Happy New Year! General Game Discussion--January 2026

[Zed Clampet]

Happy New Year 2026!​

(No dire prognostications this year--we all know we're screwed)​

(The Forza, Resident Evil and the top picture for Star Rupture are from Flux. The rest are screenshots, so credit to the publishers.)

Steam Events for the Next Few Months​

• December 18 – January 5:2025 Steam Winter Sale
• January 12 – January 19: Detective Fest
• January 26 – February 2: Board Game Fest
• February 5 – February 9: Typing Fest
• February 9 – February 16: PvP Fest
• February 19 – February 23: Horse Fest
• February 23 – March 2: Steam Next Fest: February Edition
• March 9 – March 16: Tower Defense Fest
• March 19 – March 26 : 2026 Steam Spring Sale
• March 30 – April 6: House & Home Fest
• April 9 – April 13: Hidden Object Fest
• April 20 – April 27: Medieval Fest
• May 4 – May 11: Deckbuilders Fest
• May 18 – May 25: Ocean Fest

I may do something where I break the major games releasing this year into genres. But not tonight. Tonight, enjoy this more professional article on the new releases of 2026 by none other than PC Gamer:

Upcoming 2026 games: All the new PC games you won't want to miss, from big hits to hidden gems

We're still waiting on a GTA 6 PC release date.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[dxchase]

Happy New Year! Started the new year off with very nice 3 team wipe in Arc Raiders!

 

[Pifanjr]

I started the year with the YapYap demo with my wife and three friends. The game is a lot easier with five people as it doesn't seem like the difficulty adapts to the number of players. We actually managed to extract with everyone alive on the first and last night and successfully won the demo level.

 

[Johnway]

happy new year all. Since its the new year, i think its time to review the damage, by damage i mean the amount of spending on gaming for 2025:



Summary of 2025


2025 was definitely the year that i bought the most games on steam ever. The previous record was back in 2020 where i bought 76 items. in 2025 it was 97. Although i argue that it was more like 88 by my spreadsheet and 31 of them were free.

So what was the main reason for the increase? Humble choice. i bought in on 2 months so i got 16 games then normal, also probably more free games, some great deals and a load more free games. if i deduct the humble bundles and the free games it looks more like 50 more or less on average in the previous years.


The one lesson learnt (or didn't learn)

Although we made some good deals and nothing was purchased at full price. it always pay to wait. Too often i bought a good deal at historical lows at the time, it just dropped to a lower price or (good/worse) free. there was 3 or 4 times this year that it rankled enough to annoy me. It happens every year and it won't be the last time i see it happen again this year.

i guess you win some, you lose some. It was at a price i was comfortable with and pulled the trigger. Buy the game the price difference wasn't too big. if the lowest price is pennies, i wouldn't care. When the difference is big enough that i could have bought something else in my wishlist with the difference, that's when it hurts.

humble choice has some good deals, the yearly offer during christmas seemed like a good deal but looking back there was only 2 months when i put money into it. So it wasn't all that enticing after all. I'll check month by month before deciding.



But what was the actual cost? Well...



Total Expenditure:


Total expenditure £214.40
RRP cost: £1518.81
Saving difference: £1304.41
percentage difference: 86%

A good haul i guess, my savy spending still made great returns despite a few missteps, i didn't buy games i didn't want and 99% of them are something i would want to play. There maybe one or 2 that fall in the maybe pile, but still something i would actually play. One day.


Single purchase of Shame:


Most expensive single game purchase:
Armoured core 6 - £18.99


Second most expensive:
path of exile MTX currency £17.00


third most expensive*:
total war: Warhammer trilogy - £14.39


2025 was a first in that i buckled and bought MTX currency. yes, whilst i finally succumbed to F2P but i'm not upset about it. I have 2100+ hrs playing POE and so it felt like it was worth the spending. Secondly, being stash tabs, they've been greatly helpful in freeing up space and giving me options to actually spend my way to victory and an edge. Thirdly, i was able to spend all of it. As we know one, strategy F2P makes you buy more then you need because of pricing making you buy more MTX currency. but Since i got the stash tabs on sale, i was able to clear up and acquire everything i wanted.

