Here we are again (again): the thread where we discuss the games we are playing in 2025

general
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Is 64 hours after ignoring most side stuff?

I got to Costa Del Sol last night and I love that area. It reminds me of wandering Isle Delfino. It’s just a nice space to exist in.

I feel like playing remake was like drinking a good wine, but from a subpar year (last gen tech loading zone woes). Playing Rebirth is like drinking a good wine from a great year, but watering it down so it goes further (open world busy work).

Also it’s pretty uncool to exclude Barret from the beach wear stuff. I’m certain there are many players who want a shirtless Barret. Let them have it!

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I’m also playing Fantasy Critic this year. Does anyone else play this?

Fantasy Critic is a fantasy sports-style game where players draft upcoming video games, earning points based on their OpenCritic review scores. Points are calculated as (OpenCritic Score - 70), meaning a game scoring 85 earns 15 points, while one scoring 65 loses 5 points. Players also bid on unannounced games throughout the year to strengthen their roster. Strategy involves picking highly anticipated games with strong developers, avoiding delays, and balancing safe picks with high-risk, high-reward choices

Here is my current draft.

Screenshot_20250206-162218
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I drafted these games, including the unannounced Mario, before the Switch 2 reveal trailer—we all saw it coming. However, I’m going to trade Hollow Knight for Ghost of Yotei and probably bid on Demonschool. I really like the game and think it will do well.

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I played a couple hours of Selaco yesterday and I gotta say I’m pleased to have paid full price cos omfg it’s got the juice

I get the same sense that I do playing something like OG ffvii where I can feel crystalline love and joy in the design…it feels like Hard-Boiled Science Fiction. I can tell where I’ve been before by the mess I’m leaving around. Dawn’s inability to sprint is justified by a sprained ankle mentioned on her medical correspondence. I saw a notice by an MRI machine to stop putting metal things near the MRI machine so I picked up a can of arachnopop and threw it in the MRI machine and the MRI popped open upon activation to reveal a secret closet. even in an early stage, I can look at my surroundings while situations unfold and intuit ways to bamboozle my opponents in handfuls of seconds. the thwacky slide/jump kick is a w e s o m e, the guns are total firecrackers. eating a sandwich left on a baby shower party table takes two bites. two bites!!! nom

it feels like a long-delayed delivery on all the promises of Doom and its many successors, deployed by people who understand
the mission.

I suppose at least in these early stages I could nitpick about the pacing being a little too similar to doom 2016’s ‘kill everything in 5 minutes and then vacuum the map in 30.’ I think the treasure hunt kind of hurts the momentum. my understanding is that it gets better

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Playing Till Failure

I’ve once again considered resetting Citizen Sleeper 2 at the beginning of the game. I failed, and now Laine is on the ship, summoning his henchmen against me. I’m worried because things were playing out so well. I’m thinking about turning the difficulty down so I can succeed and see the story through—this feels like a Baldur’s Gate 3 save situation.

But now, I think the game doesn’t want me to reset completely. It wants me to play it out, to fail, and to come back and explore the narrative. The first time I reset, I felt like I didn’t fully understand the mechanics, even though the game had explained them. After all, this is my first Citizen Sleeper game, and I love it so far.

I think I’ll push through, suffer, and learn how the world and its mechanics work. That very struggle gives the game its replayability.

The stress mechanic is no joke. There’s a constant tension—the threat of failure in the gameplay shakes the narrative itself. That’s just how things are in this world. It’s punishing, pushing the player to adapt, to do better.

Unlike Baldur’s Gate, I think this game succeeds by not allowing the player to save-state or backtrack. It enforces a core theme at the heart of the experience—adapting to a new world. You have to live with your failures, learn from them, and push forward, just like the characters within it.

As a machine, you don’t get to rewind or undo mistakes—you have to adapt, recalibrate, and keep going. Citizen Sleeper 2 embraces that philosophy, forcing the player to experience the weight of their failures and evolve with them. It’s a game about survival, learning, and persistence, not perfection.

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early impressions of Sid Meier’s Civilization VII since I purchased the Rube Edition:

