I suppose a real TV adaptation of The Last of Us would have the viewer experience, over and over, all the horrific ways Ellie can die in each encounter–with that grim musical cue each time. This game is a technical marvel, etc. etc., but also genuinely unpleasant to play. I soldier on because it’s supposed to be brilliant, but right now it’s three stars–just like Alan Wake 2 this is not as deep as it thinks it is (and doesn’t even have a rock musical hidden inside).

This article by Eric Kain does a very good job of exposing the fundamental problems of characterisation and motivation in the two lead characters. While he writes he “still had something resembling fun while playing” I am not sure I had any fun at all. I would have stopped if it hadn’t been for all the plaudits and 10/10 reviews.

★★★☆☆ (mainly for the technical artistry).

I’ve now played 67 hours of Street Fighter 6. Since Steam and the other services started counting, I’ve only spent more time on Minecraft, Warframe, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Red Dead Redemption 2. It deserves to be in their company–it’s a fascinating game, with a skill ceiling that seems to go forever and, as I praised back in August, a suite of tools that allow you to improve your play. I have reached Silver 4 rank, which is nothing for a fighting game aficionado, but for this 45 year-old seems just fine. Time is limited, and I have other things I want to play (I finally have started the original Hollow Knight and have also returned to the dour Last of Us 2) but I now understand why for some a good fighting game will be all they want to play. ★★★★★

A couple of weeks ago I downloaded Arcade Time Capsule, a VR game/experience that allows you to walk around multiple floors of classic arcade machines, all of which you can immediately play via emulation. It’s a wonder. I was most struck by how much I enjoyed giving the various shoot-em-ups and fighting games a go, genres I had ignored for years. Playing Street Fighter II in particular reminded me of my 1990s self, who wanted to beat people at games, rather than just finish them as quickly as possible to reduce “the backlog”.

This has led to me buying Street Fighter 6 and, for the first time in over twenty years, playing matches online. Late 1990s clan Quake was the last time I tried to beat other humans at games, so it is strange to rediscover the rush of competitive play. I sweat. I get angry at myself (though, middle age has definitely given me better perspective on these things). But I’m having a lovely time, fascinated by how the tutorials, training modes, replays, and ranked matchmaking make it easy to study the game and improve your performance.

And when this newfound fighting interest dies down I suspect I might try to learn how to play all those amazing-looking shmups…

This first-person adventure game was developed by Swedish developers MachineGames, who were previously responsible for Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. It is, however, less a shooter and more a simple stealth and puzzle game that allows you to punch your way clumsily out of messing up.

Credit must be given for all the work that went towards making this seem like the Indiana Jones film we never had: Troy Baker’s impersonation of Harrison Ford and the quip-filled script strike exactly the right tone. The story also captures the B-movie blend of adventuring and mystery of the original trilogy, complete with a despicable Nazi villain and a final act veer towards the supernatural. Special praise also for composer Gordy Haab, whose original music is good it could almost be John Williams himself (read an interview with Mr Haab on his scoring here).

The actual gameplay is very straightforward–sneak up behind baddy, whack him on the head with whatever implement is at hand, and if you are noticed by other enemies then sprint off and hope they will lose track of you. Puzzles are heavily signposted. Fist fighting is fine but not particularly engaging. The game has a strange combination of elements that never fully cohered for me, but I did enjoy my time adventuring.

★★★☆☆ (But add an extra star if you are a big Indiana Jones fan.)

I played this on a friend’s Megadrive when it came out in the early 90s, but don’t think I had ever played it all the way through. I used save-states to get through what seem to me unfair and unfun sections of the game (or to make up for my lack of platforming skill), but generally enjoyed the challenge and the cheery music. I have some other games I want to get to next, but I think I’ll be trying Sonic 2 sometime in the not-to-distant future. ★★★☆☆

It’s holiday-time for me, which means there is a little more time available to play games. It has also meant more time thinking about how I play games and sometimes wondering why I play at all.

First off is what GOG tells me is risibly called LEGO® Indiana Jones™: The Original Adventures. My 5⅚ year-old daughter and I play a level or so a day of this as her preferred screen time, and we sit in the living room in front of the big HDTV plugged into to my PC. She loves the stress-free co-op, and although it’s no masterpiece I do think that playing the Temple of Doom levels actually might be more entertaining than watching that film again.