Another interesting point is the 3rd most expensive game. I think it was WH trilogy but depending on how you frame it, it might not. there are 3 games there and if we break it down it might not be the most expensive, but the 3rd place difference is so small minor there are plenty of games that fell into 3rd place. EG: lost judgemeent, like a dragon, ishin! like a dragon.




Looking to 2026

What will 2026 bring? hopefully not so much expenditure. But who am i kidding, i'm starting 2026 by shooting myself in the foot as i plan to get planet zoo and Divinity: original sin 2 before the sale ends. but the deal is too good to pass up.


i do have games i'm keeping an eye on, namely dying light 2, days gone and maybe Metaphor: ReFantazio, but again still waiting for them to drop further.


i'm also considering buying another tab in POE, this time a trade tab so i can make money on stuff that i don't need but might sell and make my POE journey easier. But is it worth spending 4.50 when i never did it previously and that money could go towards another game? its a hard sell from that perspective. useful, but not esstential. unlike the currency and map tabs which practically were esstential.

but the even bigger elephant in the room? a new gaming pc. i'm still watching and more waiting tbh. i still would like to building a new pc but i think the opportunity has saided passed. i might have to wait till 2028 at this rate. which i suppose is fine, there are no games in my collection that i can't play and will help to my expenditure down i guess. but on the other hand, its highly possible that the prices (i fear) will not drop back to pre mid 2025 and that was when things were considered unreasonable. but old reliable cheap stuff like memory is increasing in price and the manufacturers are just doing everything they can to milk it. Worst case scenario, a downward trend on pc ownership and a rent based system where you own nothing and like it.

 

[Colif]

Happy New Year...

2025
Money spent on games - About $20
Money spent on ability to play games - about 5k (ignores fact his ram worth 1k now and adjusts price back to what he paid)

The balance seems wrong there. I was doing a training couse for 10 months of the year.

2026
I don't intend to spend 5k on games but the split will be a little closer this year.... maybe... not a lot of hardware I need now.

 

[Zed Clampet]

So all last year I've been just glancing at the Humble Choice games, but not registering them to my account. I finally went through them and added the following games:

 

[rizwan1593]

Happy new year

 

[dxchase]

Happy new year

And welcome to the forum! Will you be a new member of 2026?>!

 

[BeardyHat]

I feel like I've been better about not buying a bunch of games in 2025, but I suspect it'll come out to be about the same as I spent in 2024.

For 2025, I'm looking forward to just trying to play more of my library again. I think I was relatively successful this past year, playing many games I bought in a previous life. Including playing all of Might & Magic IV, Crusader: No Remorse, Mechwarrior 5 and probably some other stuff I don't remember.

Hoping my Ryzen 5 5600, 6700XT and 32Gb of RAM get me through the new year just fine, which I suspect should be no trouble.

I'm also going to look at what upscaling looks like on my laptop at 4k with the RTX A3000; kind of curious to see if it'll play Control like that, not because I'm particularly interested in Control, just for the fact that I know it's a popular test case.

 

[Pifanjr]

My wife bought Valheim to play with a friend of hers, then told me to play it with him first so she could just get an idea of what the game is about. She really dislikes learning new games, but her friend had been asking to play this with her, so this was her compromise.

So far it seems a bit too grindy to me compared to other survival crafting games, but I'm hoping it'll get better once we've progressed a bit and get access to higher tier tools.

So all last year I've been just glancing at the Humble Choice games, but not registering them to my account. I finally went through them and added the following games:

There are a lot of games there I've never heard of. And of the games I do recognise, the only one I've played is Shogun Showdown, which I've played the demo of. It's a good game, I think you'd like it.

For 2025, I'm looking forward to just trying to play more of my library again. I think I was relatively successful this past year, playing many games I bought in a previous life. Including playing all of Might & Magic IV, Crusader: No Remorse, Mechwarrior 5 and probably some other stuff I don't remember.

