🕹️ Tombs and cheese

🆕 On the Shelves

🟠 Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Nintendo

Samus Aran returns in a first-person sci-fi adventure focused on exploration, atmosphere, and environmental storytelling.

To be honest, I have not played any of the Metroid Prime games, so coming to this one, I had no frame of reference to compare it to. I have not played this one either, but watched a Let’s Play for the first few hours of the game.

It may be my age, or just because I don’t have enough other references, but the game’s aesthetic really reminded me of the Halo series. Still, it looks gorgeous, and the biomes are all very pretty and deftly created. As Samus has the ability to turn into a ball, this adds an interesting element to the exploration as you can look for various secret (or not-so-secret) places.

The gameplay also has the player scanning various items (mobs, plants, objects) to understand their weak points, genetic make up and relevance to the game, which, based on the let’s play that I watched, gets quite annoying over time.

One of the big critiques of the game is the “open-world” element, which has the player traverse a basically barren wilderness:

But eventually it becomes clear that the desert is a bare and boring place. There are some basic shrines where you can solve simple puzzles to unlock new power-ups, and some space junk and other points of interest to investigate.

Another review I read was also critical of the overall package:

Even after 8 years of development, the game lacks a cohesive vision. It’s a cobbled mess of uninspired ideas with flashes of brilliance.

🎸 UNBEATABLE

D-Cell Games

A young girl learns a song. An exclusive side-story set in the world of D-CELL GAMES' upcoming rhythm-adventure.

I checked out the demo and this is not your typical rhythm game (are there typical rhythm games?) The inputs are just two keys D and F to hit notes that are coming towards you. The music (at least the ones that I played in the demo) are pop punk/rock tracks which felt different too. Bit of a Scott Pilgrim meets Jet Set Radio vibe, all wrapped up in a Japan/anime aesthetic.

😎 Terminator 2D: No Fate

Developer: Bitmap Bureau

Publisher: Reef Entertainment

Experience the thrill of Terminator 2: Judgment Day with arcade action & pixel-perfect graphics! In this unique story blending iconic scenes from the movie with original scenarios and multiple endings, humanity’s fate is yours to decide.

A Metal Slug-style 2D beat-em-up with loads of polish.

📡 On the Radar

🛕 Tomb Raider - Legacy of Atlantis

Developer: Crystal Dynamics, Flying Wild Hog

Publisher: Amazon Game Studios

Experience the pinnacle of adventure with Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, a stunning reimagining of Lara Croft’s 1996 genre-defining game with jaw-dropping visuals powered by Unreal Engine 5, modern gameplay, and new surprises that honor the spirit of the original.

The following perhaps should be a standalone blog post, but I provide it here anyway, as watching the trailer really brought out these thoughts in me.

The trailer looks ace (as you’d expect). But, I can’t help but compare it to the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot game, though (which did really well), and think: beyond graphical fidelity, what are we really bringing to big-budget games in 2025? This isn’t a criticism of the developers or the technology. There have clearly been meaningful advances in animation, accessibility, performance capture, and production values, but they largely feel evolutionary rather than transformative.

I teach a class on video game history, and for me, the shift from 2D to 3D in the mid-to-late 1990s (with the PS1, N64, and SEGA Saturn) represented a fundamental change in how games were designed, played, and understood. It also opened the door to some wonderfully experimental projects (like those by ArtDink) that simply wouldn’t have been possible before. But compared to that moment, much of what we’ve seen in the last 15 years (at least in the big-budget action-adventure space Tomb Raider occupies) feels like refinement and iteration on design ideas that were already largely in place by the early 2000s.

I think there are two specific reasons why there were more experimental games in the past:

1. The fact that the 3D platform was new meant that genres, types, clichés, and tropes had not solidified yet.

It was like the wild west of game development, with studios trying new concepts rather than relying on established traditions. Related to this: on the early episodes of the Insert Credit podcast, they often refer to the early days of smartphones and how people would buy an app that emulated beer drinking (i.e., the app used the phones’ accelerometer to change the level of the drink on screen). I think the same is true of early 3D games – everything was new and shiny for consumers, too, so they were more open to buying mechanically strange, concept-driven, or genre-hybrid games.

1. Budgets were not as big, and indie studios could compete more easily.
   While I don’t have the exact budget sheets in front of me, industry estimates show that AAA game budgets have exploded compared with the mid-90s. Titles that once cost a few million dollars to make, and which still broke big, are now routinely hundreds of millions to produce (and, increasingly, market!). The price of making AAA games in 2025 has escalated dramatically! As examples: Call of Duty cost over $300 million (IGN), and The Last of Us Part II cost over $220 (Games Radar).

Team sizes, development times, and production complexity have all grown alongside expectations for photorealistic visuals and cinematic presentation. Of course, big-budget games back in the early 00s were also expensive, but not on par with what we are seeing today (FFVII being a big-budget game, clocking in at around $45 million). What this meant was that the financial risk of taking creative risks was much lower for individual studios and teams.

In sum, then, there is a huge risk in trying to make something genuinely new for big studios. If it fails, the financial consequences can be severe.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Iteration is how a medium matures. But it does raise an interesting question: if graphical realism is approaching diminishing returns, where will the next genuinely disruptive leap in mainstream game design come from?