Next, I was looking for something straightforward to play, and ended up downloading the Kega Fusion emulator to play the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Simple games with big old pixel graphics look great on my Logitech G Cloud handheld, and although I could run an emulator directly on the handheld, I am so used to using Sunshine/Moonlight to stream from the main PC that I just do that. I’m sure it adds some few microseconds of latency but I am too old to notice or care about such things. I am just as bad at Sonic as I ever was–but it brings back happy early 1990s memories for me. Being handheld I can just do it on the sofa or in bed for a few minutes. Save states are the other thing that make these games far more playable than they used to be–and frankly every game should have them. Let the player decide how they want to play the game.

In terms of contemporary games I’m alternating between Indiana Jones the Great Circle and The Last of Us Part II. As the TV is inevitably already in use I find another room and put on my Quest 3 and use Virtual Desktop to stream to a giant floating screen. These kind of games just aren’t as impressive on portables, and the added benefit of VR is that I can run them at arbitrary resolutions–2560x1080 in the case of these two. Ultrawide gives a great wraparound feeling that works well for first and third-person games. When I was recently completing Astral Chain on the Switch I couldn’t stream or ultrawide it, but I still used a cheap HDMI to USB-C adapter so I could play on a big screen in the Quest. When I tried Astral Chain in handheld mode it just wasn’t as engaging. I’d also note that it’s the decent passthrough the Quest 3 provides that makes putting on the headset far less alienating than in the past.

Finally, I did actually play a few games in “full” VR. Minecraft Bedrock, as it turns out, has a VR mode built in you can access simply by launching it with a special shortcut. Worth it for a visit to a world you’ve spent some time in. Slime Rancher also has a recent VR mod out (not the official one) so I gave that a go, and despite the cheery music it is faintly terrifying trying to manage these greedy alien creatures by yourself on a desolate planet. Not as cosy as I expected.

Each game (and way of playing) really has felt pretty unique–and that is a testament to the amazing diversity in gaming available nowadays.

It has a Saturday-morning-cartoon plot, script, and voice acting, but its action gameplay is thrilling in a moment-to-moment way that Alan Wake 2 never was. Superb high-tempo electronic guitar music, good graphics (although I can’t help thinking it would be better at 60fps on something more powerful than a Switch) and a unique chain mechanic for you to control your beast buddies. It made me smile every time I turned it on and started bashing enemies.

I played this on Easy difficulty–people who are actually good at this kind of game might want challenge, but I just wanted fun and spectacle. The final boss, however, seemed impossibly hard, and it turns out there is a world of complexity in the upgrade trees and modifiers that I had completely missed in my hammer-the-buttons playthrough. Usually I loathe having to spend time in menus rather than playing the game, but figuring out of a configuration of abilities to defeat the boss made me appreciate just how cleverly assembled this game is.

If the other games by director Takahisa Taura and supervisor Hideki Kamiya are half as good I have many happy hours ahead of me. ★★★★★

The rock musical level of Alan Wake 2 is one of the most enjoyable and creative sections of a game that I’ve played. It’s a shame, then, that I found much of the rest of the game uninspired. Combat feels clunky and does not evolve significantly in the course of the game. The “deduction” mechanics did not make me feel smart. The plot is neither particularly original nor surprising–and the cliffhanger ending filled me with no anticipatory excitement.

To be fair to Remedy, I should say that the audiovisual craftsmanship is highly impressive. The graphics, cut-scene shot composition, sound design, and musical choices make this the closest thing to prestige drama that there is in gaming. It’s stylish. It just wasn’t that much fun to play. ★★★☆☆

The original God of War was released in the ten-plus year period where I didn’t play any games. Playing it for the first time comes for me, then, without any nostalgia for the era or the series.

The major gameplay annoyance is the fixed camera angles–whether that is not being able to see behind yourself, or having to change your stick direction arbitrarily just because the camera decides to shift. I am very glad that gamers have now been entrusted with the right stick to control the camera; it seems strange that anyone thought using both thumbs would be too difficult.