Same for me, I'm just trying to get through more of my backlog. I would really like to finish Baldur's Gate 3 this year at least.

I also want to make sure I keep playing games with friends regularly. It would be nice if we could finish the Barotrauma campaign I've been doing with two friends and there a bunch of other co-op games I'd like to play more of, like getting to the top in PEAK.

 

[Colif]

I actually forgot 2 games I bought last year but total still only about 100
might even play them soon.

omg, I forgot Sacred 2 remastered... guess it was so memorable, I only played it once. 11 minutes, rejected. Such a shame
Okay, so maybe 130.

 

[Zloth]

My mouse died while writing this post! The Logitech 502X I got showed up in the mail a few days ago, so I'm ready for it. Except... there's some weird plastic bit (maybe a button?) that looks like it's supposed to be attached somewhere, but I sure don't see where. There are no instructions, just some vague pictures showing it goes somewhere in the thumb area. There's a link that, when typed out, goes to a 404 error. Eeesh. Well, it's working OK so far.

2026 should be my retirement year! Probably a semi-retirement for a few months if we can figure out a way to do that with HR. At any rate, I'm beefing up my wish list.

@Zed Clampet - I keep looking at Persona 5 Royal. Distant Worlds 2 is fun, but I play it weird.

i'm starting 2026 by shooting myself in the foot...

No! Wait a few weeks and @Colif can give you a deal on a boot to heal up afterward!

 

[Pifanjr]

I played some more Valheim and it's not really getting any less grindy. I don't really care for the combat much either, it mostly consists of spamming the attack button and sidestepping enemy attacks. Unless my wife really wants me to play it with her I'm done with it.

---

I also played some more Lethal Company. I tried to get everyone to use walkie-talkies so someone could stay in the ship and guide people, after I got lost in one of the levels and died with a bunch of loot. However I don't think anyone ever turned theirs on.

We did get one amazing haul at some point and got a teleporter and a carrier. However, the carrier blew up the very first time we tried to use it for some reason and since no one was using the walkie-talkies, no one stayed behind in the ship to use the teleporter.

 

[Colif]

No! Wait a few weeks and @Colif can give you a deal on a boot to heal up afterward!

I think he would need more than a plastic boot to recover from the wound. Re-constructive surgery... depends how good a shot he is. And what he used.

 

[BeardyHat]

I played some more Valheim and it's not really getting any less grindy. I don't really care for the combat much either, it mostly consists of spamming the attack button and sidestepping enemy attacks. Unless my wife really wants me to play it with her I'm done with it.

---

I also played some more Lethal Company. I tried to get everyone to use walkie-talkies so someone could stay in the ship and guide people, after I got lost in one of the levels and died with a bunch of loot. However I don't think anyone ever turned theirs on.

We did get one amazing haul at some point and got a teleporter and a carrier. However, the carrier blew up the very first time we tried to use it for some reason and since no one was using the walkie-talkies, no one stayed behind in the ship to use the teleporter.

Valheim is definitely mostly about the exploration, I feel. The combat, yeah, it's so-so, but seeing the new biomes as you progress through the game is fun and delving into the few dungeons, fighting the bosses for new materials, etc.

I did burn out with it though in the...Plains? I think it's called. At that point, it started to feel frustrating because everything was beating my ass and I just didn't feel like going through the grind again to kill things and make gear adequate enough to actually stand-up to the enemies in the area only to do it again in the next.

I've had two games on my mind recently, one of which I still haven't played but am meaning to, which is OpenTTD.

OpenTTD on Steam

OpenTTD is a business simulation game in which players earn money by transporting passengers and cargo via road, rail, water, and air. It is an open-source remake and expansion of the 1995 Chris Sawyer video game Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

store.steampowered.com

Basically the progenitor of my favorite game, Transport Fever 2. Sure I could play more Transport Fever 2, but I want to see what OpenTTD has to offer; supposedly it has some more complexity to it, plus I'm just charmed by those Chris Sawyer graphics. And it'll play on any device I own, even if I just intend to only play it on my Steam Deck anyway, which runs TF2 acceptably. Anyway, my plan is to give it a go at some point this month, but I'm hooked on another game and I have another game I'm obligated to play for a monthly game club on an alternate forum.