  • it’s a good game*
  • It doesnt look bad like VI, but it doesnt look as good as V imo
  • The reshuffling at the end of each Age isn’t as disruptive as it was made out to be imo.
  • The Age/Era (forgot what they call it exactly) mechanic does work as intended in keeping you focused on medium-term goals instead of just the usual fun early game then cruise control for remaining X hours
  • The culture and leader changing stuff is on the one hand kind of confusing to deal with as a player wrt to opponents, bc you think you have a handle on your rival powers then all of a sudden Persian Harriet Tubman is now like Russian Harriet Tubman. On the other hand for the player’s own use case it’s more of a build-you-own-civ as you go system, which seems cool and appears to have a lot of interesting permutations and things to experiment with
  • The combat is a bit more engaging and also more frequent, especially in the early game. You have to work to establish windows of peactime so that you can focus on internal development. I like this change. It’s a bit like V with those improved AI mods in terms of intensity and challenge. Not brilliant but not a total pushover to an experienced player
  • There is significantly less stuff: units, wonders, buildings, techs, resources than IV, V, and even VI. I don’t care for this, but because the pace and structure of the game is tightened up, you don’t miss it too too much - however this could be just a product of having the overall novelty of a new Civ to tinker with. Maybe it gets old quick we’ll see
  • To the above point: the game’s also missing some of the end-game/early future stuff (Science Victory is basically the Apollo Program in past games rather than the colony ship process, eg) we’re used to getting. Expansion material I’m sure but disappointing to be nickel and dimed a little by a Civ after all these years…
  • Not a lot of game setup options actually. Incorrect prediction on my part.
  • I’ve run into some weird game-halting bugs where you have an unskippable prompt but you can’t click on “confirm” or whatever, so the game effectively stops at that point. Not ideal imo
  • Going back to the “good game” point: VI and now VII are good games but we’re now not really getting the Civ vibes which is a big bummer, especially considering we have a handful of other similar games (Humanity, Old World, Ara, Millennia) that are varieties of good-but-lack-the-Civ-feel. Civ VII is superior to all of those games with the possible exception of Old World depending on how much the full history scope means to you. The Throne Room, Elvis cultural advisor, caveman Abe Lincoln, no more distinctive Encarta CD Rom '97 style UI, all that stuff is long gone :( It’s not an entirely cosmetic problem either: bc there’s less “stuff” and it’s a tighter game, that means there’s less slack and less opportunity for idiosyncratic play. More of a puzzle to be solved turn by turn experience. Which isn’t bad and appeals to some, but isn’t the wooly kind of time I would prefer and I imagine other Civ players may as well
  • Music is good they got the Baba Yetu guy back
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What are some good Sonic games on Switch?
I never really played Sonic because I was a Nintendo baby but my son is very interested in playing Sonic games now. Unfortunately for him, he’s discovering that old games are a lot harder and less friendly than newer ones and a game over means you start back at the first level. So the Sonics on the Genesis compilation have become very aggravating for him.

Any recommendations welcome!

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Ah, I love Civ!

I’ve been very curious about how this one will play. I think most of what you feel like it’s missing will be in expansions, which I’ve always found slightly annoying, though I find it hard to complain about spending $120 on a game that I spend 500 hours playing.

The less stuff is probably less of a problem for me since I do feel like the best part of the game is the first 4,000 years in game time. After that, they often feel somewhat perfunctory and I’m more finishing the game just to finish it or to make some very specific achievement rather than because there are continued challenges.

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then I think Old World is the ideal game for you it’s excellent

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Appreciate this writeup a lot! Looking forward to checking it out but I’m really nervy that it’s gonna end up feeling like one of those Not-Civs you mentioned :disappointed:

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Speaking of, are any of the not-Civs worth getting?
I know Total War isn’t like Civ but I got the Shogun one for free for some reason a few years ago but haven’t gotten around to it. How do people feel about these games?

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If he wants to give the Genesis Sonic games another go, I have found the Sonic Origins version to have somewhat more accessible packaging, since extra lives become a collectible and lives aren’t limited unless you do classic mode.

Besides that, the one I’m fondest of is Sonic x Shadow Generations, though I only played the original (Sonic Generations). It has 2D, 3D, and it’s pretty forgiving as an experience. I like Sonic Colors, too. I haven’t played Sonic Forces or Sonic Frontiers.

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I had the same experience with the game as I started it yesterday, and I had to learn how some mechanics interacted with others (I didn’t know about that, maybe because I didn’t feel it as clear). But I felt the same as part of the gameplay: it wants you to endure and struggle the hardships of the game, to experience the tension and the persecution more than the first game. To be honest, while I love the first and its set of characters, it has a terrible flaw, that the stakes get dissolved as you go on.

I settled for one of the earlier endings (which was the garden one), because I was invested in that narrative, but also because the game started to fall out quickly because not only the stakes were getting lower and less interesting, but the narrative started to get dimmer and dimmer. The second one maybe will have that issue later, but the tension and the stakes at least are on the spot, and I want to replay the game fully conscious of what I’m doing.

I’m also playing the Machinist in my first run.

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I’m now up to the point where I can transition to the second area in Citizen Sleeper, and I’m having a grand old time. The “no cash, starving, sleeping in a shipping container” introductory experience has given way to a much more forgiving path - I have a few friends, access to better jobs, cheaper pharmaceuticals, and a comfortable amount of savings. Living the dream!

Really though, I do kind of love the way the gameplay systems tie into the narrative to emphasize the experience of and benefit behind building community. Starting out in such a vulnerable position, being offered generosity (with strings), and eking out a comfortable understanding has been really satisfying in a way that few narratives in gaming have been for me in a long time. The narrative tension also works surprisingly well - when NuVend was trapped in the mainframe at Killer’s mercy, I legitimately worried for my ancient AI friend and hustled to free them, even though I understood that there likely were no actual gameplay hooks to force immediate action.

