#2026 games

[realpoi-15]

Happy Splatoon Raiders Day! 🦑🫟

[lanae111]

What an incredible gaming experience this game delivers 👏👏

[noydacoy]

19. Wandersong

Rating: 10/10

Played on: Steam Deck

Wandersong is a beautiful piece of art. It perfectly encapsulates themes of identity, tradition, imposter syndrome, and friendship through both its gameplay and story. I’m not surprised, considering this is also the team behind Chicory: A Colorful Tale, and more recently, Beastieball! It hit especially hard for me because I chose to play it during the week I was getting married! I eloped with my wonderful partner, so the idea of breaking tradition and doing what makes sense for you really resonated with me.

First, I need to talk about the characters. I love the trope of the player character not being the “protagonist” of the story. You are just a lowly bard, wanting to change the world through sheer willpower and determination. You have a boundless amount of optimism, and fuel everyone you talk to with happiness and hope. It’s great to see such a happy character thriving, and even greater to see what happens when the world challenges that optimism. For example, your main companion through the story, the grumpy witch, Miriam. She’s a character that my past self relates to a whole lot. Most of the time, she is grumpy just for the sake of being grumpy, she’s still figuring out who she is, she has a lot of imposter syndrome, and doesn’t really know how to make friends. I used to struggle with a lot of these things as a high schooler and college student, and I still do struggle with some of these things. Watching a character like Miriam experience these things while also making lasting bonds and growing was really powerful. I nearly shed some tears during a couple of her monologues near the end of the game.

Then there’s the hero, Audrey, who is a very interesting case. Obviously, she’s the hero, the rightful protagonist of this story. She kills the monsters to save the world! But no hero is perfect, and Audrey definitely has some… flaws. She’s a narcissist, insecure, and let’s the title she is gifted get to her head. I won’t spoil exactly how she fits in to the bard’s tale and the overarching plot, but I thought that it was a super unique take on a character who feels so redeemable that you don’t see very often in media.

The story itself being is a fun take on the typical hero’s journey adventure, as a character who was supposed to just be an NPC. It works well as a parody of those kinds of stories while also giving it plenty of respect and appreciation. I’ve already gone over most of the main characters but I loved all of the side characters each chapter would introduce too! Everyone has their own backstory, motivations, and opinions, and they all flesh out the world brilliantly.

The gameplay itself is also super fun, I was a big fan of the musical puzzle-platforming. While simple, the puzzles were fun to solve and the musical accompaniment from the bard’s singing made everything so dynamic and cute. All of the different unique gameplay styles were interesting and varied, from singing specific melodies in order, to spinning your joystick around to sing scales rapidly. Even some of the non-important gameplay elements like dancing or pitching each note up and down with the triggers were fun additional touches that just showed how much love and care was put into this game.

Of course, the game’s soundtrack also slaps. You can’t really be a musically focused game and not have a soundtrack that you can bop along to everything. Every song is dynamic, with the bard being able to belt out into song pretty much whenever you want. It adapts to each of the notes that you hit and different environmental factors also can join in the background and add more instrumentation.

Overall, I’m so glad this was the game I chose to play during one of the best weeks of my life. It made me laugh, was really close to making me cry, and resonated with me very deeply. I’ll happily recommend it to anyone!

[sdnik0]

Can I keep it so for real with yall?

Mixtape might be one of the absolute worst games I’ve ever played…?

Look, if you like this game, good for you. I’m happy it exists for that reason alone.

For me? This was absolutely miserable. And not for like a ‘oh, this game is too WOKE’ way or something. I find all three of the main characters annoying in their own way, and, I think that was the point, at least in Stacey’s case. And I love me an unlikable protagonist. I think that type of character is great. Stacey is just annoying. And it feels intentional, but in the wrong way. A GOOD writer can make a character annoying to the other characters and not to the audience, but this game does something weird where she’s only annoying to the player and not to any of the characters? Also, the fact that she calls her ‘Jenny Fucking Goodspeed’ every time just drives me up the wall.

But my biggest issue is the gameplay. I get it, this is an interactive story, the gameplay isn’t that important. However, if an interactive story doesn’t have, you know, a good story, then what is there to latch onto? No gameplay, that’s for sure, because this is a glorified movie. I heard from somewhere that this was originally supposed to be a movie but no one wanted to make it, and that tracks, because the ‘gameplay’ is fucking mind numbing. Visual novels are more stimulating than this.

Take the shopping cart escape for example! I decided to test something. I put the controller down and watched the entire section play itself. I literally got an achievement for not crashing one time. If that doesn’t represent everything wrong with this game, I don’t know what does. I feel like most of this game was filler so the runtime would be over 2 hours and you wouldn’t be able to refund it on Steam.

This game just has this pretentiousness to it that I don’t see in a lot of games nowadays. Even some of the most abstract and artsy games like, say, Silent Hill 2 don’t have this feeling of ‘this is the deepest shit ever’.

If you liked it, good for you! Like I said, I’m super happy you can find enjoyment in a piece of art that I couldn’t. I’m just gonna go back to the games i actually enjoy…

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Not to add onto the fire that is the discourse behind Mixtape, but after watching the game, I’m personally baffled by the storyline. It really does feel like a game made by people who didn’t grow up in the 1990s trying to make a game about 90s kids.

I mean, why did they use John Hughes movies as influences when that’s clearly for the 1980s? Empire Records, Boyz n the Hood, SLC Punk, Girl Interrupted, Idle Hands, Encino Man, Smoke Signals, The Sandlot, Reality Bites, Dazed and Confused, and American Beauty are all right there. It’s like the creators watched Stranger Things and decided that everything nostalgic has to feel like the 80s.

Also, I’m not the first person to say this but I’ll bring this point up again, why is there only one grunge song? This is supposedly a game that’s meant to be 90s kid nostalgia bait and they only have 1 grunge song? In the decade ruled by grunge? No Nirvana or Soundgarden at all, really? They don’t even have gangsta rap or conscious rap, nor do they have the boy bands/girl groups of the later half of the 1990s. They don’t even have the weird hits like the Macarena! (tiny edit: I guess there’s “Love” by Smashing Pumpkins, but that’s more alt rock. Also…really? That’s the Smashing Pumpkins song they went with?)

Why is this a 90s kid game and the soundtrack doesn’t include Nirvana, Tupac, Will Smith, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Garbage, Snoop Dogg, Alice In Chains, 90s era Metallica, and so on and so forth. Personally, I’m most offended by the lack of Sublime. The main characters are all skater kids, Sublime should’ve been an easy dunk to have in this game. But at least the game has two songs from Stan fucking Bush from the 1980s because…yeah.

I don’t get who this game is for. I’m a 90s kid, I don’t feel represented lmao.

[akelaphobia]

Halo: Campaign Evolved (2026, Halo Studios)

I'll be honest, this was a very disappointing remake. They had a huge opportunity here to re-add so much of the cut content from the 1999 and 2000 builds. Macworld Halo has so much cool shit.

Instead we got a clearly rushed remake that has braindead friendly and enemy AI (so many times I'd see them running into walls, enemies would ignore me entirely, refuse to dodge a grenade at their feet, or do this). They made the movement feel weirdly slippery, there's a lot of unnecessary and questionable changes to cutscenes, the great voice acting in the original was replaced with subpar new recordings, weapons sound are a huge downgrade, and sadly they didn't do enough for the repetitive level design in the second half of the game.

[would-they-be-good-at-asmr]

Would Hugh Williams be good at making ASMR videos?

Yes

Maybe

No

Voting ended onMay 20