2025 Games

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inZOI

This is fun as a one-off experience, but I'm not sure if I see it being good long term. It's an early access game and it really shows. Not a lot of options in the character creator (except for the actual face structure), this is especially felt in the clothing which is shared between men and women, meaning even more so for men theres very few options. I also looked a bit at the builder and there isn't a lot of furniture either. The personalities on the other hand seem like theres a lot to it, but I also think it's just a bunch of flavor text. Compared to the Sims, where in many games you can choose several traits, mixing and matching, and these traits actually affect gameplay, what's present in inZOI feels a bit shallow in comparison. When it comes to the gameplay in inZOI, it's a bit shallow as well. There's the basic things present that you would expect in the Sims. But, for example, when I let the "zois" free roam and do whatever they want with no control for me, they just did nothing for most of the time. Sitting around, standing around. At least in the Sims they could work on skills - which do seem to be here as well but a bit different. My impression is that this game is focused more on "conversations" - there's stuff like the "ambition" skill or "coexisting" or whatever, and there are a lot of social options - the dialogue options when zois talk to each other are very detailed. But I ultimately wonder what is the point. It's the same as the Sims where everyone will generally be agreeable and you can't see EXACTLY what people are even saying in response, it's all just a means to an end. It's very easy to get affection or relationship points up, it doesn't matter what you "talk" about. This game also has some heavy censorship but it's not really a big deal I guess when you think about actual gameplay experience, but it does take you out of it a bit when even the Sims will show more. The time cycle in this game is also MUCH slower - which kinda feels like the days drag on, but maybe you could do more stuff and it would actually feel nice if I tried (although there wasn't anything that really stuck out to me to "do"). I saw there are some things in this game you have to do more "manually" - for example, the house will naturally get dirty, so you have to buy cleaning supplies and have the zois use them to clean. So this game might provide a bit more accurate "life simulation", but it still has a ways to go with that, such as having the zois actually act on their own. I also kept getting notifications about the city having "low karma"?? But I don't care about the city, just the household I have of course. It's just weird and I'm not sure what I'm really supposed to be doing in this game. It does have a facial capture feature (although it seems like that's just a standard built in thing for Unreal Engine projects) which is fun to play around with but can get old fast. Another thing to note is that this game feels, I don't know, too clean? You can't feel much soul, it's got that corporate bland feeling where things are clean and muted and basic...if that makes sense? Even just the game cover doesn't convey anything, it's just some generic girl with a cat. Ultimately, I would wait until this game "officially" comes out and you can see what you can actually do. Admittedly I didn't engage with it very much, but it didn't inspire much engagement either.

