MT

Street Fighter (2026) If you saw the trailers and thought "this looks like a fun time", you should go see it. If you saw them and thought "this looks dumb", maybe don't see it. Definitely a step up from the first movie. This was actually movie about Street Fighter characters, instead of an action movie that happens to have Street Fighter characters in it. My main gripes are there are some tournament matches that would've been cool to see (Guile vs Vega, for one) that weren't in there, and some of the humor falls a little flat, specifically the "isn't Bison a weirdo?" type stuff, where he seems to have a bit of a foot fetish for some reason. Characters for the most part feel like they should, if maybe a little more over the top, but I don't think it's in a bad way.

1. Hades 2 (credits + epilogue) 2. Pragmata 3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 4. Marvel's Wolverine 5. Control Resonant Really fantastic game. Coming to this game after Wolverine, it really showed me how awful fighting as Wolverine was. So many times I would get attacked by a guy off screen, but here the camera was pulled back enough it was much easier to keep track of everyone, plus there was an icon on screen showing an attack was incoming, so it made it hella easier to dodge. I beat the final boss, but much like the last game I think there's more after the fact that i'm looking forward to playing. The story it tells and the world it builds is super interesting. Has me wondering if there'll be more in the series or if this is an end to it. Maybe the epilogue will tell me, who knows.

1. Hades 2 (credits + epilogue) 2. Pragmata 3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 4. Marvel's Wolverine I really wanted to like this game more. Wolverine has always been my favorite Marvel/X-Men character, and when I heard Insomniac would be making it, I was super excited. All footage I saw leading up to it only got me more excited. I got about halfway through the game and wasn't really having all that great of a time. The combat felt way too button mash-y, and I don't really remember the Spider-Man games having the same issue (but it's been years so maybe I just completely forgot). Spider-Man at least had gadgets he could use to mix up the combat more than just straight hitting bad guys. I get Wolverine doesn't have shit like that, so i'm not shocked by it, but it was still frustrating. The camera was way too up close, which I get is to make things feel more visceral, but I can't tell you how many times I was fighting one guy, and someone from way off camera would dive in at me without any warning, and just knock me out of whatever attack I was doing on the original enemy, there was just about no time to react. There's also just about no invulnerability frames when you're getting attacked, so if one person hits you, and other enemies are attacking one right after the other, prepare to get hit by every single one of them. At least you can mash parry to try and stop that, but it's still really fucking annoying, and happened FAR too many times. About halfway through the game I had to set the difficulty down to easy, because I was just so sick and tired of it. While making the game easier, it felt a little more true to how Wolverine would actually fight characters, as a dude with massive claws on his hands shouldn't be slashing away at a human enemy multiple times (yes I get they're reavers and have more metal in them) before they die. At least with enemies later in the game it makes more sense. The other thing about the combat is that it's basically 90% of what you have to get you through the game. What I mean by that is, the Spider-Man games at least had sections where you played as other characters, which helped break up the combat somewhat. With this game, you're Wolverine the entire time. I had heard a rumor that in earlier versions, there were sections where you played as Jean, and if that's true it's a damn shame, because it would've been the perfect way to change things up for a while, so that when the time comes to go back to playing as Wolverine, you're ready for it. All of this is a huge shame, because I think everything else is well done. Visually it looks amazing. Wolverine's clothes and flesh get properly fucked up, there's just so much blood, as their should be, the clothes stay slashed apart (at least until you get to a cutscene, but I get why). The characters are all acted amazingly well (but i'm kinda tired of Troy Baker just doing Troy with an accent. Please change your voice up even slightly, my dude). Liam is 100% perfect for Wolverine, even if this version of Wolverine is a tad nicer, that's not really Liam's fault.

Supergirl (2026) It was kinda...fine? I hear they didn't do a great job keeping to the original story. Whomever decided a slow remix of In The Middle needed to happen during the film's climactic fight needs to be sacked. That alone took a point off my personal score. May need to read the comic run.

