Anapurna Interactive seems to be a name that pops up more and more for me lately. Although they only started publishing games in 2017, they’ve rapidly built up a rather large portfolio of well known and well respected indie games. In a lot of ways, Anapurna feels like the major leagues of indie games. Just take a brief bullet-point list of some of their greatest hits and surely you’ve heard of (or played, or loved) at least a few: What Remains Of Edith Finch, Gone Home, Outer Wilds, Kentucky Route Zero, Neon White, Stray, and so on. 


But I didn’t pick up Mixtape because it was published by Anapurna. I didn’t get it because it was a kinda sort spiritual successor to The Artful Escape. I bought it because I just turned 45 years old. I graduated high school in 1999. And I was an obsessive compiler of mixtapes back in the day. I was the dude in our group of friends that always took it upon myself to make sure that I had the soundtrack of our gatherings. Everything about Mixtape spoke to me on a very personal and relatable level. 


Incidentally, it’s the same reason I played Lost Records: Bloom & Rage last year. And although I did connect with that game on some level, and enjoyed the half of it that I played, I ended up noping out after feeling that it just suffered under the weight of not knowing what kind of game it even wanted to be. Mixtape doesn’t seem to have that problem at all.


Mixtape is barely a game. It’s much more like an interactive movie. It’s taking in music and visuals and just kind of doing busy work with the controller while all that unfolds. It’s got less puzzles or objectives than your typical walking simulator. And yet, I’m totally okay with all of that. Mixtape feels like a living, breathing nostalgia machine. If you happen to be 45 years old and spent your youth obsessed with finding the perfect song to score a perfect moment in time, then this game is a total vibe. 


The plot of the game is simple yet deep. Three high school friends spend their last day of summer together all set to the perfect going-away mixtape. Every song on the tape soundtracks a specific moment. Think of it as the Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979” video stretched out into game form. And as such, I want to just leisurely and aimlessly go through each song on the mixtape and wax poetically about whatever comes to mind. Again, I’m an old now. I’m firmly middle age. And so I just want to ramble about my memories or whatever.

1. “That’s Good” - Devo 

Devo absolutely rules. They always have. Your typical person hears the name Devo and they think “Whip It.” And that’s fine. It’s a fine song. But Devo was so much more awesome than that song.


What I appreciate about this pick is that “That’s Good” comes from Devo’s fifth album, Oh No! It’s Devo. It wasn’t from their debut which would be the snobby choice - although that album rules. It wasn’t from Freedom Of Choice, their third album that contained their biggest hits: “Whip It,” “Girl U Want,” and the title track. It didn’t even come from New Traditionalists, their fourth album which would have been the hipper choice thanks to “Beautiful World.” Instead it came from one of their more slept on albums. 


Oh No found Devo at their most synth-laden era. But it wasn’t really a pop record. “Peek-A-Boo” is almost no-wave nonsense. “Big Mess” is actually one of my favorite songs in their entire discography. But opening this game with “That’s Good” is such a baller move. It quite literally sounds like the sort of generic synth-pop track that might score any John Hughes 80s movie (or later, any Chris Columbus 90s movie). And in that sense it is a gloriously perfect song choice. 


The entirety of this intro chapter is mainly there to roll the opening credits. But the gameplay portion comes along with simply guiding your characters down a sprawling, curving highway on skateboards. Tony Hawk, this isn’t it. But it feels so absolutely 90s. It reminds me of Spike Jonze’s Goldfish video he directed for Girl Skateboards. It reminds me of renting the movie Gleaming The Cube (go see it now if you haven’t). It reminds me of playing Skate Or Die. It reminds me that for many of the years prior to learning how to drive, I carried a skateboard around with me. 


I’m old now. I broke my foot last year playing pickle ball with my daughter. I don’t imagine I’ll ever set foot on a skateboard. But I feel like that culture is still a part of my DNA. I know that if I were to force myself onto one, I’d instinctively still be able to ollie and shove-it. The muscle memory must still be there. I don’t know if skateboarding is cool in 2026. It seems to go in and out of fashion every few years. But it’ll always be cool in my mind. 


More than anything, playing as teens skating perilously down a twisty highway rather than as pro skaters doing unbelievable stunts makes me think of the feeling of invincibility that we all have in youth. I miss that feeling. It’s truly something special to be so young, and inexperienced and well, dumb that you can feel like nothing bad can ever happen to you. You tend to feel that way before anything bad happens to you. Ignorance is bliss. Youth is wasted on the young - you know all the cliches. 


As an adult, I’m now worried that simply playing pickleball (a sport aimed at retirees, by the way) might break my foot. I’m worried that my daughter playing freeze tag may break her arm. These worries come from experience, mind. I’m sitting here on a low-sodium diet and wishing that I could go whip up some cheap and delicious high-sodium ramen. If health were no concern to me, I’d DoorDash some McDonalds to myself right now. But I’m not young anymore. I’m not invincible. I’m quite mortal. And I hate it. 


2. “Just Like Honey” - The Jesus And Mary Chain 


“They always seemed what? They always seemed really great is what they always seemed. They picked up where your precious Echo left off and you’re sitting around complaining about no more Echo albums. I can’t believe you don’t own this record.” 


That one line that Jack Black delivered in High Fidelity was enough to make me go and investigate The Jesus And Mary Chain. And you know what? They were awesome. I mean they had already gotten a Pixies co-sign via their cover of “Head On,” but this line in the film sealed the deal for me. 