The Citadel

Very cool and unique boomer shooter!! What really sets this game apart from others in this genre is that it's made by a Japanese dev, which is actually quite rare for shooter games, and so there are some Japanese game philosophies carried over here. The characters are kind of coomer/gooner bait, there's an "upgrade" system (you earn money in every level, can spend it in the shop to buy consumables, power ups, etc), and there's a bit of a story too. The story itself is a bit strange and mostly in the background, but it's there and interesting to think about. This game takes place in a strange world where it seems like Earth has been ruined by something, and angels/demons are roaming around. The "angels" are all cybernetically enhanced, leading to some really interesting designs. Many people call this game "guro", and it is quite gorey (though not worse really than something like newer Doom), but the creator himself has actually said that's not the case, and his interest is in biocybernetics (or something). Some people may be turned off by the artstyle here but I think it is actually quite charming and interesting, I like the designs. Gameplay wise, this game is very solid too. There's tons of weapon variety and they all feel quite fun to use, there's quite a bit more mobility than you would typically expect, and there are some challenging bosses/maps that feel cool. The early game is definitely more difficult as you don't have everything unlocked yet - once you do, the game is a biit trivial. Some of the boss fights at the end especially feel quite easy. But, you also cannot save at any time (something that may be quite japanese like too), like other boomer shooters, so it does actually feel quite tense and dying does have big consequences, which makes the hard sections feel much harder. So the game loses some points from me for the kind of weird difficulty scaling (some really hard maps actually, some easy ones, etc). The game also crashed a LOT for me, sometimes in the middle of a map which meant I'd have to start over...quite annoying. It seems for most people this game has some difficulty running. Finally, the environments are a bit lacking. Most of the time it's the same walls, with no skybox/just black in the sky. It makes it feel like you're in some clean, default computer simulator - which maybe is the intention, but it would have felt nicer if that was 1) communicated better if it is the case and/or 2) some distinctiveness between levels, maps, some decoration, something in the sky, something to connect you more to where the heck you are. Overall though, it's a pretty fun game I would recommend to any boomer shooter enjoyers. The pacing is pretty good so I think you could finish it quite fast. There's also a sequel game which I haven't checked out, but I've heard that it's an upgrade in all aspects to the original, so I'm really curious about that. Unfortunately though, I'm not sure if I'll actually play it, at least on my channel - because the community for this series is actually incredibly small. You'd be hard pressed to find much of anything about it on the internet - there's some youtube videos reviewing it, but that's about it. The streaming categories for both games are completely dead, there's nothing about it on twitter or google images...it's a bit of a shame, you'll only hear about this game from die hard boomer shooter fans. Which just means that as a creator it's not exactly the smartest thing I could be investing my time into, maybe if I reach a point where I truly don't need to care about discoverability but yeah :(

Xenoblade X

Playing this mostly by myself, having a great time though! Love the Xenoblade series, and this one is no exception. Lots of customization, exploring, quest completing in this one. Story feels a bit weaker but it is to be expected with the vibe this game is trying to give off. It feels much more cozy and homey, you're really building a community here. The combat is SUPER fun though I think!

Super Mario Sunshine

Amazingly fun game!! This game is pure charm and fun. It's apparently a bit of a black sheep in the Mario series, and while I can't speak to the other games too much, I love a lot of the stuff this game is supposedly disliked for! I think the controls are very smooth and Fludd is amazingly fun to play around with! All the different nozzles add some nice flavor too. I love the more "linear" nature of this game too, and every level feels connected, we're exploring an actual world, instead of some vague "ice place", "lava place", "sand place", etc. Each level still has a bit of a different feel to it and gameplay styles. I love the little details, like all the dialogue of the NPCs, the ways you can collect blue coins, etc. There's so much to explore and appreciate in this game. You're given so many options to do so as well. Nothing is too frustrating, but it doesn't feel too easy either. It's a perfect mix of chill and challenging and a good length. Now granted, you could get upset at me because I *did* play this game with savestates (though not to an extreme extent I don't think) - if you think I'm not a true gamer for that and didn't really beat the game then fine, but I had fun with it. This game is meant to be a vacation anyways, right? Savestates just make getting back into the action a bit quicker and easier, which is nice especially while streaming. Anyways, I digress...I DO think there's some things in this game that feel quite jank and unpolished, and some obvious QOL exclusions such as progress bars (especially with the blue coins) but it's nothing too bad...unless you're really aiming for 100%, which I wouldn't recommend tbh. I'm gonna miss Delfino Plaza and Isle Delfino, this game is so memorable that I remembered it even from just watching LPs when I was a young kid! Had a great time playing this~

