Tag: video games

2025 in video games

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

Ghost of Yotei was Game of the Year. It wasn’t close. I played a fair number of really good games this year, but the sequel to the best game of 2020 and one of my favorite games of all time was the best game of 2025, and I feel like that’s probably not something that’s going to surprise anyone.

The big story for me this year was how much more use my Xbox got compared to every previous year; I leaned into Game Pass a lot more than I have in the past, and anything that I could get for free on Xbox ended up being played on that console. I’m still pretty agnostic as far as the virtues of the two consoles go; how well a game runs really seems to be more dependent on the game itself than the system I’m running it on, and I’m well beyond the point where gigaflorps and raytraces and whatever the graphical buzzword of the day might be is particularly impressive. The biggest graphical moments of the year for me were a character moment in Clair Obscur and realizing that the light coming through a stained glass window in a church was actually reflecting off my character in the right colors in whichever Sniper Elite I played this year. 6, maybe? Let’s say 6.

For the second year in a row, I did not touch the Switch, and my son showed no interest at all in picking up a Switch 2, so we haven’t. I am strongly considering a Steam Machine when it comes out in 2026, though.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was probably Yotei’s closest competition, and was definitely the most unique game I played this year, as damn near everything else was either a Soulslike or a Metroidvania or a combination of both– I am nothing if not consistent with my preferred genres. It had the best turn-based gameplay I’ve ever encountered and combined it with a stunningly good story and hauntingly beautiful graphics and if it wasn’t for the bit where it used up all of its goodwill in the amazingly misconceived grindfest that is Act III, I’d probably still be playing it.

Khazan: The First Berserker does not involve any berserking but hooooooooly shit was it a lot of fun and I put more hours into it than anything else I played this year, including Yotei. I played through it completely twice before moving on to the next game. That doesn’t happen very often. What kept this one from GOTY? The lack of depth to the story, mostly. The combat was exceptionally good but the story didn’t hold a candle to the emotional resonance of Yotei or Clair Obscur, leaving the game just a touch below both of them.

I also played the shit out of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and loved 95% of it, and for the other 5% I was staring at a blurry mess of pixels as the game struggled to keep up with itself. There was also a bug in the platinum trophy, which meant that after doing absolutely everything in the game and getting all of the other trophies, I didn’t get the trophy that you get for getting all the trophies. Look, game, they’re right there. They did finally push through an update months later that gave me credit for everything, and I keep hearing there might be a big story DLC that will absolutely pull me back into the game, but a bug stopping me from getting the final trophy in this one stuck in my craw a bit. The game itself was great, though.

This is the entire map for Crypt Custodian, a game where you play a ghost cat that beats up enemies with a broom. I assume that you can tell how much I loved the game just from looking at how huge and complicated this map is. I love exploration-heavy games. This one was amazing.

And finally …

This is a screenshot from Crime Scene Cleaner, a ridiculous little game where you are tossed into the role of a guy whose job it is to clean up after heinous mob crimes. This includes getting rid of all the bodies, picking up anything broken, restoring anything that isn’t, and cleaning up every tiny little spot of blood. Upgrading your abilities includes things like getting better mops and bags that can hold larger volumes of garbage.

It was, and this is a great way to find out if you and I are people or not, one of the most relaxing games I played this year. Walk into utter fucking nightmare chaos and restore order? Sign me up. I want a sequel. They can do a new version of this game every year if they want to, I’ll keep playing it.

And, for the second day in a row, I’ve written “I want more of this” in a post, then gone and looked, and found out there was more! They apparently released a big DLC back in June and it never crossed my radar. Hooray!

What did you play this year?

#REVIEW: Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist (PS5, 2025)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video games1 Comment

I’m finding myself weirdly not in the mood to write about this, but in the absence of anything else not involving profane ranting and raving, I’m just going to tell you that Ender Magnolia is a quality if not life-changing Metroidvania, and that it excels mostly in the exploration side of things. The combat and build styles are really interesting– you bond with AIs called Homunculi throughout the game, and each of them will give you either a travel ability or some sort of new approach to combat, and on top of that each combat homunculus will have three different and sometimes wildly divergent abilities to play with. You’ll have ten or so available by the end of the game, so that’s thirty different abilities, plus items called Relics that can add buffs or tweak your build in other ways, so this is also a game that’s big on build customization.