The other game is one I've been reintroduced to via eXoDOS. I stumbled upon it scrolling through the list of games and since then, got it installed on my Steam Deck and haven't been able to put it down, in spite of the jank.

That game is Cybermage: Darklight Awakening

CYBERMAGE: DARKLIGHT AWAKENING

Step off the pages of a cyberpunk comic book and into a fantastic 3-D world. You're a novice superhero entrusted with the unearthly Darkl...

collectionchamber.blogspot.com

I must have bought this game originally when I was like 11 or 12? It is one of my earliest PC gaming memories aside from Shareware stuff and Doom back around 1995. Can't remember where or when I bought it, but I played it continually up until probably my early 20's and then somehow just forgot about it. I can't tell you how many times I made it to near the final level and then ultimately dropped it and gave-up.

Playing it again for the first time in 20-years, I'm understanding it so much more and taking in the atmosphere so much better. Absorbing the storytelling details in the environments and paying attention to what characters are actually saying (when I can anyway. There's always a lot of noise in my house) and just appreciating the game in a whole new way.

One thing I hadn't realized and explains so much about my gaming preferences is that this is a relatively early Origin game, Produced by Warren Spector. Cybermage was probably the first RPG style (though it's not really an RPG) game I ever played and now I really understand why I loved System Shock so much later in life and have been a massive Deus Ex fan since its original release.

 

[neogunhero]

2025 was good and bad for gaming to me. Let me start with the bad as it's the most biting to me.

This was the year where I was struck with a most terrible impulse purchasing disorder. Going through my Steam account purchases, the refunds far outweigh the purchases I kept. I buy something when I think I'm going to play it or it's on a great discount, then immediately I regret my purchase. A few examples:

Parking Garage Rally Ciruit - $7.49 refunded 2/1/25
Anno 1800 - $5.99 refunded 3/19/25
Green Hell - $3.08 refunded 3/22/25
The list goes on.

The games I did end up keeping were more expensive, perhaps because I felt more confidently that I'll play them. The most expensive game I bought was Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii for $59.99. In a way I regret that purchase as I didn't realize it was a basically a direct continuation of Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth. While not necessary, it would help a lot if I played that first. I got trigger happy for a game with Majima as the protagonist, though it still stands on its own.
Oblivion Remastered and Arc Raiders were $40 each, Dying Light 2 was $20, Enshrouded was $24, Schedule 1 and Skin Deep were $15, and a lot more added up.

Rough math ends up at $250 spent on games this year. Jeez! I went years without spending more than $100 on Steam, this is probably one of if not the most expensive year on Steam I've had.

So the bad part of this is that I spent so much money while also doing way too many impulse purchases that ended up being refunds. I buy on reaction not thoughtfulness. Like Johnway stated you see a deal that's really good at the time, maybe historical low, but only a few months later it gets discounted even further. Plus, I just don't have the time to play all the games I bought. A lot of them like Skin Deep and Captain Wayne Vacation Desperation I got very far but didn't quiet finish it.

Another bad part about this year: Microsoft is becoming a truly despicable company in my eyes. They are hardly unique for a megacorporation in this sense, but their hands are on too much of the world's conflicts and troubles. To top it off, Windows just keeps getting filled with more and more bloat every year, adding unnecessary features they think you need instead of introducing ones that are actually helpful and will be used by majority of users. Their push to force AI into your PC is the biggest line crossed for me. I haven't jumped ship yet, but every single day using Windows is another day I dream of switching to Linux.



Here is the good:

New GPU, new SSD, new Monitor. It has really upgraded my set up. The SSD hits the full 3500MB/s speed my motherboard supports and has an incredibly large amount of cache, meaning my downloads will no longer drop to 5MB/s because the cause is full. The old SSD hit a maximum for 2000MB/s and its cache would get full after only a few gigabytes downloaded, causing game downloads over 10gb to become painfully slow. This was fixed with the new SSD, and it's been good to me ever since.

