We played Slay the Spire over Christmas, which is a dauntingly huge box full of cards and boards that takes quite a while to set up, absolutely ages to play and another age to put away.
It's mostly notable for its absolute commitment to the bit: it features everything from the original game. Four characters, three Acts (plus a final Act and boss), hundreds of cards, Ascensions, unlockable cards, even a daily challenge mode. It's also really, really good: it's made a lot of tweaks to suit the board game format, almost every card and monster is different in some way, but it all feels exactly right in play and it's clearly had a huge amount of thought put into it. We played it two-player co-op and our experience with the videogame carried us a long way, I'd imagine it's tougher for newbies.
Next time we find ourselves with a spare day this is definitely hitting the table again - we played as the Ironclad and the Silent for our first game and I really want to see how they've implemented the other, more complex characters. It's a really clever thing and a lot of fun to play.
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.
Resident Evil 2 Remake
(Leon's story, anyway - I'm going to carry on and do Claire's "second run" now, despite my misgivings about how they've apparently dropped the ball a bit with the concept).
I really enjoyed revisiting this. It looks spectacular for a last-gen game (it's had some upgrades, though) and it has bags of atmosphere. The police station is the obvious highlight here, if the whole game had been as good as that it would have been a 100% all-time classic, but sadly the sewer section is a huge letdown and the final bit in the Umbrella labs, while good, can't quite turn it around.
I messed up my run quite a bit:
Spoiler - click to showI used up almost every bit of ammunition I had in the sewers section where you have to cross the waterway bit that's filled with the horrible sewer monsters, I don't really know how I was supposed to do that otherwise as there's no space to get around them, but I'm guessing there's a trick I missed. I also managed to completely miss picking up the flamethrower (actually in retrospect that might have been what I needed) and only realised when I kept collecting ammo for it later on - and that made the ivy zombies mighty tricky later on. I really thought I was going to run out of ammo completely during the last couple of boss fights but I made it through somehow. Didn't fancy doing those with the combat knife!
Lengthwise this is perfect, 6-8 hours is ideal to encourage replays and speed runs and all the various modes it offers.
They keep trying to do it, though, don't they? Other M was exactly the same, Samus could only use certain items of equipment when she was given permission by her (male) commanding officer. Nothing to do with having to find them, she just had to be told by a man that she was allowed.
4 though, ooof.
I hadn't played the previous game so when Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor came out early this year I don't think I even noticed it. It appeared in a couple of GOTY lists though and it sounded good, I'm pleased to confirm that actually it is. It's basically Vampire Survivors with a more traditional game structure wrapped around it: lots of unlocking stuff and levelling up and playing through different modes here, which gives context to the various auto-shooter runs you'll be doing. It looks and sounds pretty good and there seems to be masses to do. I'm really enjoying it for a bit of brains-off Christmas blasting fun.
Garwoofoo