“Just Like Honey” was side-one, track-one on their debut and it still stands up. Also bonus points for appearing in Lost In Translation which spoke to the sort of hipster I was in college. Allegedly, the band stole the intro drum part from The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” which also works for me because I legitimately have a soft spot for those old girl groups. So yeah, this track just works. 


This chapter of the game is basically just the classic kids hanging out in a bedroom. It’s such a mundane thing, but an important bonding experience - at least back in the 90s. I don’t know what kids do now. I assume they just hang out on TikTok which is lame. Back in the day we hung out in person. We had actual face time instead of using FaceTime. 


Things you’d do in your friends’ rooms: play video games, of course; go through their CD collection; watch movies; talk about girls; talk about how annoying your parents were; try to sneak alcohol or a smoke; check out the stash of um… adult magazines that your friend may have stashed somehow; debate Tarantino movies; maybe - just maybe, do homework. 


For whatever reason, this section of the game really made me think of my buddy Garrett. This would have been mostly freshman and sophomore year of high school. I remember all kinds of sleepovers there in the summer between those years. 


I remember stealing some kind of fruit flavored brandy from his dad and just getting destroyed. It was bad. I remember throwing up in the night and crawling into his older brother’s room because I was lost. I remember his older brother also sharing with us some also um… adult VHS tapes that we’d be interested in seeing. And I remember sneaking into his brother’s room after he went out for the night to raid his CD collection for any albums I’d want to copy onto cassette. I remember doing even more illicit things and then getting really deep about how ants are amazing because they exist in their colonies and just understand what their job is even without words. I remember looking at pictures of Garrett hanging out with my friend Anthony. They weren’t friends, but they both seemed to be vying for the attention of this girl Jen. She was a skateboarder by the way. Maybe that’s why they both liked her. I remember watching every Tarantino adjacent movie that me and Garrett could find - Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Curdled, Four Rooms. I remember developing a pretty serious crush on Alicia Witt because of that last one. I remember listening to Nirvana bootlegs and DJ Shadow’s first album and a whole slew of mixtapes by local DJs. I remember this girl Caitlyn sneaking out after Garrett’s parents feel asleep and climbing through his window to come hang out with us, but then he got mad because she wanted to make out with me instead of watching a movie with us. I remember playing Mario Kart 64 a lot. Like, a lot. 


Most of these bedroom hang-out sleepovers happened on summer nights between 1996 and 1997. The crazy part was that Garrett was on the school football team and had to wake up early to get to practice all day. I don’t know how he did it. But then again, if I slept over on a Saturday night that meant my parents were picking me up early for church the next morning. It’s crazy because I feel like I slept so much more as a teenager. But maybe back then I could nap given that I had so little responsibility. I don’t know. I don’t remember. 


3. “Freak” - Silverchair


Of the post-Nirvana, thus post-grunge “grunge” bands, Silverchair was pretty up there for me. Personally, I also loved Everclear, Bush, and Foo Fighters. But Silverchair was great. I got to see them on the Neon Ballroom tour in 1999. But their output prior was great and really they kept making great records arguably throughout their entire career. I think Young Modern (2007) was their final record, but “Straight Lines” was incredible. 


Their first album, Frogstomp was great. It was iconic. It sort of is the sound of post-Nirvana grunge really. But I also think that their follow-up, Freak Show was overlooked. I don’t think it was as popular as their first album. While I personally think that “Abuse Me,” is the better single, “Freak” was awesome. I can vividly remember referencing the “no more maybes, your babies got rabies” intro lyric with my high school girlfriend at the time. She actually introduced me to the band, but I’m pretty sure it was because she had a crush on Daniel Johns, whereas I actually thought the music was great. 


I also want to point out that Silverchair is one of those bands that I think should be judged by their b-sides rather than albums proper. They actually put out a box set called The Freak Box which collected all of the singles from Freak Show. “Punk Song #2,” is incredible for instance. They also eventually put out a b-sides collection called Rarities 1994-1999 which may well be their best album. “Untitled,” is possibly their best song ever. The acoustic version of “Ana’s Song” is great. “Blind,” is from The Cable Guy soundtrack and should have been included on their debut. Their cover of “Minor Threat,” is spot on. 


The whole point of this chapter is the high school drive around. You listen to music, you hope you don’t get pulled over, you stop and get fast food. This makes me think of my buddy Al and my buddy Mark. We used to drive around and listen to Reel Big Fish and Sublime. We’d stop at Burger King and do stupid things like put tape on our faces when we picked up our food order. Or we’d try to order things not on the menu and see what the reaction was. This was prior to social media. We weren’t going for Likes, we were going for our own amusement. Our own memories. We’d order a “Burger King Flame,” or pizza. 


I also have a vivid memory of that kid Anthony - remember he wasn’t really friends with Garrett, they both just liked Jen. One night he and I drove down route 6 way too fast on our way to Al’s grandmother’s beach house. I remember listening to Moby’s Everything Is Wrong and it just blew me away. If I ever hear the song “Feeling So Real,” I am instantly transported back to this night. 


4. “Sensitive To The Light” - Rainbow


I don’t really know anything about Rainbow. They were a 70s metal band from England. I guess there was some connection to David Coverdale (pre-White Snake) and Ronnie James Dio (pre-Black Sabbath and Dio). But I can’t pretend I’m an expert about 70s British metal. I’m not. I know some Black Sabbath stuff. I like some of the early stuff. The weirder stuff anyway. But I’m not a metal head by any means. I like metal adjacent stuff though. I love the Deftones. I like Tool. Spinal tap is hilarious. And I have a soft spot for nu metal. I’ll talk about Korn or Limp Bizkit if anyone’s interested for way longer than is appropriate. 


