the game is pretending it's going for. TP is a lighthearted game larping as a darker one. I do wonder if Nintendo will understand this distinction for the OoT remake.

RE6 has *many* issues for sure, but calling it a Gears of War clone is straight up incorrect. They are two completely different games. Plus RE6's issue isn't the combat system, it's that the game does everything in it's power to not let you engage with the combat, favouring gimmicks instead.

>If you change a major part of the game, people who liked it might not like it anymore Well yeah? Games are a visual medium, the visuals are a huge part of a game. People are allowed to not like anime. The more you try and victimise anime, the more people will hate it too.

Finished Mina the Hollower with 100% items collected. A great game. Personally I'd rate it 8-8.5/10. Best way I can describe it is it's Castlevania x Link to the Past merged together as a gameboy game. A very open game where you're free to explore and go through the game as you like. The exploration and platforming is surprisingly open ended. There's a ton of upgrades and trinkets/equipment which can absolutely break certain challenges and help kill enemies. Very much a game where if you're struggling in an area, go exploring somewhere else and you might find an item to help out significantly, on top of general health or stat boosts from leveling up. It was an incredibly polished experience to go through, and you can tell a lot of effort went into every aspect of the game. The reason why I don't give it a 9/10 or above, is because while the game is incredibly well made there were a lot of niggling design decisions which brought the experience down. Such as: some trinkets were OP, others were practically useless, Mina's raw/base gameplay is incredibly clunky without certain trinkets or power ups, the whole Dark Souls thing of losing sparks or bones on death really didn't need to be in a game about exploration, the difficulty is all over the place in terms of balancing etc. I could go on, but basically it's a bunch of minor issues that pile up for me personally. Though others may not have these issues. But again, the game was great very much enjoyed it and do recommend fans of this type of game keep an eye on it.

They also know if they fuck up RE1, a game where the current remake is touted as one of the best remakes of a game ever, they'll be ripped apart. RE1 will be the last remake they'll release, and my theory is RE10 will probably go back to the Spencer mansion/Arklay mountains.

I really do hope it's good. There's a very real conversation about pointless remakes/remake slop, but there is space to make some really cool stuff by taking older games and remixing them into a familiar yet new experience. Like how the 2002 remake of RE1 did.

I've been meaning to play through Xenoblade for ages now. Too many games man.

This Nintendo Direct has been great so far

I swear one of the reasons why Capcom games are so prevalent nowadays, is because they are completely willing to sell their games for peanuts after a couple of years.

I really should get around to playing Stellar Blade one day

Claire looks way better in the Code Veronica remake. The game looks to be a complete re-imagining rather than a remake, which I'm mixed on (though tbf that's been happening more and more as the remakes have gone on). CV was always my least favourite gameplay wise for the classic games, but the story was one of the funnest in RE. Not a fan of how Hunk's used in the trailer, but that ship already sailed with RE9. As normal I'll probably pick it up day 1.

For my last round up/final thoughts I have on Onimusha: WotS. The combat is what it is. I think there's fun to be had, though like everyone else has said, the enemy aggression needs to be increased as WotS has clearly put more emphasis on combat. Especially compared to Onimusha 1-3. I'm sad that Capcom has gone the more cinematic route for the combat system rather than the more faster, and responsive "arcade-y" combat of the older games though. Even more so, since with Pragmata some people at Capcom clearly still like the arcade-y design. What my real worry is, is Capcom has stripped out/dumbed down all the adventure game aspects the older games had in favour of just running through and killing dudes. I still want to explore to find power/magic jewels to increase your health/magic. I want there to be actual locked doors where you have to run to a new area to find the key (no the hidden thread guys are not the same). I want puzzles and puzzle boxes. I want lore books which may possibly have passwords etc. The demo didn't show any of that. While I understand a demo may not be able to show that kind of level design, the constant objective marker in the top left, and the thread guys you had to kill to remove barriers did not inspire confidence (on top of the map being a actual straight line). Plus no inventory menu also hints that the old-school level design not being used. It's still very likely going to be a good game which I'll likely play through at some point, but it comes across as a new trajectory not inline with the older series from what I got from the demo. Which begs the question, if the demo is fully representative of the full game, why revive the series only to change it this much?

Shit man. This is sad to hear. His videos with CGB and Rarran were great. Condolences to all his family and friends.

Getting annoyed with all Onimusha discourse being boiled down to only Issen's. The games are more than 1 (one) singular combat mechanic.