New GPU was a huge improvement over my last one, and I expect a good lifespan on it with all the newest upscaling tech, plus the three fans and upgraded design keep this card insanely cool. I played GTA V Enhanced with full ultra graphics, Ray Tracing set to High/Very High, and maintained below 45c for over an hour on the game. New monitor also unlocked a whole new world for me, being able to properly utilize FSR and frame gen while keeping input lag fairly low, compared to my last TV that would introduce the worst input lag you've ever experienced with using frame generation.

Played a lot of great indie games this year. BallxPit, CloverPit, Captain Wayne, A Merchants promise, PIGFACE, The Holy Gosh Darn, Arco, Nubby's Number Factory, The Coin Game, and Skin Deep to name a few. Time and time again indie games prove to be in a whole world of their own compared to AAA games. I still enjoy AAA games especially if they provide something that a traditional indie game just can't due to funding. However, indie games are where the most unique ideas and biggest risks take form. What AAA publisher would put out a game about an intergalactic insurance agent fighting space pirates with cans of hairspray and lighters while saving imprisoned felines besides Blendo Games??


2025 was a fantastic year for gaming, but not my wallet. A little financial pain so I will be comfortable with my rig for the next few years will be worth it in the end.

 

[neogunhero]

I also started out my year yesterday by oogling at the ray tracing effects in GTA V Enhanced.

Spoiler: GTA V Screenshots

It was just like being a kid and laughing whenever you'd see your squished reflection on the side of a car. It's seriously impressive.

However, cranking up the RT to Ultra results in some terrible frame drops, especially in heavily reflected areas. Just behind where I was standing in those photos, there was a restaurant with a patio seating area, surrounded on two sides with glass walls. Standing in the corner of where the two glass walls met, my FPS tanked to about 20 because of all the RT going on I suppose. It looked fantastic, but unbearable at that frame rate. Dropping it to High, I still get a lot of the visual benefits while maintaining a solid frame rate. In most games I'll never use it, but in a game like this, it's tons of fun messing around with it and seeing it in action.

 

[Pifanjr]

I randomly got an invite to play REPO from a friend of mine and decided to hop in. We ended up making it to level 6 so far with two other friends of his, which is the furthest I've ever gotten, while getting most of the loot intact to the extraction zones.

In the last mission we lost our shotgun though, which is a real shame as it was by far the most expensive thing we had bought and was incredibly effective at taking out monsters.

Hopefully we can buy a new weapon if/when we continue playing.

Valheim is definitely mostly about the exploration, I feel. The combat, yeah, it's so-so, but seeing the new biomes as you progress through the game is fun and delving into the few dungeons, fighting the bosses for new materials, etc.

I did burn out with it though in the...Plains? I think it's called. At that point, it started to feel frustrating because everything was beating my ass and I just didn't feel like going through the grind again to kill things and make gear adequate enough to actually stand-up to the enemies in the area only to do it again in the next.

I feel like Nightingale took all of Valheim's good parts and left out all of the bad parts. The only thing that's worse in Nightingale is the enemy variety.

 

[dxchase]

And welcome to the forum! Will you be a new member of 2026?>!

Apparently not lol, saw the ban mark.


Well, new year with the same start. Staying home from work with the holidays paid playing and getting yelled at for playing too much lol.

2025 was probably one of the better gaming years for me in the last, idk maybe 8 years? In terms of releases
Since around the time i started playing Destiny 2 as a reference point.

I also have played a lot of new titles i didnt know about prior to this year that i enjoyed more so than the last couple years (Chronos: The New Dawn, Tainted Grail, BallxPit, Ninja Gaiden 4, Arc Raiders) just to name a few.

I also played a bunch of a game in a genre i didnt think id play much in which is TBC with Clair Obscur (for as long as i did play it, never finished it)

Another part ill mention has to do with Arc Raiders. Probably the game that ive sunkin the most into over the last couple of months even with my enjoyment of Battlefield 6.