This chapter was about parties and getting drunk and running from cops. I can’t really identify. I mean, I went to parties in high school. I had a good time. But I was never really a degenerate. I was too worried about getting in serious trouble. I liked to toe the line, but never really be a bad kid. 


I remember once, probably junior year of high school my buddy Al and I went to some local band concert. It was not long after Al got his car. This would have been 1998. It was friends of ours from the lunch room. I honestly had no idea what kind of music they even played but I wanted to be supportive. It was basically some kind of screaming emo stuff. It was fine. I bought their tape. Like I said, I wanted to be supportive. 


Then we went to a party at my friend Nick’s house. Nick’s parents were divorced, and neither parent ever seemed to be home of whichever house he was at. There was a lot of kids packed into a small house. I remember the soundtrack was Dr. Octagon and Bombay The Hard Way that night. I remember doing a few things that were questionable, but not insane. I remember letting a girl I was into cut my hair in Nick’s kitchen. 


I remember throwing up later that night. But I also remember that Al was a designated driver. And later my mom told me that she knew what I was up to, but also trusted that I was the kind of kid that had limits and would’t do anything too stupid. So yeah, I guess I wasn’t much of a rebel even in my rebellious years. 


5. Remember When” - Mitch Murder


I may have gotten the song wrong. I’ve never heard of it. 


But this chapter was a brief thing about shoplifting. I never really went through that phase. When I was in first or second grade, I was at a pharmacy with my mom and I asked her if I could have a candy bar. She said no. So I decided to just hide it in my pocket and take it. When we got to the car she realized what I had. She made me go back into the pharmacy by myself and give it back and admit what I had done. That was scary and embarrassing and taught me a very serious lesson. I internalized that and I think it made me a better person. So thanks, mom.


6. “Witchie Taito” - Harper’s Bizarre


Again, probably the wrong song name or band name. No idea what this even is. 


The song is about photo booths. I don’t really have any good stories here. That wasn’t really a thing I remember being into in my teens. It always seemed like a rip-off. As a grown-up I’ve done a couple with my daughter and it’s a cute memory but costs too much. We have phones in our pockets. We can document anything at any time. I don’t know.


7. “Have You Seen Her” - The Chi-Lites


The original song, I don’t really know. I do remember MC Hammer recording a cover of this one on his 1990 album, Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Em. It was kind of popular. That’s all I can really say here. I don’t even remember what happened in this scene of the game, so probably nothing substantial. 


8. “Airwalker” - Bertram Dolby


Never heard of this song. Such a strange mix of recognizable licensed songs and random stuff that is foreign to me. 


This chapter seems to be about touching grass as the kids say. The first half of the 90s, the internet wasn’t ubiquitous yet. We kids still spent a lot of time outside in the summer. We were off the grid. It was nice. 


I didn’t really go explore nature all that much honestly. But I did spend a lot of time outside, riding bikes or skateboarding. There were no cellphones. Parents just assumed you’d be home for dinner, then probably go back out and be back by dark. I’d come in around 8pm and watch some sitcoms with my mom and siblings. Then stay up way too late and start the whole thing all over again. 


Back then summer felt like it lasted the better part of a year. It was almost eternal. It just never ended. The season stretched out forever. And the days never ended. It was beautiful and I miss it. As I write this on memorial day 2026 as a 45 year old dad I can tell you that things shift. Perspective changes. Responsibility takes its toll on how you process time. The you go to work and the days are busy and full. The summer flies by. It’s fleeting. You can never fit in everything that you hope to. There’s never enough time to touch enough grass. 


9. “Monochrome” - Lush


Good band. I never really got into them, though. Another skateboarding chapter. Nothing to really say here. 


10. “Deepspace Scan” - Chris Dunn


I might have gotten this one wrong too. I don’t know what it is. It was a chapter about skipping stones. I’m not deep enough to have anything to say about skipping stones. 


11. “State Of The Heart” - Mondo Rock


I don’t know what this song is. I forgot the chapter. A pattern is forming.


12. “The Touch” - Stan Bush


This song comes from the best Transformers movie: the 1986 animated one. I loved it. But I loved the GI Joe movie even more back then. 


This chapter was about baseball. And fatherly expectations. 


When I was a kid I tried out for little league. I was actually excited about it. I got my dad to throw me fly balls to catch and felt like I was pretty good outfielder.  I made the team and then quit. I liked baseball. I did. But I just didn’t want the schedule. I didn’t want other parents watching me and judging me. And I didn’t want my dad to judge me, either if I’m being honest. I don’t even think I knew what the word “anxiety” meant until I was around 18 or 19 and went and talked to a doctor about things. So when I was a kid I just felt like I was nervous and weird. 


I remember my dad buying me the LJN Major League Baseball game on NES when I was a kid. I thought it was cool that he bought me a random game that I didn’t ask for. I thought maybe he was taking an interest in my hobby. But then later I concluded he was just trying to get me interested in what he wanted to see me interested in. Like, I hoped that this meant he had found a video game that we could play together. But he never did play that game with me. Instead, I think he was hoping a video game would make me want to play baseball outside. It kind of bothered me. I thought maybe he was trying to find a common ground with me (video games), but really he was trying to get me to find an interest in what he was interested in. In some ways, that soured me on baseball for some time. 


