For Auld Lang Syne: A 2025 Patient Gaming Round-Up

Happy holidays! It was a great year of games, both new and revisited. 19 patient games and only a single non-patient game this year (very worth it though). I found this year I was more willing to put the time into getting all the achievements on some games, which is something I usually don’t bother with or care about. Maybe just having a bit of extra time earlier in the year to challenge myself helped.

Unfortunately I now live in an area with a less-than-stellar internet connection, which has significantly reduced my interest in playing fighting games and multiplayer games in general. Maybe I’ll put the gloves back on one day if I can find a game with enough good single player content, but even then there’s no replacement for playing actual people.

Alas, here’s what I DID play! I'm a five-star rating fan, and each tier is unordered except my GOTY at the end.

Games I abandoned too early to rate:

Banner Saga (2014) - I bought the whole trilogy in a bundle deal thinking it would totally be my jam. The trailers reminded me of Pyre, which I loved. Unfortunately I put a fair six hours into the first game and never really found the groove. The artstyle is charming and the story, while grim as far as I got, certainly had potential for an epic tale. I guess I just found the difficulty of the combat a bit too much. Each fight took a long time to work through as the whole thing is based on attrition. Each time the game dangled an optional fight in my face I felt like it was the choice I wanted to take from a narrative perspective, yet was signing deeply as I prepared myself for another fight. Eventually I just decided to let the game be.

Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun (2016) - Another super-sale touted as the best of its genre. Turns out I just don’t like the genre. Too much micro-management and save-scumming for me. Mark Of The Ninja still holds my vote for best stealth game.

★★☆☆☆

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (2013) - Not gonna lie, I only played through this game in hopes that my contribution will help convince Capcom to release Lost Planet 2 (the actual good game) from redevelopment hell. The first installment unfortunately has stiff combat, many a rough edge, and a truly, truly awful plot. But it really is cool to fight all these thermo aliens and piloting mechs is great! The mission structure is fun and I do like the concept of your health bar and your mission timer being one and the same. Just please Capcom, fix the sequel up and put it back on Steam.

Wizard of Legend (2018) - Heard it was a great magic game, but in the end I didn’t really get the vibe. It’s a pretty straightforward room clearing roguelike, yes there are plenty of spells that do plenty of things but I wanted…I don’t know…something else. Maybe I just felt like it was a worse Dead Cells.

Strikey Sisters (2017) - It was cheap and I thought the premise was interesting; Fantasy brick breaker with enemies and bosses. But man, each stage took so long to beat and it was way too easy to goof right near the end and have to start again. Overall the gameplay was leaning towards a three star experience, but the voice acting was leaning even farther towards a one. Seriously, just skip the cutscenes or mute it or something if you go play this game.

★★★☆☆

Spiritfarer (2020) - A game with a great premise that overstays its welcome. I have a selection of the spirits that I enjoyed my time with (not just the first few) and others that I was very happy to see off to the netherworld. There’s just a lot of busy work with growing, salvaging, and collecting all the bits and bobs you need to make each person’s house and furniture. Smelting specifically was the worst of the chores, but blacksmithing was up there too. All in all the faffing:feels ratio doesn’t stay balanced by the end. I decided I wanted to see each spirit off before completing the game and was very annoyed to find out >!I’d wasted a bunch of time on the last guy who never leaves the boat!<

Chants of Sennaar (2023) - People said it’s another Tunic experience, but it really didn’t capture the same magic for me. I found the puzzles pretty straight forward for the most part. I do appreciate decrypting languages in general, but I think they could have gotten a bit weirder with them.

Dungeons of Dreadrock (2022) - This one was just puzzles through and through. And lots of pretty good ones! The quick reloading was a good way to experiment and figure out what needed to be done. I think I ended up having one or two out of the hundred I needed to look up after exhausting all the hints. The story is a bit weak but that’s the glue to hold all these puzzles together.

★★★★☆

Paradise Killer (2020) - This was a very cool little game with a GREAT soundtrack. I really enjoyed exploring the different parts of the island and piecing together what was going on. If I could do it for the first time again, I wouldn’t have spent so much time maxing out my relationships with everybody as it got a bit grindy. I 100% lucked into a very specific spot of the map right as I was wrapping up the game that cleared up the last big part of the mystery which was nice. The game started with a premise that you can ‘find your own truth’ but I’m fairly sure there’s only one correct order of events that happened. Maybe it just meant that you can end up being wrong and still complete the game, since you can begin the trial at any time.

Untitled Goose Game (2019) - Lovely little game, very silly. Just the right amount of frustration and difficulty to make me feel like a goose persecuted by pesky humans. The music fit the game perfectly. 100%’ed

Buck Up and Drive (2022) - This was an awesome arcadey driving game that prioritizes fun over any semblance of realism. I had a great time bumping up my highscore, spinning out on cop cars, chasing down rivals, and grinding rails. I highly recommend grabbing it on a Saturday morning.

Bugsnax (2020) - I look back on Bugsnax in wonder. It’s ridiculous, but it’s good! The puzzles behind capturing each bugsnak was enough to support the rest of the gameplay loop (including the bizarre snack feeding mechanic to turn people into snack frankensteins) and the rest of the budget must have been blown on the stellar voice acting. I was pleasantly surprised by this one, and I bet you would be too. 100%’ed

Wild Guns (1994) - This was a really cool design for a shooter. Putting your character in the foreground to jump and dodge out of the way while you fire at your enemies in the background was a super unique take on making a third person shooter. And it was a lot of fun! The theme was great, the levels challenging but not overly unfair. It would be right at home at an arcade.