This game helped bring an old friend of mine "back" into gaming. We had lost touch for a good while and we started talkin again in 2025 and he was watching my streams playing arc raiders. He decides to get it and we have spent some nights playing which we havent done in at least a decade. So thats been fun, kinda in line with @Pifanjr because i didnt know he bought it, he just invited me.


So right now my current game loop is Arc Raiders and Diablo 4. Diablo 4 fills the void between Arc Raider topside runs haha, its a fun season but this season its so quick to level up that the endgame and seasonal stuff just burns out fast for me having been doing it this long.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I played some more Valheim and it's not really getting any less grindy. I don't really care for the combat much either, it mostly consists of spamming the attack button and sidestepping enemy attacks. Unless my wife really wants me to play it with her I'm done with it.

Valheim is definitely mostly about the exploration, I feel. The combat, yeah, it's so-so, but seeing the new biomes as you progress through the game is fun and delving into the few dungeons, fighting the bosses for new materials, etc.

I did burn out with it though in the...Plains? I think it's called. At that point, it started to feel frustrating because everything was beating my ass and I just didn't feel like going through the grind again to kill things and make gear adequate enough to actually stand-up to the enemies in the area only to do it again in the next.

The game is overrated. But you guys are missing the main ingredient for enjoying Valheim. Get to a new biome and everything is kicking your arse? That's why we played using the "Better Wolves" mod. Just tame them as usual and watch as they become bad doggies. One may not always be enough, though. They breed like rabbits, and I usually brought the max number with me, four.

I had a very dangerous base in the plains, and I had a breeding kennel there. I can't tell you how many times I engaged in panicked dashes towards my kennel as baddies gave pursuit.

I also played some more Lethal Company. I tried to get everyone to use walkie-talkies so someone could stay in the ship and guide people, after I got lost in one of the levels and died with a bunch of loot. However I don't think anyone ever turned theirs on.

We did get one amazing haul at some point and got a teleporter and a carrier. However, the carrier blew up the very first time we tried to use it for some reason and since no one was using the walkie-talkies, no one stayed behind in the ship to use the teleporter.

What we did was everyone would bring their treasures and dump them out the front door. I usually made one trip inside, but after that I just took everyone's stuff to the ship. I could outmaneuver all the outside monsters except for the giant. If we were on a map with him, I stopped leaving the ship at 5. One word of warning--that huge dog, or whatever he is, will hop into your ship sometimes.

 

[Zed Clampet]

2025 was good and bad for gaming to me. Let me start with the bad as it's the most biting to me.

This was the year where I was struck with a most terrible impulse purchasing disorder. Going through my Steam account purchases, the refunds far outweigh the purchases I kept. I buy something when I think I'm going to play it or it's on a great discount, then immediately I regret my purchase. A few examples:

Parking Garage Rally Ciruit - $7.49 refunded 2/1/25
Anno 1800 - $5.99 refunded 3/19/25
Green Hell - $3.08 refunded 3/22/25
The list goes on.

The games I did end up keeping were more expensive, perhaps because I felt more confidently that I'll play them. The most expensive game I bought was Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii for $59.99. In a way I regret that purchase as I didn't realize it was a basically a direct continuation of Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth. While not necessary, it would help a lot if I played that first. I got trigger happy for a game with Majima as the protagonist, though it still stands on its own.
Oblivion Remastered and Arc Raiders were $40 each, Dying Light 2 was $20, Enshrouded was $24, Schedule 1 and Skin Deep were $15, and a lot more added up.

Rough math ends up at $250 spent on games this year. Jeez! I went years without spending more than $100 on Steam, this is probably one of if not the most expensive year on Steam I've had.

So the bad part of this is that I spent so much money while also doing way too many impulse purchases that ended up being refunds. I buy on reaction not thoughtfulness. Like Johnway stated you see a deal that's really good at the time, maybe historical low, but only a few months later it gets discounted even further. Plus, I just don't have the time to play all the games I bought. A lot of them like Skin Deep and Captain Wayne Vacation Desperation I got very far but didn't quiet finish it.