Ironically, I loved that LJN game. It’s nothing special. There’s plenty of baseball games on NES. But there’s a real nostalgia I have for that one. So maybe my dad succeeded in finding a good gift for me, even if his ruse to get me into playing baseball outside backfired.


? “Title Unknown” - Artist Unknown 


I looked at this draft sitting in my Apple Pages and realized something. I’ve had no urge to revisit this game in over a month now. I bought this game using mad money from my birthday in early May. Since then we’ve had my daughter’s birthday and now today is Father’s Day and the first day of summer. And yet I’ve not been interested in playing this game in all of that time. 


The weird thing is this, I actually enjoyed my nights playing Mixtape but it wasn’t because the game was good or fun. Basically, I enjoyed the writing prompts. I enjoyed the forced nostalgia. In that sense it lines up very closely with Lost Records from last year. Much like Lost Records, Mixtape gave me reasons to think about things from high school and write about them. And that’s all fine and well. But it doesn’t mean that I was playing a good game or even enjoying the game itself. And so now with that realization I’ve lost total interest. 


We are approaching the mid-point of 2026 and so far my two favorite games of the year are Slay The Spire II and Marathon. It’s honestly been a weird year. I’ve played a bunch of crappy games this year. A lot of stupid mobile games and sims. Actually, Pokemon Pokopia was really good. But beyond that, I don’t know. There’s been some JRPG remakes, though not as many as last year. It’s been a more quiet year than 2025 so far. But of course Grand Theft Auto VI is supposedly launching in November, so that should shake things up hard for a while. But yeah, for now I’m just playing Slay The Spire II and Marathon every single night and I actually feel pretty okay with that for the time being. 

I’ve spent my whole life proclaiming that all games are interesting. And that’s generally true. But that doesn’t mean that all games are good. Nor does it mean that all games are meant for every gamer. 


I grew up in an era of weird games. I’m talking about weird games that hit me the right way. Outside of rambling, I’m not even sure what I’m trying to express here. But let’s just go crazy, okay? 


Phantasy Star Online was incredible to me. It was marketed as a console MMO, although it was certainly not massive. But I loved that game hard. And my love and appreciation for Phantasy Star Online lead to my love and appreciation for all kinds of other desperate games. 


Hypderdimension Neptunia is often considered a bad game. And yet, because of Phantasy Star Online I was able to appreciate that game more than any normal person should. It also made Monster Hunter make sense to me. In fairness, it was the later more streamlined entries like Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise, but still. 


When I finally got to play Phantasy Star Online 2, it was a pretty deal to me. It didn’t feel like a proper follow up to that original game, but it did feel like something much bigger. It made Final Fantasy XIV make more sense to me. But also Nier Automata. Everything I’m writing here feels completely disjointed, I know. And yet it makes sense in my brain. 


I think the important point I’m trying to make is that Genshin Impact felt like the same kind of revelation to me. When I discovered Genshin Impact, it was a really big deal. It felt sub-genre-defining to me. It felt like a perfection. 


I would see people commenting on message boards about how bad gacha games were, and I just didn’t get it. If Genshin Impact was a gacha game then certainly these people were wrong. Genshin Impact was amazing. 


Genshin felt like a free-to-play Breath Of The Wild. I loved it so much. I got dozens of hours of fun out Genshin without spending a cent. It was also the first game that my daughter got into and she’s now into the hundreds of hours. Again, without a single penny spent. It’s not allowed in my house. Free games are great, but we don’t spend money on them. That’s the rule. And she knows so much about the lore of Genshin it’s mind-blowing. 


I started playing Genshin Impact in 2023, myself. And I’ve been forever chasing that dragon. Trying to find some other game that could dethrone it. Genshin is no longer on PS5, which means my daughter has to remote play into my PS5 to play it from her PS4. And that’s fine. But for me, I’ve been on a quest to find some new free to play gacha game that could possibly capture the same magic. And I just can’t. 


Earlier this year I played Seven Deadly Sins Origins, and it was trite. Not to mention that tittle which barely rolls of of a tongue. It felt like it was trying so hard to be Genshin Impact, without so little of the charm. 


But when Neverness To Evenness rolled around I was optimistic. 


NTE supposedly mixed up Genshin Impact with Grand Theft Auto and Blade Runner. It was totally marketed at me. But honestly it just feels so vapid.


Back when Final Fantasy XIII was released, critics panned it for its linearity. They called it a game of hallways. And that’s what much of NTE feels like early on. Ironically, I defended Final Fantasy XIII at every turn. I loved the game, characters, and battle system. But I think I was in the minority. I’m not defending NTE, though. 


As much as I want to like this game I just can’t. The water physics are amazing, I’ll give it that. The setting is great. The animations are beautiful. But I think I’m just getting burnt out on gacha games and NTE feels like just another. And I’m tired of them. I’m tired of trying to get sucked in and feeling exhausted.


And that’s where I’m at. I’m exhausted. There are so many new gacha games and they all feel the same to me. Genshin Felt like a revelation but so many others have felt like rehashes. And that’s where I’m at right now. I’m burnt out on rehashes. I’m tired of new gacha games just like I’m tired of new cozy games. I need something new and interesting and it seems like the stuff I’m exploring this year just ins’t that. 

It’s hard for me to really explain what a big deal Genshin Impact is in my house. I started playing it in 2023 or so and thought it was a pretty great free game. I had a blast with it for twenty or so hours and then kept it installed in case I wanted to keep poking around between other games. But for my daughter, it was huge. In many ways, Genshin Impact was her Super Mario Bros.


