It is February and I Have Played Some Video Games

I keep a record of the games I play. It lives on my phone in the Notes app. 

It's nothing fancy. No pictures, no sentences; not even scores. Just a plain text note, littered with spelling errors as well as abbreviations that'll only make sense to me.  I love to add a new entry and spend time scrolling through it, mumbling things to myself like "Oh yeah, I played that", "I liked that", "I didn't like that" and "Is that how you spell Veilguard?" It's a simple yet effective solution to tracking my games-played and seeing how my year is shaping up.

Despite only being a month and a half into 2025, my list for this year is already looking pretty good. It's got a bit of this, a bit of that. With no big new release to focus on, I've been switching between multiple games, some old and some new, getting through backlogs and revisiting favourites. I've felt very productive, pressing my buttons and rolling credits. 

The next fortnight will bring two brand new and highly-anticipated games: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii and Monster Hunter Wilds. I suspect that pair will last me well into the spring, and while my game list updates may slow right down, I won't mind at all.

If I enjoy LaD and Monster Hunter anywhere near as much as I did my January, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception revisit, then I'll be over the moon. I hadn't replayed U3 for a decade, and I'm happy to report that it remains outstanding.

While I do prefer Uncharted 2, as I think it's more consistent, the high points of Drake's Deception rank among the best in the entire series. In particular, that stretch from the plane crash to credits is unmatched across all four games, or five if we include The Lost Legacy. Cutter and Chloe are perfect in their supporting roles, and their appearances are rationed to perfection, as they basically disappear after the first third, and Helen Mirren-alike Marlowe and her dapper right-hand man, Talbot, make for a mysterious and convincing pair of villains. The opening pub scene is a delight, containing as it does so many of the elements that make Uncharted irresistible: nonsense history, charming characters, wanton and comic violence, and terrific writing. 

Naughty Dog appears to have walked away from the series while it was still relevant and well-loved. While there's something to be said for going out on a high, it makes me sad that we may never get another Uncharted, or at least a Drake-led entry. ND's move to po-faced tales of shockingly violent and irredeemable characters living miserable lives couldn't have left me colder. Uncharted for The Last of Us seems like a poor trade, regardless of the latter's undeniable quality. 

Sticking with PS5, I'm currently twenty-five hours into Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I instantly took to the new art style and it doesn't clash with the mature and bloody nature of the DA universe, which was my initial concern. It's still a gruesome game, full of blood mages, ravenous hell-beasts, and aggressively charming rogues, even if it is presented more tongue-in-cheek. It apes Mass Effect 2 in structure - gather a team for an impossible-mission and then help your crew solve their problems and strengthen your bonds - but this structure fits nicely. Combat is a little shallow, the writing is inconsistent and sometimes lacking in nuance, and it suffers from an absence of meaningful conflict between your allies, but overall I've been very impressed.

Since Christmas, I've been dipping in and out of Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, mostly with my daughter, who seems to be on a crusade to destroy my DualSense controllers with her rapid bashing of buttons.

Me: Please be careful! Do you know how expensive those are?

Her: Daddy, I beat you again.

Me: The best part of 10,000 yen.

We finished the Punisher arcade game in co-op, which was a blast. I bet no one else at her school has played that one! Pokemon-loving casuals.

Still on PS5, I've got nothing but good things to say about Digital Eclipse's Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, which provided a much needed and highly enjoyable education on all things Jeff. I knew of him before, but only as the guy with the llamas and long hair who made Tempest and that Vita game. I knew he was important, but I didn't really know why. Well, now I do. It's nice to learn something new about my favourite pastime and it's comforting to know that there are always new or less-familiar stories waiting to be told.

Minter is exceedingly likeable. Even if some of his earlier games are now borderline unplayable - sorry - I still couldn't get enough of watching the documentary clips and hearing about what went into their creation. Jeff's story of bedroom-programmer is a familiar one in that scene, but what really appealed to me was the do-it-yourself nature of his story. Sending out handwritten newsletters, attending trade fairs and building up a fanbase, family members pitching in - the story of Llamasoft is one of an industrious self-starter making effective use of every opportunity available to him. From Gridrunner to light synthesizer programs, Jeff has rarely veered from his vision, and has remained relevant through so many industry changes. I feel that his story is bigger than games, and serves as an inspirational example of someone doing what they love, sticking to their guns, and putting the work in.

Switching to Xbox, I finished Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. I stand by my initial criticisms - see category 24 -  but I still rate it and am glad I soldiered through some of those earlier sub-par sections. Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders, however, I didn't stick with. I approve of the premise - just get down that mountain - and I really like the clean visuals, but I quickly accepted that I just don't enjoy playing it. It values speed yet it throws so many trial-and-error stretches at you that are almost impossible to successfully navigate on a first attempt. Hidden rocks, jumps that need to be hit at a precise angle and ice sections that kill all momentum - it was doing my head in. I'm happy that it exists, and it seems to be doing well, but it's just not for me.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene was free on the Xbox store, so I grabbed that and barely put it down before finishing it. I should've played it a decade and a half ago when I bought a copy on PSN! I have several Game Pass titles lined up, but realistically it'll be mid-spring before I get to any of them. Buying Shatter Remastered in the sale won't help me get to them any sooner! Christ, I love Shatter.

I have increasingly been seeking comfort in older games. I cleared Guitaroo Man on PSP last month, am still having far too much fun with the Bit Generation titles, and I'm now using my Analogue Pocket to play through Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, which I have thoroughly fallen for. It can be slow going, I desperately miss the new gameplay mechanics that sped up combat in the updated versions of Let Us Cling Together, it explains very little of its mechanics, and the story is dense, yet I adore it. It plays so nicely and looks stunning on the Pocket.

I've also cleared a few runs on Meteos on Nintendo DS. It is simple and addictive, though it does lack substance once you've cleared the main mode. Also lacking in substance was Star Wars The Force Unleashed, which I finished on PS3 a couple of weeks ago. It's janky, very early-2010s, and absolutely my kind of thing. I played it on Easy as a treat. I'm told the sequel is only 4-5 hours long, which means I absolutely must play it. I will keep an eye on the junk bins, which is where I found my copy of the first game for pocket change.

Computer games, I've played some. Will play more.