After a brief time with Monster Hunter Stories, I really managed to focus this week on my PS2 stuff and get through a lot. Then I traded a bunch of them, but also picked up some new ones.
It's always fun to go down the list of Metacritic's top games for a system or year. Here goes for the GBA, which I'm trying to play alongside my PS2 games. It's all about the early 2000s.
Alongside my PS2 gaming is also me trying to play the handheld out at the time, GBA. I've had trouble getting to it, but this week I got super sidetracked on GBA games. I also touched on PS4 and XSS and bought a bunch of stuff both digitally and at my game stores.
I dove through a bunch of my PS2 games in chonological order. I'm in the 2003 games now. Then I played a lot of my rental game, Mario & Luigi Brotherhood and took another stab at Ys Origin on Xbox. Also a few digital purchases.
This is the blog from last week I couldn't get posted until now. I was snowed in on that Sunday the 31st [edit: 25th], but I made it to MK's place Mon-Thurs to play a ton of stuff as work was cancelled those days. Here's the lot.
It’s time for my “Best Video Games of 2025 Awards Show!” Keep in mind that this is my list only and no other outside opinions contributed. And if a game isn’t on this list, it either just didn’t appeal to me as much or I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. Ok with that out of the way, let’s begin!
2025. We are a quarter of the way through the first century of the new millennium and they are still making cool games! Here is a recap of my 2025 in gaming, though few of these games came out in 2025.
My first task in 2026 is the Atari years, 1977-1984. The system dominated the home console wars until the Famicom in '84. Arcades were king and PCs were just beginning to explore more complex experiences but for a high price. Here's a very personal breakdown of those years. I'm sure others have different ideas of what's most notable.
I went over the Metacritic list of best DS games and made my own list with comments. There's certainly many more great games I didn't mention for various reasons.
It's sort of roughly so because in gaming it means to me the seventh gen consoles which really started in 2005, but it's more strictly so for my TV/Film and reading. So this week I set up my PS3, juiced my DSi XL and got to work.
I won't get to NGC this month, but it's fun to peruse the Metacritic best-of list anyway. These are largely exclusives to the system I've played or have thoughts about.
November is coming up, and so I'm looking forward to revisiting games from the first decade of the 2000s. However, I will not be doing Dreamcast because I don't have one anymore and have only a passing interest in getting another one. But, I had one back then, and it's fun to remember to good times I had on the system.
I got a few new/old games from various trades as I clean up my 90s era console/handheld games collection.
My girlfriend and I am going on a short vacation to our old college in central New York this weekend. Among other things, I'll be looking to see if that arcade machine, Sky Shark, is still there in the pizza shop I used to go to. The odds aren't good after so much time. But anyway, I played a lot of games this mid-week-end that I have (I'm off wed/thurs regularly) trying to decide what to keep of my 90s game collection.
The site was down when I tried to post last Thursday, so here it is now.
Recently, I livestreamed an (almost) complete playthrough of Richard "Lord British" Garriott's 1982 RPG, Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress. These videos were originally simulcast on my Twitch and YouTube channels.
Really farmed a lot this week. Is that a real verb? Got me a Pokemon game for 50 cents too.
I'm definitely feeling a farming frenzy coming on: glued to the screen, not moving for hours, barely aware of my surroundings, forgetting to eat. It's on the verge of unhealthy obsession, but I just laugh about it and pull myself away at the end of every "weekend" and get back to work.
It's amazing to me the difference when you are totally absorbed by a game. Time just flies by and everything else around you just vanishes in importance. I'm not thinking about switching games, or taking a break or anything like that, it's just Farm Together 2 as much as possible.
Lots of stuff this week, but it all comes down to Farm Together 2, which will be my friend and mine's obsession for the coming weeks.
I'm all over the place lately. I'm trying to do games set in the 50s and keep up with the new stuff. I eventually just reduced it all to playing the largest files size games first on my hard drive. It's all a mess now, but I'm having fun, so I guess it's all good. Here's the sloppy story.
I'm on a kind of staycation this week. I made some real life journeys to NYC and some virtual ones to WWI France, a fanciful place called Teyvat, baseball land, and Marvel's NYC.
My new plan is to roughly follow my reading plan. This month I'm reading from the years 1900-1949. The games just have to be related to the period in some way. So this blog is about my week's plays and some new pickups.