Reid Main

I did not realize just how many different genres of video games I ended up playing this year.

Dispatch

Dispatch is the spiritual successor to the type of games Telltale made a decade ago such as The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. The only indicator that Telltale didn't make this (other than the company imploded) is the vulgarity and debauchery are turned up to 11 so if you're not a fan of the humour in TV shows like The Boys or Invincible you may be a bit put off.

As a huge fan of Telltale Games I immediately fell in love with Dispatch. It is comprised of eight "episodes" that average out to about an hour each. The first two were a bit slow but they built up to some amazing peaks in episodes five and six. The bar scene in episode five is something that will live rent free in my brain until the day I die.

So why is Dispatch slumming it down here in the honourable mentions? In my opinion, episodes seven and eight fell off pretty hard because I no longer felt that I was directing the story. One of the strongest things about Telltale games was no matter how much they were pushing you towards preordained conclusions, you felt like your decisions had weight and meaning. Sure maybe when you sit down later and think back you can see how the invisible hands were guiding you, but in the moment you were completely engrossed and bought in. Dispatch felt like this to me for the first six episodes but then control was ripped away at the end.

All of that being said I really do recommend you consider playing Dispatch because the writing, voice acting, and animation truly are superb. Even thought I have a bitter taste in my mouth I actually want to go back and play the game again. But this time I would just let each choice default to whatever the developer wants and experience the story that they envisioned. Or maybe just be a complete asshole who tries to sabotage the team at every point.

Donkey Kong Bananza

Donkey Kong Bananza is a fantastic open-world adventure game where your goal is to absolutely destroy every level with a plethora of powers and gather all of the banadiums (not a typo) so DK can fill his belly. Oh also you're trying to tunnel to the centre of the hollow Earth to be granted wish and rescue someone. But lets be honest it's mostly about the banadiums.

Donkey Kong Bananza is the perfect example of a game that can be extremely fun when you're playing it and immediately forgettable when you stop. This does not mean it is a bad game. Only that there is a high likelihood of something else you could play which is more enjoyable. Couple that with a price tag of $100 fucking Canadian dollars and you should understand why Donkey Kong Bananza is down here in the honourable mentions. But you gotta give props where it is due. Nintendo knows their drugs are addicting and prices them accordingly.

You are not going to find a game exactly like Donkey Kong Bananza. The combination of world destruction, collectable, platformer is unique. But for $100 CAD you could buy Minecraft and Super Mario Odyssey and probably have more fun.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Monster Hunter Wilds is a watered down Monster Hunter game. Capcom has been chasing the "average" gamer for so long that they have overcorrected and made something that really doesn't appeal to anyone.

The core loop of Monster Hunter is to craft weapons and armor to hunt monsters and skin their hides. This allows you to craft better weapons and better armor until you're facing absolutely insane monsters that seemed insurmountable dozens of hours ago. I know that sounds reductive but that is effectively why I have played every previous game in the franchise for 200+ hours, minimum.

But this time around Capcom released a Monster Hunter game that is so easy you don't even need to craft more than two or three weapons and armor sets. Gone are the days of trying to build specific elemental weapons that a monster is weak to, or armor that gives you better resistance to their attacks. You can simply roll up with the starting weapon and bonk a monster to death in five minutes. They even chose to get rid of traversing the environment and essentially added a fast travel mechanic. You simply hop on your "chocobo" and it takes you directly to where the monster is. You're getting ubered to the battle and just like when you're in an uber you space out and don't really know / care the route you're taking.

Monster Hunter Wilds also launched with what felt like the lowest number of monsters of any game in the franchise. There were basically only one or two worth hunting in the endgame because you were just grinding for the same generic crafting material. What was even worse is that the weapons you'd craft were then just used to hunt those same monsters. So you weren't even building anything to help you defeat a monster. You were doing it only for completion's sake.

The game is also plagued by technical issues on PC. There are tens of thousands of Steam reviews detailing the problems people are having and even after ten months and four major updates they still persist. I'm not sure what is happening but Capcom's RE Engine seems to only be getting worse.

Every single Monster Hunter game has been followed up with a "G version" (essentially an expansion or DLC) that adds a new level of difficulty and host of monsters to the game. I'll be very interested to see what Capcom does with Monster Hunter Wilds because at this point in time I think the majority of gamers believe Capcom haven't even finished building Wilds. Who knows how everyone will react to $50 DLC that is in practice just finishing the game they already paid for.

I've bounced so hard off Monster Hunter Wilds that it may be possible I simply skip the DLC and wait for whatever the next mainline game in the franchise is. This is such a sad deperature from Mosnter Hunter being my game of the decade.

Arc Raiders

Having watched videos of Escape from Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown I was aware of the general gameplay elements of an "extraction shooter". I had no motivation to play them because they always prioritized player versus player (PvP) combat. That's not inherently a bad thing but when it is possible for you to lose all of your equipment and therefore hours of progress it becomes difficult for me to justify playing one. But with this year's release of Arc Raiders I finally cracked and took the plunge.

The only reason I decided to give ARC Raiders a shot was because it billed itself as PvPvE (player versus player versus environment). Like I said, I am not against PvP but I did not want it to be the core focus of the game. After putting in 40 hours I am happy to report that the PvE elements were a ton of fun. But that the PvP was as frustrating as I expected.