Sly Cooper and The Thievius Racoonus (2002) [Replay] - Ultimately my favourite Sly is Sly 2 but its predecessor did have some great points to it as well. The level based design kept you in the action and reduced the dilly-dallying you might otherwise do in open world sequels. Even so, it still feels like a proof of concept when you know what follows. I got all the bottles, but there was no way I was going to do the speedruns which require serious skill and many attempts per level to beat. I think I got two before throwing the towel in.

Micro Mages (2019) I watched a video about the design goals behind Micro Mages and it was impressive enough to make me pick it up. THE WHOLE GAME IS 40 KILOBYTES and has been hyper-optimized to fit as much game into that small space as possible. I won't link it in case it flags this post but seriously check out the video explaining some techniques they used! For a game as constrained as it is, Micro Mages is awesome! If this was released for the NES back in the day people would have lost their minds over it. The animations are fluid, the levels are varied and challenging, the feeling of having to write down a code for each level to keep your progress is wonderfully nostalgic. My only regret is not being able to finish the final level on Hard mode. There’s one particularly nasty bit with a bubble-spitting goat, a bouncing slime, and a giant floating skull that I could never pull off consistently.

★★★★★

Shogun Showdown (2024) My roguelite of the year for sure. I know the gaming world has been swarmed by roguelite deckbuilders over the last couple years but this one was legit pretty sweet. I enjoyed the one-dimensional movement and spacing considerations. It actually has some strong parallels to my favourite IRL card game Exceed now that I think about it. Having to spend an action to turn around was a keystone to the game design; a lot of weapons, enemies, and tactics are centered around this one little mechanic. You have to beat the game seven times over in increasing difficulties, each run introducing more than just beefier enemies. The 7th run is legit HARD and I really liked how >!The final boss doesn’t have a health bar. It made the whole battle so tense and I won with a single life left on the last possible turn. Thrilling!!< Technically you can play your seven runs with each of the different characters but I’ve put it down for now. Will definitely pick it back up though!

Tinykin (2022) - I wanted a game to explore and Tinykin delivered in spades. Massive levels with tons of nooks and crannies. No matter where you go in this game there’s always something useful around every corner. The biggest star of the show was the soapboard, without which traversing the levels would have been a massive slog. Kudos for that idea. The races were fun too. This one finished up at just the right length too. It was a well paced and enjoyable game. I feel like I can’t go back and play Pikmin now that I’ve been spoiled by its spiritual successor.

Banjo Tooie (2000) [Replay] - An instant classic. Many people prefer the Kazooie but I’m a Tooie guy through and through. My hot take is that many people who dislike Tooie are judging it in terms of 100%ing it, rather than just beating it. And in that lens it’s pretty fair, the game has some big levels and it takes a lot longer to backtrack through levels and collect it all. I did it anyway, but I get it. I love the larger, interconnected worlds. Kirkhope slayed the music design. While it’s not my favourite level, >!Witchyworld!< always sticks out to me as a great theme for a level; >!it’s a cruddy, rundown, evil amusement park, something that is supposed to be fun and exciting!<. Just one example of the slightly more mature nature of the game. The >!polluted swimming pool in Jolly Roger’s Lagoon giving that one poor kid an extra arm!< was another example. But yeah I’ll keep replaying this every handful of years for sure. Next time it’ll be a minimalist run. 100%’ed

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - New Game + (2019) - While the initial playthrough was back in 2023-2024, I decided to do my very first Fromsoft New Game + this year with Sekiro and get some more endings. It was a great time, and not near as difficult as I expected it to be (well some new bosses were but not the overall gameplay). I enjoyed the experience so much I ended up going for all the achievements and costumes! It was pretty cool how much faster each run got as you get better and better and can start just running past all the stuff you don’t need to bother with anymore. The only thing I never did was the full boss gauntlet with no reward at the end; that juice was not worth the squeeze. Grinding for the last handful of skill points near the end was the lamest part but it wasn't too bad. Overall Sekiro is still Fromsoft’s finest work in my eyes. 100%’ed

Okami (2006) [Replay] - I finally decided to buy and replay this gem from my childhood. Still great. Do I wish there was a mod to remove Issun from the game? Absolutely. Does it reuse bosses a few too many times? Yep. But it’s so gorgeous and fun to explore I can’t help but give it a pass. The soundtrack goes bananas as well. Literally going to be in Japan, >!hiking Mt. Ezofuji and (hopefully) seeing a pair of the world’s largest owls!< in about a week!!! 100%’ed

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom (2024) - My patient game of the year! What a great, great game. Precision platforming with a car has never been more fun. It’s the simplest concept with, like, two buttons maybe, and yet the amount of tricks you can pull off from those basic principles is staggering. The best part is that almost all your tricks are usable from the first minute of the game. It just dripfeeds that information slowly to you which gave me Tunic vibes. No part of the animations or level design takes itself seriously (a surreal humour I quite enjoy) and finding all the collectibles was genuinely challenging. Managing to 100% the game without looking anything up was a pretty great feeling for me. 100%’ed

There you have it! Here’s to another year of cool games. Thanks for reading/skimming/gaming.