Ultrakill

It's the new popular boomer shooter!! I jokingly call this a zoomer game cuz I feel like there's so many zoomer coded memes about it and well I often see/hear of younger people playing this...anyways! It's actually fun! I was worried this game would be "too fast" and I wouldn't be able to think straight playing it; while it certainly encourages you to be fast, you don't have to be, and it's not too bad, though it can be easy to feel overwhelmed especially during boss fights. This game has a bit of a reputation for being "hard"...there are certainly some encounters which feel like quite a sudden steep in difficulty, it can feel like a lot of bullshit in the moment, I'm still not sure if they're reasonable spikes but they're certainly quite doable fights in you really focus, take your time...and make sure you have the right tools for them too. The game kind of almost gets "easier" over time as you gain more tools, or at least easier to think of ways to solve problems. Anyways, in short, the game isn't too hard actually save for some kind of bs encounters, but it feels quite reasonable. It also just FUN - all the tools you have mean you have lots of options, and you don't have to worry about ammo or anything so you can just do whatever you want, and you have the option to heal whenever by using enemies! I love the environments too, every level is different and the variety is a lot of fun, you can tell especially with the later levels that there's different gimmicks to them too which helps keep the gamepley feeling fresh! I never felt bored really. The sound is also great and really gets you immersed in this "world" and keeps you going even when you're malding your heart out. There's even some goofy "lore" in this game...I don't really care for it much tbh, but I think it's created quite a dedicated fanbase for this game to the point there's body pillows of these weird robot characters...However, the game isn't finished either. There's still more levels to be released, which feels like a bit of a shame I guess, having the experience interrupted like that...but I do understand that the "continuous development" model is quite beneficial for indie devs, so I just hope they keep doing good work. I'll come back to this whenever the final parts get released, probably leave another final review at that point, but speaking to the experience so far - it's pretty great! As a final note on the difficulty, I played on standard so my points are based on that, but this game is actually quite customizable with lots of difficulty and accessibility options, and even secret levels/extra hard levels if you really want to push your skills here...I'm not much of a fan personally of pushing myself like that haha but there's lots of nerds that like to flex with their total 10000% gamer cred completion of this game so there's that if you want to be obnoxious! :P

Zoo Tycoon

Just a neat little game where you build your own zoo. It doesn't feel as customizable as I thought it would be, and a lot of the "creating animal enclosures" thing is just ticking off a list of w.e the animals like, for example just spamming rocks until the animal deems it's enough, then going to spamming trees, etc. I suppose you could, like, actually put them in a nice formation...but it seemed like that didn't really matter for the sake of the game soo meh? I do love these simulator/management games though as it feels really satisfying at the end, seeing everything come together, your profits rolling in...Watching the animals was quite cute too. The art style is also great, I love these semi pixel graphics (don't even know what they're called tbh), it's so charming. I will say though the sound is a bit lacking, maybe it was my copy or something but it was just quiet most of the time and could've done well with some funky background music~ Unfortunate that these games don't really get made anymore, it'd be quite fun with modern QOL features. I only wanted to play this as a fun one off, never intended really to go and complete the whole game so that's why it's dropped - I still think it's good, but I can't dedicate so much to it, if you're a real management autist though I'm sure it'd be fun to progress and try all the challenges!

Elden Ring

What can I say, it's a great game. I think everyone knows this by now. So many builds, so much to explore, while I normally don't like non-linear games, I thankfully had a guide/chat to help me out on where to go haha. Honestly every boss felt very fair and pretty satifying to defeat, there's tons of tools to help you out as well and "customize" the difficulty. I think this game deserves all the praise it gets, but it would probably be a way different experience playing on your own. I don't like that you kind of need "help" at a lot of points to know where to go/what to do but it wasn't really that bad, but figuring out the secrets techs/where the best items are would definitely be pretty hard all on your own...and these things can help out a LOT. But yeah, this game is just stunning too, I kept wanting to stare at awe at the sky, the environment in the distance, seeing the great erdtree all glowy...it's amazing how interconnected everything else, it is such an intentional world, but doesn't feel unrealistic...However, it is a HUGE game. Like, if you look at the playlist, it's almost 20 parts sob...It's a huge undertaking, so understandable if you don't have the time for it. I don't think I'll ever do another playthrough like this again, it took me 8-10 months or something? But I'm glad I did it and got to experience this great game. I am curious to check out Malenia and the DLC, but I'm not in any rush considering how long those will take too, I'm sure. As a streamer I'd kind of rather play more games that are shorter than this, unfortunately.

