On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… a return to work, and some grey sky to look at wistfully. It’s Friday the 5th, so if you’ve not taken your Christmas decorations down, you have to do it today but if you’ve been well prepared like me, you’ll have all that extra time for playing games.
The gaming industry is already winding back up for the next 12 months, and I’ve also been ruminating on what’s coming out this year. I’m already looking forward to this month’s Prince of Persia and Tekken 8, but it seems that the number #1 pick amongst the team has been Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. You can check out all the other games in the top 50 on the site.
This week I’ve been playing some Super Mario Wonder with my youngest, and he’s a very angry gamer. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m mildly worried about the future of our controllers. Alongside that, I’ve been playing Asgard’s Wrath 2, which is very good, but also very long for a VR game, and then I decided it was finally time to get up to date with gaming and play The Witcher 3. It’s fantastic on Steam Deck so that makes things easier.
Aran has been playing Starfield. He told us, “I’m only a few hours in but jumped to a few different planets. Gone off the beaten path of the main mission and have already become a gang member and a smuggler of medical supplies.” So, sounds like it’s going well already.
Steve has spent the festive period with the entirely appropriate Ebenezer and the Invisible World, saying, “It’s a solid if unspectacular Metroidvania elevated by the bonkers choice of source material.” He then moved on to RoboCop: Rogue City, “which I’m enjoying a lot more than my learned colleague Ade did – although I can totally see his point of view on it. I’ve got a real soft spot for the 360/PS3 era single-player style that RoboCop follows Terminator Resistance in.”
He too has played Super Mario Wonder with the kids and dug out his Wii U for some Wii Party sessions, and he rounded things out with The Forest in online multiplayer with a group of fellow middle-aged geeks.
Meanwhile, Nick P has mostly been playing Lies of P, which has been bloody brilliant so far, alongside his usual smatterings of Street Fighter 6, Dead by Daylight and FC24.
Nic B got his wife Taiko no Tatsujin for Christmas – the drumming game – so naturally they’ve had a “smashing time” knocking the heck out of some plastic peripherals.
And finally, Tef has also unboxed his Wii U, but has he been playing Nintendo classics that didn’t make it onto Switch? No, he’s been playing through Black Ops 2, with the loose justification that he wants to play through Black Ops Cold War from PS Plus a few months ago and hadn’t played the Wii U copy of Blops 2 that he got years ago when it was on fire sale.
How about you then, what have YOU played? Are your decorations down? And what’s got you most excited for the year ahead?