So yeah - game everyone likes is very good! Who would’ve thunk it.

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I’m loving all the Citizen Sleeper discussion! I’m almost at the end of the Citizen Sleeper 2, so I’ll save my thoughts on that. I’d like to speak on both of the games in a general sense though. Both of them do something I think a lot of players want. Contextualize and react to failure. Failure is not an end state. Failure is not a punishment. Failure is a natural part of life. Life is what we do with our failures AND our successes. Citizen Sleeper is about life and what it means to “be alive”.

I know a lot of write ups, reviews and posts mention this. The game spells it out pretty plainly. You are a robot shell, inhabited by an emulation of someone else’s mind sans their memories. The first game focuses on what it means to be alive. What it means to be an individual. What it means to form connections with others, and the strength that gives both parties. It shows you that your failures and successes in this life will affect both you and the ones you connect with. By the end, you will have chosen how you want your new life to start. OR end.

In the sequel, they focus more on what you DO with your life. Without the need for a drug to stay alive, you are free to make decisions for other reasons than survival. Yes, you are being pursued. There is still a countdown timer a lot of the time. However, you are more empowered in Citizen Sleeper 2. You are more self-reliant and you already have someone at your side if you need help. Many of the choices in Citizen Sleeper 2 revolve around who you help and why. You build community. You choose to build something, to rebuild something or strengthen something. There are rewards for many of these actions. Most of them, actually. But you will choose which things to pursue based mostly on your morals, convictions and politics.

I think that is the strength of these games. They hold a mirror up to you. They ask you questions, you give an answer and then they produce and outcome that you have to deal with. Sometimes things go the way you anticipate, and you’re satisfied. Sometimes you fail, and that’s ok. Sometimes you fail, and it’s not ok. This is when you really get to roleplay. What do you do when you don’t have the resources to do the thing you really wanted? Do you risk your health? The health of your friends? The LIVES of yourself or your friends? How important is this cause to you really?

Obviously, you can turn these questions away from the screen and reflect. Which is what Citizen Sleeper has made me do as I near the end. What do I want to spend MY time on? What can I do to strengthen MY community? What would I sacrifice for? Things aren’t good for a lot of people out here. They aren’t great for me either. But any extra gas in the tank can be used to try to help. If you find yourself at the end of a cycle with one dice left, use it to help someone. It might not land the way you want, but it’s worth rolling anyway.

Thanks for reading.

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Nice write up! This is what I really liked about Citizen Sleeper and also why I never felt like there was a reason to replay it or go back to a previous save.
I got the story my choices made for me.

Been pretty excited to jump into Citizen Sleeper 2.

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Nice to have that, really. I’ll consider it.
Also, this game feels like it’s one to replay it compared to the first, in the sense of wanting to do things differently. I didn’t know why, but I get the gist of what you said since this is something the game offers to you.

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Personally, I wasn’t able to go back to Citizen Sleeper. I doubt I’ll be able to go back to Citizen Sleeper 2. But I haven’t finished it yet. I am getting the feeling they might have realized that people had a hard time revisiting the first game. I have suspicions of a way they could mitigate this in CS2, but we’ll see.

For me, these games feel like a life lived. Choices made. Outcomes decided. Going back felt cheap. Cheaper than loading a save or starting a new campaign. It felt like unwriting a story and reliving hard memories at the same time. I think the acceptance of failure, death and entropy is the true ending of these games. But that ending also comes with hope. Hope that what we do matters. To us and maybe someone else.

I wasn’t able to go back. To be honest, I don’t really want to either. Citizen Sleeper seems to give me what I need. Whether I want it or not. Haha

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Failing is what makes us human.

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Yup. I agree with you with the first one. The first one felt more like an enthropy, a microcosm in which you’re all connected. That doesn’t mean they are, but this is an enclosed environment and you are properly growing with it. It ends up falling on a cliff for me at the ending, but the idea is mostly there, and yeah, I had the same feeling too, and I decided which was the thing I wanted to do.

The second feels like more expanded on that and it works well. I want to end up my first gameplay, though (in a good way).

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Is your kid using the rewinds on the Genesis Classics Collection? That option can really help ease some of that frustration (I used it liberally, and I am old). I feel like that’s the most friction reducing option out there – the Sonic Origins collection adds checkpoints and unlimited lives, but no rewinds, if that helps. Sonic Frontiers is great for just running around and exploring a 3D space without a lot of consequences – you can even just fish with Big the Cat to get items and pay your way through things you’re stuck on. It looks pretty crusty on Switch, but that might not be a big deal for a kid. Shadow x Generations is genuinely fantastic, and apparently pretty decent on Switch, and I hear Colors is pretty friendly for youngsters (I recall people being unhappy about the Switch version, but it may have been fixed, and again, most kids aren’t Digital Foundry so who knows)

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