Another bad part about this year: Microsoft is becoming a truly despicable company in my eyes. They are hardly unique for a megacorporation in this sense, but their hands are on too much of the world's conflicts and troubles. To top it off, Windows just keeps getting filled with more and more bloat every year, adding unnecessary features they think you need instead of introducing ones that are actually helpful and will be used by majority of users. Their push to force AI into your PC is the biggest line crossed for me. I haven't jumped ship yet, but every single day using Windows is another day I dream of switching to Linux.



Here is the good:

New GPU, new SSD, new Monitor. It has really upgraded my set up. The SSD hits the full 3500MB/s speed my motherboard supports and has an incredibly large amount of cache, meaning my downloads will no longer drop to 5MB/s because the cause is full. The old SSD hit a maximum for 2000MB/s and its cache would get full after only a few gigabytes downloaded, causing game downloads over 10gb to become painfully slow. This was fixed with the new SSD, and it's been good to me ever since.

New GPU was a huge improvement over my last one, and I expect a good lifespan on it with all the newest upscaling tech, plus the three fans and upgraded design keep this card insanely cool. I played GTA V Enhanced with full ultra graphics, Ray Tracing set to High/Very High, and maintained below 45c for over an hour on the game. New monitor also unlocked a whole new world for me, being able to properly utilize FSR and frame gen while keeping input lag fairly low, compared to my last TV that would introduce the worst input lag you've ever experienced with using frame generation.

Played a lot of great indie games this year. BallxPit, CloverPit, Captain Wayne, A Merchants promise, PIGFACE, The Holy Gosh Darn, Arco, Nubby's Number Factory, The Coin Game, and Skin Deep to name a few. Time and time again indie games prove to be in a whole world of their own compared to AAA games. I still enjoy AAA games especially if they provide something that a traditional indie game just can't due to funding. However, indie games are where the most unique ideas and biggest risks take form. What AAA publisher would put out a game about an intergalactic insurance agent fighting space pirates with cans of hairspray and lighters while saving imprisoned felines besides Blendo Games??


2025 was a fantastic year for gaming, but not my wallet. A little financial pain so I will be comfortable with my rig for the next few years will be worth it in the end.

When you said $250, I thought you meant per week...

 

[Colif]

Wow slowly becoming a violent version of The SIms

I knew about player housing, it didn't click that you had to find all the furniture as well.

This isn't the game I used to play.

 

[Frindis]

Tried to enjoy Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but it was not for me. It looks stunning and runs fairly smoothly for looking that great. The combat felt nice enough, but I did not like the parry/dodge system because the slow combat animation before mobs attack messed my reaction time up.

While I did like the music, I disliked how quickly they changed the music, instead of perhaps having it transition more smoothly from combat music to the serene music score outside of combat. It felt immersion-breaking.

The last annoyance for me was in the first area where you walk around getting introduced to different people. While walking around, I noticed NPC's that were identical looking talking to each other. Not one, not two, but SEVERAL! You would think that they would have managed to tone it down, considering there were not a humongous number of people around. Stuff like that annoys me because it could have been easily fixed, either by just having fewer NPCs or BLENDING them in better!

 

[neogunhero]

When you said $250, I thought you meant per week...

Is that what your Steam purchases look like??😂

That’s $250 alone on Steam, not including a few games on GOG, Humble Monthly once or twice and a month or two of Game Pass. It really was an expensive year for me comparatively.

 

[Colif]

The last annoyance for me was in the first area where you walk around getting introduced to different people. While walking around, I noticed NPC's that were identical looking talking to each other. Not one, not two, but SEVERAL! You would think that they would have managed to tone it down, considering there were not a humongous number of people around. Stuff like that annoys me because it could have been easily fixed, either by just having fewer NPCs or BLENDING them in better!

So you have a thing against identical triplets.... I see