Dead Letter Dept.

So this is a new horror game, sort of "analog"-like. It has a retro feel with a bunch of filters applied to it. Basically, it's a spooky haunted typing game. A few parts of it feel quite unpolished, like the repeated environments, some typos, cutting to black with just some text on screen...but despite those, it nails its atmosphere. The sound is GREAT, and really makes you feel unsettled even when nothing is happening. It has some "subtle" jumpscares that will startle you and make you think something is going to happen. My issue with this game is it feels like all edging with no payoff. The typing game aspect drags on too long - sure it's cool to type all these things, but with how much it's repeated, it feels like, really am I just playing some 4th grade educational typing game...Nothing "happens" either. You just see spooky stuff and that's it. Now, I didn't finish this game, so I can't really speak to the ending or if there is any payoff (though I played for ~4hrs and didn't feel anything, it felt like it dragged at that point), and supposedly there's multiple endings which seems cool (though not sure how they're achieved), BUT the reason I didn't finish is because I don't really want to support these devs. This game actually has quite a relatable and sad story, about the monotony of work, feeling alone and invisible, etc...the main character constantly struggles to pay rent. And yet this game has such an obnoxious anti-piracy mechanic. They shame you with a pointless humilitation ritual, making you type out some shit like "I pirated this game, that's bad, you should support indie developers" over and over every single in-game day. It feels like a slap in the face contrasted against the story they're trying to tell. The devs clearly care more about owning "chuds" who pirate their game than their actual story or making something good. You should respect your community and be glad anyone is playing at all. If the game is good enough, you can convert those pirates to paying customers just fine, but shaming them and making the game a chore will just drive most away. The effect spent implementing that mechanic could've been used to improve the game. I decided I didn't want to give this game further advertisement, so I'm just dropping it. I have no problem supporting games that I play a lot and that I think deserve it, but this isn't the case here.

F.E.A.R

Wow, I actually finished a game!! This game has a bit of a funny inside joke on my channel, as I thought it'd be quite a short game. When you look at howlongtobeat.com, this game is only 8 hours! Yet it took me 5 streams! I suppose I spent a lot of time yapping and messing around, but I kept thinking I would end the game yet it kept going. As for the game itself, I think it was great! A good shooting time. Interesting and detailed environments that are fun to explore aroud, cool enough guns (though you can't hold that many), a unique combat mechanic where you can slow down time to improve your short and dodge enemies, and many health packs to collect. I wasn't paying too much attention to the story honestly, but from what I know it's pretty interesting too, a horror twist on a shooter, although the game really does not play like a horror - it's not scary so don't worry if you're afraid of that. But it has horror concepts like cannibalism and spooky girls. It doesn't push too much onto you so you can pay as much or as little attention as you want. It has some cool schizo scenes, and the moment when you kill the main bad guy and all the enemies shut down is very cool. However the ending was a bit disappointing, it ends quickly and without a resolution, baiting you to play the sequels. There's no big boss fight at the end or anything, you just walk out. I would've wished for something more grand and some explanations behind the more mysterious things, like why our character has powers. Still though, a good experience! Maybe don't worry about wandering around so much as I did haha.

Mario Party 3

it's weird to put this under dropped, as these aren't really games you set out to "complete". I haven't played many Mario Partys, but I think this is probably one of the best. The graphics and style is really charming, and from what I played, it has great minigames and great boards. I played against AI, and they were quite a challenge!! Probably much more fun with friends but it is still good alone, and there's even a story mode apparently to unlock more! I don't plan to revisit this though, maybe with friends or I might check out some other Mario Party's too! But this is basically all you'd want from a Mario Party yep.