There was one night where I had loaded up Genshin Impact solely because I was testing out an external capture card and needed something on the screen. She asked if she could try it. She was four at the time, so all she could really figure out was kind of roaming around and taking in the colorful scenery. But then she just kept wanting me to let her play it. 


She spent all of 2024 dabbling with the game. Genshin Impact became the game in which she learned what a video game actually was. She learned how to use a controller; how to manipulate a camera in a 3D space; how to navigate menus and maps. Going into 2025 she was just as hooked. She was also a very good reader, so she got into the actual plot and lore of the game. She got a plush toy of Barron Bunny. She spent hours learning how to draw characters. She learned how to look up Youtube videos to help her through difficult parts of the game. 


Even in 2026, Genshin Impact is a Mount Rushmore game for her. She plays other games but we can never uninstall Genshin. She loves Hello Kitty Island Adventure on her iPad. She has some Bluey and Paw Patrol kid games on PS4. She’s even gotten into exploring the N64 app on Switch. Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 and Mario Tennis are all ones she comes back to. But the day that Hoyoverse announced that Genshin Impact would lose PS4 support was the day I had to show her that we could remote play my PS5 to the PS4 in the living room just so she wouldn’t lose access to her favorite game. 


All of the above is important background because the game I’ve been playing for the past week or two is Seven Deadly Sins Origin, which is exactly like Genshin Impact. Exactly.


Apparently Seven Deadly Sins is based on a manga series that I’ve never heard of. So I don’t know really know if the IP is popular enough to gain any name recognition or not. I don’t know if the manga is a classic or cult classic or not really a big deal. But I do know that this game is so much like Genshin Impact that it makes my head spin. It’s a weird feeling of familiarity and confusion. 


The opening hours of the game? Exactly like Genshin Impact. Even the cover art looks like Genshin. The controls are the same. The structure of quests are the same. The art style is the same. It genuinely feels to me like some other developer attempted to make a sequel in all but name. Maybe because Hoyoverse has been spending so much time focusing on their other games, I don’t know. Maybe there was hope that Seven Deadly Sins would fill some kind of void. I just don’t really know who this game is for. 


You do get to ride around on an anime pig though. So there’s that. And actually it’s a good gimmick. At any point you can click a few buttons and the pig while autopilot you to your next main quest waypoint. I like that. It’s a good quality of life feature. 


But honestly, I don’t know why I would want to play this game for any serious length of time. I’ve put it less than ten hours now and it’s just so firmly in the “fine” range of games. There’s nothing really wrong with it if you like gacha games. But what’s the draw here? Why would anyone choose Seven Deadly Sins if Genshin Impact already exists. 


I’ll admit the theme is cool. The manga is based on a group of characters who all represent the (you guessed it) seven deadly sins. That’s neat. But the story is - well I don’t even know. The story could be the plot of a show called stories I don’t care about. And so I’ve been skipping everything because it doesn’t hold my attention. 


Seven Deadly Sins is fine. But it’s also unoriginal and cliche. If you’ve played Genshin Impact or basically any gacha game in the past ten years, then you already know what this is. You know exactly what to expect. And yet I was compelled enough to give it a whirl over the past couple of weeks. I think that was only due to me having so few truly new games to play. I can’t help but get interested in current releases just in case they might be something that does pull me in. 


Outside of Slay The Spire II launching into Early Access, the first quarter of 2026 wasn’t really incredible. But slowly notable releases have started to pile up. Now I’m looking at my wish list and seeing some pretty major games like Resident Evil Requiem, Pokemon Pokopia and Marathon, which are all pretty high up on my want-to-play list. 


I doubt I’ll even show Seven Deadly Sins Origin to my daughter. She’s happy enough with her current rotation of games. I think that by next month the game will be deleted from my PS5. I think that six months from now I won’t even remember this game anymore. I think that when best-of-2026 discussions start up, this game won’t even be a blip on the radar. And yet it’s not bad. It’s just not really good either. But perhaps even worse, there’s just nothing of note here. There’s no real reason to play it or think about it or talk about it all that much. Which is a shame because it looks like some serious time, effort and dollars were put into its creation. 
​

I was a senior in high school in September, 1998 - the same month that Pokemon Red & Blue were released in North America. I can remember some of my friends being really into it at the time. They were bringing there Game Boys in and linking them up to trade Pokemon. And I remember thinking maybe we were told old for this stuff. I mean, we were seniors. We were supposed to be cool now. And Pokemon looked like kid stuff. So I snubbed it hard.


I started dating this girl who was already in college not too long after. And again, I felt like I was supposed to be cool. I was dating an older girl. She was in college! And she was really into Pokemon. She was watching the animated series every day. And even though it got her approval, I felt like I needed to be cool and roll my eyes. She was a vegetarian, and she wanted the Pokemon toys that McDonalds (or was it Burger King?) Was giving away, so she made me eat fast food every day during the promotion so that she could have the toys. I was dutiful because I mean, I was a high school dude with a college girlfriend. I just went along with it.


And so I ignored Pokemon for a very long time. I always figured I was too old and too cool. And then around 2009 or so I got deep into Game Boy collecting. And so I ended up with a copy of Pokemon Yellow and at some point decided to check it out. And y’know what? It was awesome. Like seriously awesome. And all the sudden my world shifted because maybe I had been wrong for so many years.


I won’t go into crazy detail on my history with the series since but rest assured, I’m a fan. Probably my favorite entry was Ruby & Sapphire. I played and loved Let’s Go Pikachu - the remake of Yellow - just a week or so before my daughter was born. I thought the movie Detective Pikachu was pretty excellent. But I’m not a fanatic. I think the last mainline game I played was Sword & Shield, which was really good but not amazing. 