The first 20 hours were pure enjoyment. I did not really care about the quality of what I was looting. I was simply focused on hoarding as much material as possible and upgrading my base so I could eventually bring better equipment out on raids. During this time I would say that 90% of my encounters with other players was cordial. People spoke using their microphones and used the emote wheel constantly. Sure I got backstabbed and jumped a handful of times but it happened so infrequently that I was able to shake it off and hop right back into another raid. As a PvE game I loved ARC Raiders and really wish there was a way to queue for PvE-only environments because I honestly think I could have played another 100 hours like that.

Sometime after 20 hours the game began to turn. When I was able to craft and bring better equipment on raids I started to run into more hostile players. They would never use comms or the emote wheel. They'd simply hide in the shadows and jump me or just be running across the map with no regard for self preservation and attack anyone they encountered. It started to become clear that this was the optimal way to play ARC Raiders. The game hands out cheap but powerful weapons that can quickly kill even players who have brought high level equipment. So why bother crafting anything when you can use free guns to kill someone and take it instead? As I approached my 40th hour I'd say that 80% of my encounters with other players were hostile. That paranoia triggers a is a self-fulfilling prophecy because then I stopped talking to other players out of fear of exposing myself. So we are all skulking in the shadows, terrified that we're going to be jumped, and all of our loot taken.

After I had completed all of the game's quests there was really only two things left for me to do. Look for all of the blueprints so I could craft everything. That had little appeal because building those blueprints took a lot of resources and would most likely be lost to another player with a free weapon. So the second option was to become what I hated and just start murdering players indiscriminately. This also had little appeal because I don't think the PvP combat in ARC Raiders is good. To scratch that itch I could easily go play Battlefield 6 or Deadlock or even Hunt: Showdown.

I know it may sound like I hated ARC Raiders but I promise you I didn't. The general idea of the game is great but it just morphed into something that was no longer interesting to me. At the time of writing there are nearly 400,000 people playing ARC Raiders on Steam and I hope that they are enjoying themselves and Embark continues to support them for the foreseeable future. But if Embark wants to try to pull a player like myself back I hope they realize that a PvE-only mode is not going to cannibalize what made ARC Raiders a really fun game.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a fun game but it's just not as good as the first. It feels much more disjointed than its predecessor because you're travelling through space to various different planets and ships. This allows you to experience all sorts of new things but they don't usually affect one another. In Citizen Sleeper you are stuck on a cramped space station so no matter how far you go you cannot escape the consequences of your actions. Everything seemed to be interconnected with one another due to the closed off nature of the environment. But in Citizen Sleeper 2 sometimes you'd arrive on a planet, complete a quest for a reward, and then leave never to think of that place again.

I appreciate the risk the developer took expanding the scope of the first game. It would have been super easy to just write another story for the same location and cash in. But they didn't want to rest on their laurels and tried to create some grander. I have no idea where they are going to go from here but I am interested regardless.

Super Mario Galaxy for Nintendo Switch

If you had asked me to rate my favourite Mario games at the start of 2025 I think I would have put Super Mario Galaxy near the top. I had such rose coloured glasses for the planetoid platforming that I may have put it ahead of games like Super Mario Odyssey or Super Mario Bros. Wonder. But after replaying an "enhanced" Super Mario Galaxy for Nintendo Switch, it is much more rough around the edges than I remember.

Back in the day Super Mario Galaxy relied heavily on motion controls and fixed camera angles due to the limitations of the Wiimote. You may have thought that Nintendo would have taken the time to add free camera control due to the Switch's dual Joy-Cons but you'd be wrong. This is effectively Super Mario Galaxy running through a Wii emulator. There are no modern quality of life improvements to this port. The only way I found it to be playable was if I docked my Switch and disconnected the Joy-Cons. I absolutely had to make use of the motion controls and infrared pointer to play this game.

At the same time the planetoid platforming is definitely not as good as I remember. There were so many times where some errant jump (usually cased by a poor camera angle) sent me spiralling off a planet into the abyss where I'd die and have to restart the level. The sheer number of instant failure scenarios where I wasn't hit by an enemy honestly shocked me. I did manage to beat the entire game but I think I only enjoyed collecting like half of the stars.

By no means is Super Mario Galaxy a bad game, but in this day and age if you own a Nintendo Switch there are at least seven other Mario games you should be playing before this one.

Once Upon a Katamari

There isn't much to say about Once Upon a Katamari other than it is a Katamari game for the latest hardware. If you enjoy rolling random things up into a ball while listening to banger music then you'll most likely enjoy Once Upon a Katamari.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

I actually cannot remember if I ever played the original Final Fantasy Tactics. If I glance over at my shelves I can see boxes for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, both of which are games that I have absolutely fantastic memories of.

When I saw that Nintendo was remastering the original under the moniker Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles it seemed like the perfect time to try it. Oh lordy how wrong I was.

Final Fantasy Tactics is simply a product of its time and credit where credit is due, they did not attempt to fix anything with this remaster. I naively went into it thinking the job system of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance would be present but you can really see how that has evolved over time. The story is really good but the combat has just slowed to a crawl because I guess I somehow made the incorrect choices when it comes to levelling my characters. I think I have righted the ship but it took several hours of grinding that really sapped a lot of my energy.

So if you're going to give Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles a shot, just be aware that you truly are playing a PlayStation 1 game from 1997.