I don’t think it will be VR any time soon. (I may eat my words on this)... I see people talking about fully voice-acted, chatbot-powered NPCs a lot. This could be a reality. And I wonder what kind of games (and game genres) could be created out of this. My initial thought goes to ギャルゲー [GYARU GE-] and 乙女ゲー [OTOMO GE-] (dating sims), but imagine it in something like a horror game... talking to a psychopath NPC that is just freaking you the heck out... would be quite interesting. But which company will leap into this new domain? My guess is that it won’t be an AAA studio. Indies and mid-scale companies are the ones driving innovation, where the financial stakes allow for experimentation.

This is how economics is shaping our gaming landscape.

🎮 In Rotation

🤺 Clair Obscur - Expedition 33

Developer: Sandfall Interactive

Publisher: Kepler Interactive

Lead the members of Expedition 33 on their quest to destroy the Paintress so that she can never paint death again. Explore a world of wonders inspired by Belle Époque France and battle unique enemies in this turn-based RPG with real-time mechanics.

I had to check out the “Game of the Year,” didn’t I?! I’m currently 80% through as of the day of writing (2025/12/23, yes, in Japan format)

I had to postpone my play-through of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for this. The reason is that it was lent to me by a student at Sophia University (where I work on Thursdays). There are so many reviews out there, from people who have played through it in much more depth than me, but let me give my honest thoughts here.

The graphics are incredible. Man, saying this after my rant above seems a little superficial..! But they really are excellent. The whole world is designed into such intricate detail that pretty much every screen has you going “wow” like the dude from the MLG meme:

Every corner you go around is another phantasmagoria of colour, shapes, textures, and imagery, one more impressive than the last. They absolutely nailed it. From the intricately detailed French streets of the intro to the dark, brooding caves of the later levels, all the way to the amalgamation of all zones towards the end of the game (no spoilers), you’re treated to a huge variety of glitter-infused, GPU-pushing spectacles one after another.

However, something got me thinking... I was playing the game with my son last night (or, more like I was playing, and he was watching. Sorry, son!) and he said to me, “Imagine if this game were like The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild and you could go anywhere you want in the world.” This question from my son is important for my critique of the game in terms of graphics and the resulting gameplay.

The game feels like you’re on rails. It’s super linear. This is why there is no map during the levels—you don’t need one. Just head straight and you’ll get to the boss. The levels are generally of the same structure—fight mobs along the path, save at a flag, and repeat until you get to the boss. So the critique here is that yes, the levels are designed beautifully, but the negative that comes out of that is the fact that you basically have these super elaborately designed corridors, which the player walks down. You cannot go off the beaten track, because there is no beaten track.

In terms of story—it’s intriguing. I still haven’t beaten the game, and I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll keep this section short and say that the people that you meet along the path seem oddly familiar and connected to the main party in some less-than-wholesome ways (I think, at least). Being a mystery does keep me interested in the narrative, though. I really DO want to figure out what is going on. Or, at least, be shown the whole picture.

The battle system also requires some words. Here’s some:
Turn-based, rhythm-game-like, juicy explosion festival of pain (with tiny numbers...).

The battle system is cool. Turn-based, so you have time to think, but the enemy hits fricken hard, and you have to dodge or parry their attacks. How do you do this? By having excellent timing (and memorisation of attack patterns) to press your button just in time as they come swinging in with their single, double, or multiple strike attack. Miss a few, and you can say goodbye to that character. Getting a parry and counterattack does feel amazing, though, as time slows down and the sound goes BOOM.

The game deserves the praise it’s getting, but still, I would have liked to see Kojima grab at least one award at The Game Awards for the amazing Death Stranding 2 On the Beach.

🕵️‍♂️ Unheard - Voices of Crime

Developer: NEXT Studios

Publisher: NEXT Studios, 505 Games

What if you could hear every word spoken at the scene of a crime? “Acoustic Detectives” wanted for testing our new device! Return aurally to crime scenes and use the voices you hear to identify potential suspects and solve the mysteries. What is it that’s connecting these seemingly unrelated cases?

I played through the first two missions. It's a cool concept and very original.

You go to a crime scene where participants/actors are dispersed into multiple rooms, and you can choose who you follow over the length of a single audio recording. Start with one set of people, then once you’ve listened through, go and listen again from the perspective of another actor. Once you have the person’s name locked in, they appear on the map throughout the recording.

You can also leave little comments on the recording, which fly across the screen as it plays back, so you can keep track of the various narrative arcs. The voice acting was a little poor, if I’m honest. The fake French accent and pretend smoking in the bathroom were particularly grating.

👸 姫ギャルパラダイス メチカワ!アゲ盛り↑センセーション (Hime Girl Paradise Mechikawa! Age mori sensation)

NipponColumbia

I’m on a mission to up my game literacy this year. And, being bilingual in Japanese and English. I’ve been playing some Japan exclusives. This one came out on the 3DS in 2012 and is all about ギャル (gal) culture.

The story mode has you do a bunch of missions, unlocking new clothes, makeup, and accessories from various gal sub-genres (princess gal, dark gal, casual gal, etc.). There are also fashion checks, a shop to buy various items, and mini games. One of the mini games has you learn “gal-go” a type of gal language which uses odd characters to spell words via SMS. Example from wiki:

• ｷょぅゎ、1囚τ"〒〒ｶヽ世τ㊦±ぃ。
• →きょうは、1人で行かせて下さい。

It's a fun way to learn about this genuinely unique subculture of Japan.

🧀 Cheese Rolling

Developer: The Interviewed

Publisher: The Interviewed

Chase a cheese wheel down a steep hill! Tumble with friends in this ragdoll recreation of an English tradition.

A free-to-play, stupid, little ragdoll physics fun.