The Sims 2

I grew up playing the Sims, I would say I'm a Sim girlie. But the Sims 2 was new to me, as I had only played the Sims 3 before. This game is neat but I didn't get to experience much unique about it that sets it apart from the other Sims games (probably cuz I was just making everyone stay at home and have babies), the animations at least all looked quite solid. What I dislike personally is that this game has way less customization at base than the Sims 3, and I found it a little difficult to get any mods working. It runs pretty well though. I don't know if I will come back to this as I mainly just wanted to do a silly stream - I might revisit the concept of "100 baby challenge" more seriously with an actual gameplan on how to best achieve it at some other time.

Civilization 7

Honestly this is quite decent...but you know what's not decent? The price tag!! And DRM!! Jokes aside, I think this game is an acquired taste that some people will really like, but if you're expecting a "Civ" game, it's probably disappointing. It's quite different from the others and the main thing is the "eras" system. Your game is pretty much split into 3 parts, and eventually you will be forced to stop what you're doing and choose a *different* civilization to play as, and the game will continue. I think the logic behind this choice is to create "micro" experiences, because apparently most people don't even finish their civ games, they'll stop the save file once it gets boring and just start over. So this system creates "games within the game", nicer stopping points and new "objectives" once in a while to hopefully keep the game fresh and challenging so you don't just steamroll everything. Problem is though...it creates a huge disconnect mentally. We're used to playing as *one* civilization and it feels nice to create our own stories around that, and to build up our empire. But here, our empire is forced to collapse once in a while and reset. This game also does not have a lot of the charm of the other civ games, even down to the leaders. Idk what to say, they just have less rizz, make way less of an impression. The leader screens in Civ5 and even Civ6 were VERY cool and memorable and felt like you were fighting *them*. There's so many boring menu screens in this game, this game has "story" scenarios where it will give you some prompt and you have to pick between options, and it's just grey boxes everywhere. It feels so detached, you don't even get to "see" what happens as a result of those choices, it's just some numbers going up or down. Otherwise I think the game is mechanically fine, fun enough to play but I'd rather play the other games instead. I would probably only recommend this on a sale and after seeing what the expansions bring.

Banjo-Tooie

It's just like Banjo Kazooie, some things are dressed up a little differently but it's still going between levels. But now you can't complete levels completely the first time and will have to come back to them later when you unlock more abilities. Seems like there's tons of new abilities in this! Honestly it was fun but as a huge game, it's a bit overwhelming. I think some people don't like this game as much, I'm guessing because of the extra, potentially frustrating, mechanics. I did have a few rage moments which felt more like the fault of the game being clunky and not me...and I don't even want to imagine the horror of the button mashing mini-games...Anyways, very cute and fun game still, but it is quite daunting, maybe I'll come to it one day!

Hello Kitty Island Adventure

This is a pretty neat game for what it is, but it definitely is missing some polish. For example, you can't even rotate the camera or move it at all, which you would think would be important for a game focused so much on exploration. While some people may expect mostly an Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley style experience, it actually has a lot of Zelda BOTW style gameplay, though much dumbed down. A lot of things in this game feeled "dumbed down" or mobile game-y? The UI, the simplest graphics with minimal shading...I also personally feel like there's not a lot of options in the game? The available outfits, the furniture...compared to Animal Crossing at least, if you're into customization and dressup there's waaayy less of it here. The good thing is you DO have a lot of the Sanrio charcaters, and they are very cute to be expected. It is fun interacting with them, but there is a daily limit of 3 gifts to each one for some reason? Which could really slow down your progress in the game. I also found it a bit confusing to figure out...what to do? What is the goal here? It doesn't feel like there is much to aim towards other than just collecting gifts to give to everyone. Nevertheless, it is still a very cute game so it does well in that sense. It just lacks a certain depth I think. But for very chill bursts of gameplay now and then I think it is fine. I don't really plan to stream this again, as I feel the game actually starts to die down in excitement once you get past the beginning (plus just wanting to do other things) but who knows I might come back to it on stream! And I'll play on my own when I feel like injecting some sanrio cuteness into myself.