1. Hades 2 (credits + epilogue) 2. Pragmata 3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom I bought the Switch 2 upgrade, to have something to kill time before Wolverine and Tokon came out. I originally was only thinking of fucking around, but eventually I was enjoying myself too much and got all of the shrines/lightroots again, and then beat it last night. Still a real fun game.

It may just be before the X-Men officially become a thing, because obviously Jean's there, and he seems to have some familiarity with her.

1. Hades 2 (credits + epilogue) 2. Pragmata I had a good time with it. Playing the demo, I wasn't sure if the hacking would get tiresome a few hours into the game, but it never seemed to. Did kinda see the ending coming, but it was still impactful. I ended up lowering the difficulty near the end because I was just ready for the game to be over. The last boss fight felt kinda superfluous, like they only added it because they wanted some big, action setpiece to end the game on.

The Mandalorian and Grogu Real fun movie. There's a part near the middle that drags a tiny bit, but it's not unenjoyable. Definitely could've been split into an 8 episode season, but the bigger budget allowed for bigger stars. Was surprised to see some stop motion in a few shots as well.

Last year's defeated games 1. Hades 2 (credits + epilogue) Beat this on the 1st, so it counts!

Pretty sure I finished the Hades 2 epilogue and it's kinda not worth it, honestly. The ending that you get before the credits was way more satisfying

I think you beat Hades 2 a day or two after me, lol. I made it my goal to hit credits in Hades 2 before the new year. 1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. 📱 Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 8. (Famicom Disk System) The Legend of Zelda 9. / Hades 2 (first time) 10. (Famicom Disk System) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link 11. (Famicom Disk System) Metroid 12. Dispatch 13. Metroid Prime 4 14. Metroid Prime 1: Remastered 15. / Hades 2 My thoughts pretty much echo Kyle's. I had a similar thing to the first game where I fell off hard in early access, but when it came out in 1.0 I was hooked again, especially since I got it on the Switch 2 as well as the PC. The cross save syncing wasn't perfect, but the fact that it works at all is fucking awesome. I'm still working through the epilogue stuff, but much like Hades 1, i'm kinda ready for it to be over completely. Like Kyle said, with Hades 1 you beat it around 8 or 10 times to get the full ending and that was it, but with Hades 2 you had to beat both final bosses multiple times, AND THEN you have to do a bunch of other things like get your relationship levels up with certain characters to a certain level, there are some characters that have gone missing between games and you get vague hints as to where they are after you roll credits and you've gotta do THAT. I'm still definitely enjoying my time, but I don't really know if i'll have the same urge to beat it after going through it a few more times. Just after the credits alone i've beaten the underworld boss around 8 times and i'm still not finished, so doing that for so many times in a row gets kinda frustrating.

I call bullshit oh and happy birthday, ya filthy animal

Been there, shit sucks. Couldn't do a lot of gift giving this year, with my finances being the way they are. Still managed to get a decent amount of stuff for the people in my life, at least. Tomorrow we're going to my partner's mom's for their family Christmas, then on Christmas day, we're going back (just the four of us) there, then to my mom's, and then my partner's dad's in the afternoon. Should be a nice, busy day

1. DOOM: The Dark Ages 2. 📱 Balatro 3. Diablo IV 4. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred 5. Donkey Kong Bananza 6. Control 7. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 8. (Famicom Disk System) The Legend of Zelda 9. / Hades 2 (first time) 10. (Famicom Disk System) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link 11. (Famicom Disk System) Metroid 12. Dispatch 13. Metroid Prime 4 14. Metroid Prime 1: Remastered I bought this back when it came out, played for a few hours, and just kinda forgot about it. In all honesty though, i'm glad I did. Playing it after MP4 just made me appreciate everything Prime 1 has to offer so much more. For one, the world actually feels like a cohesive place without needing some sort of mostly empty map connecting the various areas. The boss and it's "motivations" (for lack of a better word) are way more obvious and told to you as you progress through the game than they were for MP4, and actually made sense. My only real complaint is the Fusion Metroids you start fighting at the end of the game. Eventually they'll split into two (as if one isn't bad enough) and each one is weak to a specific weapon, so you can really only deal with one at a time. It's hard to keep track of two of those slippery bastards at once.