PWB Jan 26 & Overview 25

We didn't really do a end of year thread, so I'm just bundling that in here too.

Played '25
2025 was all about playing my favourite ever videogames. I started the year playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition, it's janky in places but it's still great. Then I replayed all of Celeste (erm, except for some of the crazy difficult bonus levels) and I think it has to be the best videogame ever made. Then I closed off the year getting absolutely engrossed with Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I had played BotW before but I didn't finish it, it is now one of my all-time favourites.

I did play a few other bits and pieces, but not a lot. Paper Mario Origami King was way better than it needed to be. Citizen Sleeper was pretty special.

Play '26
I'm almost finished playing Ocarina of Time 3DS. I've been enjoying it but mostly for nostalgia and curiosity - I wouldn't call it "good". It is interesting to see how much of it was reimagined in BotW.

I will be jumping into Tears of the Kingdom and Majora's Mask at some point soon.

I think Persona 4 is next to play.

Want & Bin
Please can 2026 be less stupid and far less fascist than 2025?

Played 2025

Like you I spent a lot of 2025 catching up on, or replaying, older stuff. I spent about three months on Tears of the Kingdom and it was absolutely superb; I also replayed Resident Evil 2 and Arkham Asylum and went back to the Final Fantasy 7 remake having previously abandoned it about halfway through. Also the Mario Galaxy re-releases on Switch. So some good solid games to revisit there and I'm glad I did.

In terms of new stuff, it was a quieter year - I adored Monster Train 2, had a laugh with Doom: The Dark Ages, enjoyed the first half of Avowed (but not so much the second half) and was impressed by South of Midnight. I was really looking forward to both Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders and Power Wash Simulator 2 but neither of them have grabbed me like their predecessors did - maybe it's just too much of the same thing. I really admired Clair Obscur but did bounce off it and I should probably go back and play it on easy mode one day.

For all the problems that Xbox undoubtedly has at the moment, Game Pass still constitutes about 90% of my gaming time. I think it's inevitably going to die a death at some point and I will really miss it when it goes.

Play 2026

I'm on the final chapter of the FF7 Remake so that will probably be my first completion of the year. I'm also enjoying Deep Rock Galactic Survivor for a bit of simple blasting time.

Want

I have no idea what's coming out this year so I'm just going to take it as it comes. However I have a few games in my backlog I want to get to, most notably the Resident Evil 4 remake, Lost Judgement and Metafor: ReFantazio. So I've got plenty to play.

Bin

I've tried the second scenario in the RE2 remake and it's just a super-hard remix of the first run really - I'm running around with no ammo, about three times as many zombies and Mr X chasing me down relentlessly at double the speed he went before, and I'm not having a great time. I think I might just move to something else.

Played 2025
I seem to have missed most of the big hitters from the year - didn't play Clair Obscur, haven't got GamePass, and don't own a Switch. Most of what I've done (aside from semi-regular jaunts on the Sea of Thieves) is flying revisits - Elite Dangerous, Forza Horizon 5 (on PS5), and latterly the Tomb Raiders.

Play 2026
I'm only a few levels from the end of Tomb Raider II (Floating Islands can do one). I won't be too sorry to see the back of it - despite remembering this as a bit of a favourite in the series, it's a bit of a chore, with far too much combat and not nearly the same sense of exploration of the original. I have almost no memory of III, so that'll be interesting.

The Expanse: A Telltale Series was very cheap in a sale, so I picked that up. The character models are extremely uncanny, but it's good to hear Cara Gee's Drummer yelling at people again.

I've made a little progress in the Star Wars Outlaws DLC, but as ever got sidetracked with open-world nonsense. It's a pretty great rendition of the galaxy to get lost in, though.

Want
The upcoming Tomb Raiders, Legacy of Atlantis and Catalyst, are probably at the top of the list. Maybe also the Tomb Raider Anniversary remaster? I've played it before, and Legacy of Atlantis might render it somewhat redundant, but I'm feeling weirdly completionist about my Tomb Raider of late. I'm sure it'll pass.

There's a game I saw somewhere called People of Note that's a proper turn-based rhythm RPG, and might be more like what I wanted from Stray Gods.

Warren Spector's upcoming Dishonored-style PvPvE burglary game, Thick as Thieves, has been on my wishlist since it was announced, but I have no idea when it's supposed to be out.

I'd really like Sucker Punch to pack in the Ghost of… stuff and make (or remaster?) some inFamous, but that's real pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Bin
Anything that uses "generative" "AI". I've steadfastly refused to buy ARC Raiders because of its AI-generated voice work, and even Clair Obscur dropped off the wishlist after that was de-awarded for using it, too (and yes, I know it was patched out). It might be a futile stance to take, and I'm one very tiny drop in an extremely large ocean, but what use is a principle otherwise?

