MT

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.

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 Going into the game, the only review I had heard was from Giant Bomb, and their reviewer gave the game a 5/5. This game is not that. It's AT BEST a 4/5. The Metacritic rating has it about 80%, and I think that's around where I fall as well. It was an enjoyable game, absolutely gorgeous, running at 4K/60 docked, and 720p/120hz in handheld mode. It's a bit too linear for my tastes. Without getting into story spoilers, there's an "open world" desert area that connects the other main areas. The game funnels you through two of them at first without giving you choice, and then after that the game says "okay, now you can go anywhere!" Except that you can't. I tried to go to one area that I saw off in the distance, and the character you can call to give hints (or get hints whether you want them or not, and as of this current version, you CAN'T turn his help off), would tell me to go to a completely different area. After going to that area, you can only go so far before you have to get an item from there, take it back to another area on the complete opposite side of the map so that he can install it into your gun, and then go to a completely different area to use that item. There's no fast travel, and there's just about nothing to do in the main open world area. There are a few "shrines", a few powerup areas, and then a ton of green crystals. One of the things the Giant Bomb reviewer mentioned was that you should try to grab as many of the green crystals you could as you went through the game. So I did just that. You need the green crystals to unlock something that will help you get to the final area (an area you can't get to without it), but the game itself never tells you that it's absolutely REQUIRED to do. You have to get an INSANE amount of these. Every time I came across one in the hub world, I grabbed it, and it STILL wasn't enough. It's not a terrible game by any means, it does just fine as a reintroduction to the series to people who haven't played it before. Not being able to turn off the helper character is a crazy choice to make (hopefully a patch puts the option in, because there are times when he just will not shut the fuck up). The other real complaint about the gameplay is the button to jump outside of morph ball is B, but inside the morph ball it's X for some weird reason. There's a way to change it, but I learned that with about 2 hours left in the game. Like I said, it's a beautiful game, the bosses are interesting and fun to fight, but there's a lot of it that just isn't really worth it, IMO.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Shang Tsung in the first Mortal Kombat movie) at age 75