As we get back up to speed in 2025, our first What We Played of the year is more about 2024 and all the holiday gaming we snuck in over the past fortnight. Visiting family for Christmas meant I didn’t have the big consoles to play on, but that just meant I got completely hooked on Balatro for about a week. I clearly wasn’t the best boy in 2024, because Santa gave me the flu for Christmas, and along with the tail end of the NFL season, Retro Bowl was the perfect minimal thought game. I’ve now taken the Seahawks on a three-peat and am looking to right the wrongs of Atlanta Falcons history in my current season.
Aran’s holiday gaming has included a review of Threefold Recital and some more of The Witcher 3. There was also some more Football Manager 24, where he’s mounting a title challenge with Valencia and into the knockouts of the Champions League.
Steve’s now on the hunt for a new headset, but that hasn’t stopped him from playing a bunch of games over the past couple weeks. He finished off the excellent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, completing all of the side quests and achievements, and has moved on to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, “which is great but feels a lot less expansive than the first one as most action taking place in the one big open world planet so far.” He’s also finished 9 Sols, though this did mean dropping the difficulty down about two thirds of the way through.
While he’s got Cuisineer and Behemoth on the go for review, Gamoc’s Christmas & New Year gaming has also included Black Ops 6 and started Dragon Age The Veilguard – “The latter is as magenta as it gets, but still seems good. The former is, indeed, a Call of Duty game.”
It was a very Bohemian Christmas for Jim, who’s continued on his playthrough of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. He did a bunch of errands and local mysteries, and has found that everything from eating food, to maintaining Henry’s gear and sparring with a weapons trainer is a bit of a time sink, but he’s enjoying it and is now pushing on with the main quest because he knows there’s a lot of new games coming soon!
Tuffcub played Skull & Bones and….. he didn’t like it – “It looks and plays like someone knock off studio tried to make Black Flag, I really couldn’t believe a full priced game could look that ugly in 2024.” So he tried to have a better time with some Transformers: Galactic Trials, but this part racing game and part shooter “should live up to it’s name and be put on trial, sentenced and thrown in to a pit of Sharkticons. […] By far the worse game I have played in 2024 and thankfully, the last one.”
Oh dear.
Nic B bought Animal Crossing New Horizons for his wife and they’ve been playing it together. “It’s not my usual speed of game, but it’s really cute and a nice thing to do together,” he said, though he’s no doubt a bit befuddled why they’re catching all these bugs and fish and then not turning them into armour.
Rounding us out, Reuben’s absolutely hooked on Marvel Rivals and is foaming at the mouth for Season 1 to start, and Dom’s basically just found time for some Overwatch 2, Snow Bros. Wonderland and Songs of Silence.
Now then, what did you play over the holidays?
TSBonyman
I received Rise of the Ronin for Christmas, haven’t unwrapped it yet though, also received one of those naughty gamesticks and have been playing The Chaos engine for 1st time in 30 years!