All that said, there was something about Pokopia that really piqued my interest. I’m almost embarrassed to say that right off the bat, that cover art caught my eye. There’s something so neat about it. It’s busy for one thing. Most games strive to have a striking single image. Not this one. It’s busy in a way that reminds me of old PSP imports or something. And it’s got a lush green going for it that really pops. 


There’s always something interesting to me when a long running series steps outside of its comfort zone a bit. Not that Pokemon has had any shortage of spin-offs or anything. But honestly so few of them grab my interest. Don’t get me wrong, Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (1998) was fantastic. But I never really cared about things like Pokemon Snap for instance. And really, Pokemon has such a solid formula that part of the series charm is just how little it changes fundamentally between entries.


Pokopia isn’t original. But it is.


Pokopia is a mash-up of Pokemon, Dragon Quest Builders and Minecraft and Animal Crossing. And it works. Perhaps all of this is unsurprising given that it was co-developed by Game Freak with the help of Omega Force who also made Dragon Quest Builders 2. If you’ve played the Dragon Quest Builders games, then you know what’s up. They were basically Minecraft but set in the world of Dragon Quest and with the inclusion of quests. 


Pokopia takes things a bit further. It’s basically Minecraft set in the world of Pokemon but with quests, and also leaning hard into the cozy game thing that Animal Crossing is so well known for. You will not have any combat here. But you will decorate houses. 


I do think that Pokopia may well be one of the first real Switch 2 killer apps. While I personally loved Mario Kart World, I can also see gamers happy enough to just stick with Mario Kart 8 and all of its DLC. Pokopia feels like a new game that you can just not replicate the experience of on an original Switch console. It’s at least nice to see the Switch 2 library of exclusives start to steadily expand. I didn’t really plan to be an early adopter or anything, but somehow I ended up with the console about six months after launch. Pokopia was actually the one game that I asked for for my birthday this year. And it’s made for some relaxing down time in the weeks since. 


The crux of the game is that you play as a Ditto who’s posing as a human. He finds a post-apocalyptic world that used to be inhabited by Pokemon (and humans) and he immediately tasks himself with bringing this world back to life. Slowly, you restore bits of the world - maybe getting grass to grow early on and Pokemon start finding themselves back in the world. They eventually teach you new skills that can restore more of the world, bringing more Pokemon back. And the cycle continues. 


It’s a great loop honestly. Being thrown into a barren wasteland and then slowly making it come alive again. It’s turning garbage into art. It’s turning dirt into flowers. It’s relaxing and optimistic. Given the gloomy undertones of a post-apocalypse, Pokopia is truly an uplifting game. And that’s nice. 


My first Pokemon that I found was Squirtle and that’s beyond appropriate as he’s always been my favorite. And it’s been a joy seeing who I meet next. Charizard came around to teach me about fire. Meowth was a fun find. Balbasaur taught me to plant stuff and so on. I’m admittedly bad at Pokemon names even though I have books outlining them. But when that huge fish dude from Sapphire showed up, I was thrilled.


Much like in the Dragon Quest Builders games, the slow yet constant drip of new tasks is just perfect here. You’ll never feel like you have nothing to do. But you can certainly just ignore it all and do what you feel like too. That said, I never had a moment where I wondered what to do next, or felt like I was’t making progress.


I’m really not a cozy gamer guy, though. And I can at least say that Pokopia has been far more compelling for me than Animal Crossing: New Horizons or Stardew Valley. Earlier this year I tried Heartopia and bounced off of it hard. But back in the pandemic days, I played plenty of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Everyone did. My friend’s kids would have me visit their islands. It was a super popular game because it was a zen garden that also helped keep us all connected. 


And yet I can’t love New Horizons. And maybe part of that is the pandemic. Ironically, a few weeks ago my daughter and I went to a Switch gaming night at our local library and she played New Horizons there. She was really into it and I was just thinking about how I hadn’t played it in six years. I think that maybe the game is so wrapped up in the time it was released - a time of utter confusion and panic - that I just can’t feel comforted by it anymore. My daughter started playing it at home last week and I just couldn’t get into it the way I did back then.


But I’ve had fun with Pokopia. I’ve built little habitats, and found new Pokemon and done all kinds of silly things. Heck, I made it rain. But historically cozy games don’t keep my attention for super long. A couple of weeks with Pokopia have been fun, and I do feel like I’ll continue to chip away, but I’m not obsessed. I loved rebuilding the whole first area, but as I opened up more of the map and realized just how big this world is, the game started to feel more daunting. 


Ultimately this is a huge game and that’s great. People are going to love it. It’ really good. It’s just way more content than I personally want to engage with. That said, I feel like I’ll continue revisiting this throughout the year and the chance is good it’ll still end up on my short list of best games of 2026. So there’s that.

Y’know that thing where you’re terrible at a game and don’t even really understand it but also you kind of totally love it? That’s where I’m at with Marathon (2026). Really, this game is a fascinating piece of history. One book I’d totally recommend to anyone who finds any of the things I write about interesting is The Secret History Of Mac Gaming, published by Bitmap Books. In that book, you’ll learn all about Bungie. While Windows and DOS gamers in the 90s had Id Software (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom Quake), Mac Gamers had Bungie. 