Sekiro

This is a pretty good game, but I had to drop it for personal reasons. It is quite different from the other souls games I've played since you play as a defined character - no character customization or class choice. I think this is neat because it means the developers could develop encounters around your specific moveset, which is possibly why this game has the reputation of being so hard - you're expected to master every mechancic here thoroughly. For the most part the combat is fast paced, which I enjoy, and the parrying is fun. It is also roughly linear, though there are some optional sections, which feels nice as you don't have to worry about a huge open world necessarily, but it is also fun to navigate the world with how fast you move, the grappling, jumps, etc. A lot of mid-boss fights can be trivialized too with some strategy, which felt fun to pull off. My biggest issue with this game was that many mechanics are designed around limited items. For example, to throw a shuriken you actually need some "shurken" item, if you run out then tough luck, you need to go find more. And if this shuriken ability is very helpful in a boss fight, that means you'd have to stop all your attempts to go find it. Same with some consumable items that could help deal with boss mechanics. It feels very JRPG-like, when this is supposed to be a fast paced action game - I don't want to break up the action to go farm something. I got very close to beating a particular boss, but ultimately I couldn't despite my tries and I decided it wasn't worth the rage and time to continue this game right now. I plan to focus more on retro games moving forward as well, meaning this game sadly has little room for me.

Banjo-Kazooie

A whimsical and delightful game! It's a cute retro 3D platformer, the characters are very charming and full of character (Kazooie is so sassy!!). The music is great too! As someone somewhat new to platforming, it wasn't too bad. There's lots of "other" stuff in this game like combat and minigames too. I think it's very doable, although there are some jiggies that need some wild leaps in logic to figure out how to get. I played with a lot of handholding from my chat, which made it quite a bit easier (but also) fun for me. Some levels are harder than other but they're NOTHING compared to the final boss...I actually felt quite mindbroken as I struggled a lot against it. Most of the difficulty I feel comes from the camera, not having complete control over it but there's also so many things that rely on precise aiming from it...Even with me wildly abusing savestates, I found it quite difficult, so just be prepared. This game is definitely beefier and harder than I thought it was, taking me ~5 whole streams to get through and a big difficulty spike at the end. Some minigames as well had brutal conditions. It seems like an easy baby game but it's not really - and this is with me abusing savestates the whole time. Regardless I had a really fun time and a positive experience, collecting everything felt so good and the levels are just a treat to go through! Wildly varying environments so you get a feel for all sorts of things. I might play Banjo Tooie to experience more of it, but it does feel like I overcame a huge task with this game so a bit of rest from the series might be good...But yeah this is a kino classic and I can see why it's beloved, but it's not free of rage moments where it feels quite ridiculous. As a pure platformer, I had a lot of fun with the movement actually! So I look forward to more of that~

Cursed Digicam

Another Chilla's Art sloppa horror game. The premise itself is pretty interesting, I think the scenarios it presents are fine and a little spooky but overall it's actually pretty boring for the first chunk of the game, ramping up with both scares and mystery once you get back to the house. The "twist" is a bit eye-roley but fun, however the overall logic of the story...doesn't quite make sense...But oh well. It's wacky Japanese horror at the end of the day and I always find those fun and interesting. There's no jumpscares really, it's more just tense, spooky, and atmospheric. It runs a bit better than his other games I think but still has optimization issues and very obviously tons of default/store bought assets. It's fine enough to play once but you'll probably forget about it and is probably only good as streamer bait to get reactions/chat about. I'm just disappointed mainly by the obvious cut corners and laziness here, even if I can recognize there was still a good effort at a story and some clever uses of staging and whatnot.

Balatro

Don't get me wrong, this is a great game. I'm just dropping it as I don't really have an interest in STREAMING it, but it is a very fun game to play, just chilling in my own time. Comfy addicting card game where number goes up with crazy wacky random runs!