Played 2025
Clair Obscur is a game I think is also deserving of the almost comical praise it got and I think the E33 haters are more annoying the E33 glazers it has to be said, not saying you can't hate it but some people clearly have a chip on their shoulder over it being the sacred cow right now. I also played BG3 last year and I think it's one of the best games I've ever played.

Strange as it seems, emulation was a big part of my year, partly because I have like 8 or so devices at this point but also, I can't take my Switch 2 or Steam Deck into work, but I can take my RP Mini or Odin 2 Mini into work and play Gamecube games during my work break, through this alone I've beaten the entire Shadow Hearts Tetralogy(Quadrilogy? Yes Koudelka counts fight me) in commutes/work and they're full on PS2 RPGs, as well as Fire Emblem on the Gamecube.

Nintendo adding Gamecube to the NSO and with good titles is a great sign though, the more availability rises, the less I need to do it. They added Soul Calibur 2 too late for me, but Sony DID add Soul Calibur 3 to PSN and I've abruptly stopped my playthrough on the O2M to just play that version, availability is cool!

Play 2026
Need to get back to Atelier Yumia but I think I still want to rejoin Samus on a few more adventures. I am in dire need of another commute game so I think I'll get back to We Love Katamari which I think is the sequel.

Also I would really like get back to reading my Visual Novels on the steam deck, other than that I am trying to play Ys 1 as much as I can without a guide and I got way further than I thought, it's actually not that confusing pre-Darm Tower, it's also a little gem of a game in my opinion, it's just not all that newbie friendly.

Want
Trails Beyond the Horizon is out this very month, the 13th game in the series, I'm obviously really excited for it (Rean is back ) but I'm even more excited for the Trails 2nd Chapter remake, which is my favourite of the entire series, the first game remake released late last year and as far as remakes go it's one of my favourites, up there with Resi 2.

Played 2025
A lot of 2025's big hitters didn't land for me. Of all the Game Awards nominees, only Donkey Kong grabbed me. That's just personal taste, it was clearly a year of incredible games, but I didn't have the glut of AAA titles everyone else seems to have enjoyed.

Instead, 2025 was the year I rediscovered the joy of old PC games. Or rather, realised that games from 2015 are now old. No live service bollocks, no ray-traced lighting to reduce my computer to a blubbering wreck, and still modern enough to have most of the QoL features I expect.

To that end, I've ploughed through Deus Ex, Fallout New Vegas, Halo Reach, Just Cause 3, Hitman, and a whole lot more. With the RAM thing getting more ridiculous by the day (I read on eurogamer today that they expect a 5090 graphics card to hit $5000 by the end of the year), 2025 might end up being the cut-off year for games I can realistically enjoy on my PC.

Play 2026
I'm enjoying Metroid Prime 4 more than most. It's a very funneled experience, but in 120fps it still feels great to play. The game-design fossils are all too apparent (open world, chatty friends), but I still reckon this is better than most AAA output. It's just going to suffer in comparison to Prime 1 which was, let's be fair, perfect.

Hitman. Now that I finally own this, and have gathered all of my progression into one save, I might be playing this until 2027.

Additional Play:

I got given Myst for Christmas, so I've been clicking helplessly around mysterious, low-resolution puzzles. I've never played any of these before (very few point-and-click games at all, tbh), and it really doesn't hold your hand at all - I was stuck for about 45 minutes knowing that I had to rotate something, but unable to figure out how. Got there in the end, then went through the entire next island but forgot to pick something up, and now need to go back and do it all again. Yay!

I am enjoying it, though.

Grab a notepad, if you haven't already.

Tried Ghostrunner a bit and I'm not sure on it yet, it's probably just me but it does feel as polished as it think it is for the type of game it is (speedrunning parkour cyber ninja simulator). I'll try play some more but the flow isn't quite there in the way that it is for Neon White, I know Ghostrunner is a melee game and NW is an FPS but they're in the same tree it feels like.

Didn't help that there was Plot Exposition after the second level in the form of some enemy-less platform jumping whilst listening to someone talk at me for a fair bit, at least in Neon White you can skip the story scenes.

Not going to start any new big game yet until the new Trails game is out, so I might aswell just play a lot of Sektori

Hitman. Now that I finally own this, and have gathered all of my progression into one save, I might be playing this until 2027.

I'm back on the Hitman train too at the moment, having played and thoroughly enjoyed a couple of Elusive Targets lately, it's got me back into it. There are still a few levels I haven't got Mastery 20 on (because I'd got them when I'd originally played on PS2) so I've been tackling those. I'm still blown away by how much stuff there is in this game now, and how good it all is. Every single level is a masterpiece in its own way.

Apparently they are doing a rerun of 12 Elusive Targets later this month, and then another 12 a couple of weeks after that, so a good chance to catch up on any you've missed or haven't seen before.

I keep thinking of going back to Hitman but I know that I'd struggle to get into the mindset required to stalk around and re-learn everything (not to mention finding the time). Might redownload it anyway, see if the icon on the dashboard guilts me into that over Arkham City or Sleeping Dogs.