Bungie has a wild history. The company launched in 1990 and remained a Mac-exclusive game developer for nearly a decade. That was a ballsy stance to take and I admire it. While the Apple II was a strong gaming machine, the classic 1984 Macintosh wasn’t really aimed at gamers. And while certainly there were plenty of games to play on it, they were more often than not multiplatform that could also be played on PC. But Bungie took it upon themselves to focus exclusively on the Mac and championed the machine. And that’s awesome to me. 


They had a handful of early games that weren’t really earth-shaking. Gnop (1990), Operation: Desert Storm (1991), Minotaur: The Labyrinths Of Crete (1992) and Pathways Into Darkness (1993) were all released to some level of enthusiasm. But it was 1994’s Marathon that actually put Bungie on the map. Marathon 2 (1995) and Marathon Infinity (1996) followed in quick succession. 


After that there was Myth (1997) and Myth II (1998) and Oni (2001), which branched out into other platforms. But it was the follow up to Marathon, released in 2001 that really set the world on fire. You may have heard of a little game called Halo. Maybe. That game was released for both Mac and PC and also a new console called the Xbox. 


From then on, Bungie became known as an Xbox developer. Halo 2, 3, ODST, and Reach were all Microsoft exclusives. They came out on Xbox and Windows and nothing else. So that’s a weird jump, right? How is it that a company that spent almost a decade making games specifically for Apple computers then jumped ship and made games specifically for Microsoft platforms? If I’m not being clear enough, Apple and Microsoft are polar opposites. 


There’s an important linearity of franchises to understand here. Marathon begat Halo. And Halo begat Destiny. The first Destiny was released in 2014 on Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3 and 4. And then Destiny 2 was released in 2017 on Windows, Playstation 4, 5 and Xbox One and Series X. And then in 2022, Sony bought Bungie. It’s all so crazy. Bungie started as a developer focused on Apple then shifted to Microsoft and then ended up being owned by Sony. But through those decades, it feels like Marathon, Halo and Destiny shared a very obvious DNA. 


Halo was great. I’ll give you that. But the truth is I really only played the first game. Destiny is where my Bungie love really kicked in. There was a period of time when I was an Xbox guy, but it was only because my friends were playing games on Xbox. And so that console served a social vehicle. But frankly, I’ve been a Playstation dude since PS1 came out. And technically much further back if you (like me) consider the Sega CD as Sony’s dry run for their own console. But Destiny was incredible to me. It felt like if you took Halo and combined it with Phantasy Star Online, which is an obvious win for me. 


The hype leading up to Marathon grabbed me right away. Just the colors and visual style. I was sold. Honestly, I wanted Destiny 3. Many people do. But Marathon definitely intrigued me. I actually downloaded Destiny Rising the day it was released. That was the new mobile game that NetEase put out. I liked it fine enough. But I only played it once. It did not suck me in. And frankly, I think I was annoyed that it was strictly a mobile game. Why not release Destiny Rising on Mac or PS5, really? So to me, the upcoming Marathon reboot felt more like Desinty 3 than Destiny Rising ever did. 


Somehow, Marathon became one of my most anticipated 2026 games. I mean obviously we are still supposedly going to get Grand Theft Auto VI this year. We will see what happens. But as I write this we are almost halfway through the year. And what are the big games I’ve been looking forward to? Resident Evil Requiem, Forza Horizon 6, and not a lot else. Directive 8020 looks cool. Pokemon Pokopia was fun for sure. But when I’m talking pure hype, I don’t know. Marathon was a big one for me. 


Early on, Marathon passed the good game test, which is to say that I often found myself thinking about it even when I wasn’t playing it. That’s always a sign of a game getting its hooks into you. I’ll find myself thinking about random things, like was that an Oni reference early on? I think that it was. And if so, that’s awesome because Oni wasn’t exactly a popular game. 


The thing is this, though. I’m not really good at Marathon. Like, I’m actively bad at it quite often. I genuinely feel bad for my teammates because I feel like I’m a liability. But I just try to keep a few things in mind. For one, I was equally terrible at most any other competitive game upon first trying. It’s only through playing a lot that you learn things and get better. So there’s not much I can do other than keep trying to learn things, or just flat out quit. I also try to keep in mind that this is a game and I’m not playing ranked mode or whatever. I’m just trying to have fun, and hopefully the other teammates are doing the same. I try, therefore I feel okay about my failures. Over the past month I’ve found myself spending a fair amount of time on the Marthon reddit forum just hoping to eek out any little bits of advice on how to improve my skills. 


Some drama broke out surrounding Marathon not long after I got into it. Bungie announced that after the next Destiny 2 update, the game would cease to be supported. This was a huge blow to the Destiny 2 community, so I get their pain. But I also see both sides. Listen, I thought the first Destiny was amazing. And I bought Destiny 2 on day one and thought it was even better. But I also recognize that Destiny 2 was supported for a longer time than most folks probably expected, and really Bungie probably has to shift all of their resources over to their new game if they want it to succeed. Either way, the Destiny 2 community is probably feeling pretty salty about Marathon and I get it. I do. But I also do want to see Marathon succeed.


Marathon is smaller in scope than Destiny 2. But I don’t mean that in a bad way. Destiny 2 felt epic whereas Marathon feels more distilled. The stories are smaller. But I like that. I like that rather than feeling like I’m marching ahead through a giant sci-fi epic, instead I’m doing these smaller sub-thirty minute runs and walking away with all this little mini stories to tell. It adds levels of excitement and tension that I wasn’t really expecting. Though in fairness I wasn’t really all that versed in extraction shooters prior to this. All I know is that after spending a few hours with Marathon it became clear that this is not Destiny 3 in any way. It is really its own thing. And that’s good. Because frankly Destiny and Destiny 2 were amazing games. But I’m also okay with Bungie doing something new. 