I liked it, and I platinumed it today, and if you’re into Metroidvanias as a genre at all it should definitely be on your list. Unfortunately I’m tired and kinda crabby at the moment for no particular reason, so I’m going to cut this shorter than I originally had planned. What should I play next? Both of these are on sale right now:

Dammit

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I told myself it was beating Ender Magnolia or bust tonight, and now that it’s 9:30 and I’ve somehow failed to eat dinner I’m forced to admit that my choice is “bust.” Bah.

An unexpected proud dad moment

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, video gamesLeave a comment

My son has been patiently working away at the Path of Pain since I got home from work, four hours ago. The person who put the video above together is some sort of divine creature; I never even attempted this feat when I was playing Hollow Knight, and if I had I would have invented twelve new swear words and killed one of the cats by about the halfway mark.

This kid hasn’t let a single swear word or even really a single sound of frustration pass his lips the whole time. No controller tossing. No muttering under his breath. Just persistence and patience.

I don’t know where the hell he got it from. Sure as hell not me.

Very quick #REVIEW: Ghost of Yotei (PS5, 2025)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video gamesLeave a comment

Game of the God damned year.

I mean, come on. This year had some slight competition, but there was no way that the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima wasn’t going to be my GOTY. It’s not close. This was the sequel to one of the best games I’ve ever played and was at least of equal quality. The only thing holding it back from being obviously better than the original was I had some idea what to expect going in.

Absolutely fucking amazing. Fifty-eleven stars out of five.

On Dungeon Crawler Carl

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

Wow, that’s bigger than I thought it was going to be.

Oh well. Scrolling’s free.

I finished the seventh and most recent book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series last night, staying up too late to do it. The eighth book comes out in June; I pre-ordered it the literal first day it became available to do so. Dinniman has an unrelated book, Operation Bounce House, coming out in February, and I’ve preordered that as well. The series is currently expected to be ten books, and apparently might be eleven.

I don’t think I’ve reviewed any of the books as I’ve read them, and I don’t really intend for this to be a review yet either, as a multi-book review really ought to be for the whole series and even as fast as Dinniman seems to write, we’re at least two or three years away from that. I will say this, though: I started this series mostly out of FOMO, something that y’all know good and well catches me on books all the time. I don’t like not reading good books, even if their premise– aliens invade Earth and a guy and his cat get thrown into an intergalactic competition that somehow mimics the genre tropes of role-playing video games– is completely ridiculous. “LitRPG” is its own entire genre; having read and enjoyed eight books in it, other than reading more of Dinniman’s work in the future I have no plans at all to dip my toe into any other examples of it.

I’ve been reading about a book a month in this series since picking up Dungeon Crawler Carl in May. The first one was at least a little bit against my will; I wasn’t expecting to like what I was reading all that much, but again, FOMO.

I plan to restart the series in December so that I can have read it twice by the time A Parade of Horribles comes out. My wife picked up the first book on a whim a couple of months ago and is currently reading book five, and she’s read them back to back to back to back to back. Which means the same as “back to back” but sounds like more of a feat. This is not a thing she does, guys.

These books have no fucking right to be this good. They’re too ridiculous and too raunchy to be as good as they are. And yet somehow this series is the best new thing I’ve encountered in a long time, and having read four thousand pages of this series this year I am about to start over and do it again.

Plus Bounce House and the first book of another series of his called Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon, because right now Dinniman is tied with BrandoSando for the author I’ve read the most books from in 2025, and I can’t let Sanderson win that contest.

Just do it. Trust me. Put aside your reservations and pick up the first book. The whole series is on Kindle Unlimited if you happen to have Amazon Prime, so you don’t even have to pay for it. Get them from the library. I know, I know, this feels like it has to be dumb as hell. Go give them a shot anyway.

Nothing tonight

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

I love y’all but I’ve got a book to finish and I haven’t touched Ghost of Yotei in a few days and I intend to rectify both of those problems before bed.

Yeah, no

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

Finished Alchemised tonight, and I’m going to use the evening to decide if I have anything interesting to say about it. While playing Ghost of Yotei, of course.

One quarter down. Man, this school year is flying by.