Early 2000s gaming sexism is my other chief problem–the game’s display of female breasts at every opportunity and its ultra-violent, ultra-masculine hero seem to be trying very hard to be adult, but end up seeming juvenile. It didn’t need to be an 18.

The combat is, however, is still engaging and well-designed. Carelessness leads quickly to failure and most battles seem fair; you need to pay close attention to which kind of enemy you are fighting and their attack patterns.

Other games beckon, so I will put this on pause for now, eight hours in. ★★★☆☆

(Played on the PCSX2 emulator, which seemed flawless to me.)

I played Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora when it came out, got about twenty hours in and then moved on to something else. I was wondering last week if I given it short shrift, so reinstalled and played five or so more hours.

It’s certainly beautiful. It’s fun to fly around Pandora. The story is fine. Shooting mech-suited bad humans with a bow is satisfying. When I looked at HowLongToBeat, however, and realised I had at least a dozen more hours to complete the game at my typical slow pace, I realised that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t want to search for the right ingredient in the forest to craft a better bow. I didn’t want to spend more time get better trousers, or a better harness for my flying buddy, or unlock another research station the same way I unlocked the last five.

It’s not a problem unique to Avatar, as I remember feeling that Horizon: Zero Dawn had outstayed its welcome by about 15-20 hours–although I found that game’s story considerably more interesting so I did push through to finish it. I will not finish Avatar, and so I happily assign it to the never-to-be-finished pile. ★★★☆☆

Age has withered my interest in online multiplayer, so it was the talk of this game’s single-player campaign that attracted my attention. Credit to the designers for aiming to bring in some brief open-world elements to change up the pacing, and even greater credit to them for the Control-influenced supernatural horror sections. It’s not quite as inventive as its influence, but the production design is impeccable and the game is always fun to play (thanks, too, frequent save-points!). This is the game-equivalent of a good Mission Impossible film. Silly, but entertaining. ★★★★☆

I played this in VR (Luke Ross mod) all the way through with the Phantom Liberty DLC.

This beats Half-Life Alyx for me as the best VR experience to be had. Night City’s size and complexity makes Alyx seem a very linear and restricted game in comparison. I don’t care that Cyberpunk doesn’t have VR controls–using a controller with the mod’s gaze-aiming works perfectly.

The main story is, as every one points out, not quite as good as the DLC, but it’s still full of plenty of cool set-pieces and some genuinely different endings. The DLC in VR is just phenomenal.

There is nothing else like this. CD Projekt may have messed up the launch but right now it’s one of the best games ever made. ★★★★★

This is a fantastic game. Tight design means you never feel your time is wasted and you are always learning from each encounter. It is difficult (I played on normal) but fair. The sound is terrifying. The graphics and animation are high-quality throughout, dark but never obscure. Play it. ★★★★★

This would have been a four star game for me if it had finished with Arthur’s death. The epilogue, however, elevated yet another Rockstar game about a gang of thieves into something more impressive. Watching John Marston (Jim Milton!) build his new life on the ranch was the best part of the game by far, and something very special in gaming. ★★★★★

It’s a game about killing large monsters that makes you regret killing the monsters and resent the protagonist. Mood and music are perfect, and the climbing mechanic generally works well. I wouldn’t have minded a few less colossi to beat, as I felt the game was a slog by the twelfth or so, but nevertheless, a unique achievement by the creators and a game that is still well worth experiencing today. ★★★★☆

I loved about 75% of this game–the exploration and gradual increase in your powers is deeply satisfying, and the smoothness of movement and jumping is a pleasure. What brings it down for me are the bosses and the odd section where the difficulty spiked and it wasn’t clear how I should fight certain enemies. I resorted to walkthroughs a number of times to avoid wasting long chunks of time flailing around not knowing how to do damage. It’s a good game, but I’m not desperately waiting for Remastered 2 or Prime 4. ★★★★☆

This was the perfect game to play with my four and half year old daughter. Co-op here is perfect for younger players, as they can’t die or fall behind. Although she wouldn’t be able to figure out the puzzles herself, she could feel she was helping as I bumbled along. Graphics are simple but beautifully animated; music is fantastic classical piano. It’s unique and, dare I say, a classic. ★★★★★