Marathon is also a surprisingly difficult game. I didn’t often feel nervous playing Destiny, but Marathon has an ability to put me on edge. And yet, it also feels worth it because every success feels absolutely incredible. 


I have to admit that I’m honestly terrible at this game. Like I legit feel bad for teammates at time and feel like a liability. I only picked it up two months after launch, but right away I had the feeling that I was way behind most of the players I was teamed up with. Plus, I can’t quickly parse what gear is when I’m looting or even quickly understand what a good load out looks like. But the weird thing is that pretty much right away I felt like I loved this game and that made me want to keep trying. I want to be good. Or at least I want to be competent. If I’m being honest though, there’s just so much stuff I don’t understand. I have no problem admitting that because Marathon feels like the kind of game that wants to challenge new players. It wants you to spend time with it and learn from doing rather than by telling. Normally that’s the sort of game that sends me running for the hills, but I’m just so engaged with it that I can’t help but keep pushing ahead. 


I also have to admit that sometimes I’m a bad teammate because I refuse to engage with chat. There was a time a decade earlier when I would have been willing to throw on a headset and play games with strangers. Actually in Destiny 2 there was a guild that I joined and would often hop on and have a headset and chat with strangers or semi-strangers and feel just fine. But look, I’m a different guy now. I’m 45 years old now. Most nights, I’m playing games while my wife is sleeping in the same room. I’m playing games to unwind and be quiet, not to to be talking to anyone. And certainly not to be yelled at by strangers because I’m terrible. I totally admit that my refusal to hop on voice chat is going to stop some productive communication, but it is what it is. I do my best no engage in non-verbal communication and I try to use the ping system, which I found worked wonderfully in games like Apex Legends. 


The game follows a flow of seasons which last for three months each. At the end of each season, there is a full wipe of looted gear and upgrades, which is an interesting gimmick because it basically makes each new season a good jumping on point for new players given that most everything is reset back to a level playing field. At least in theory. Obviously you can’t take away the hundreds of hours of actual experience and understanding that other players might have already gained.


The week or so leading up to season two had me flooded with anticipation. I made some effort to make progress before the wipe, but honestly I was still just trying to make sense of most of the game. I spent time reading Reddit threads and seeking out hints and tips to improve. I fired up the game with glee the night that season two started, only to be greeted to server issues which was a drag. But what can you do? Online gaming in 2026 still isn’t perfect. I’ve come to expect that. 


The first week of season two was also a free week to help attract new players. Personally I think that’s a good idea and I kind of hope Bungie keeps up that offer going forward. I think resetting everything and then creating a possible flood of new players for a week is good way to approach things. 


Upon actually starting season 2 it appears that wipe wasn’t 100% because returning players were gifted with some reward gear. I decided that I wasn’t going to suffer from gear fear, and took that stuff out on my first runs only to see it quickly lost. But alas, that’s Marathon. There’s a constant thrill thanks to the risk and reward of using your best gear. But I think ultimately that tension is worth is because it makes the game more fun and you start to have a different outlook on the gear. Yes, you feel successful when you find some cool new weapons or shields out in the wild. But if you were to think of it as too precious to actually use, then what was it all for? I’d rather lose my best and rarest gun in a run than let it sit collection digital dust in the vault. Maybe that’s just me. But once you get into that mindset it’s pretty liberating and you find yourself remembering YOLO.


Being a Marathon early adopter and fan has been a little weird though because there’s just so much chatter about it right now. There’s been coordinated review bombing on Steam. We see Sony’s State Of Play presentation live chat being spammed with players posting requests for Destiny 3. Even major news outlets like Forbes are publishing numerous and ongoing articles framing Destiny 2’s ending new updates and Marathon’s rocky launch as some sort of Bungie civil war. It’s kind of weird to be so into a new game that can’t really be discussed without another older game being part of the conversation. 


But the important thing is that I’m still having so much fun with the game. 


Season two’s first week created one of my most embarrassing online gaming moments probably ever. I found myself on a team and we were playing fairly well. Late in the run we ended up in a bit of an open area and got ambushed. We worked together pretty good and while it was chaotic I saw the whole other team go down. Immediately I started healing up and looting and wasn’t really paying attention to what my teammates were doing. I turned a corner and saw a couple of bodies dragging themselves along. I decided to be merciful and not kill them but of course I had to loot their gear. I took everything and then made a dash to try to find my teammates. As I ran and realized that I no longer could see their waypoints it dawned on me: those were my teammates. Somehow in all the chaos I didn’t realize they had gone down. They were literally dragging themselves toward me to be revived and like an idiot I just stole all their gear and ran off. I guarantee you that from their perspective I was the biggest rat of a teammate they had ever played with. But the sad and embarrassing truth is that I am just an idiot. 


All that said, when you get a good crew working together in unison and successfully exfil, the game feels like a work of art. When I’m actually paying attention and successfully keep my teammates healed or revive them, I feel great. When we make good tactical decisions and are able to flank another team it just feels like gold. When you see that green banner that says “run complete,” it is just so rewarding. 


Marathon is not a hand-holder. Even a dozen hours in I’m still figuring things out. Season two has tweaked how stat upgrades work and it’s been for the better. I’m slowly ticking off my quests and making progress and I know there’s still so much I don’t understand, but the learning has been truly worth the confusion. 


When season two started, I decided I would switch up my character (or runner or shell or whatever). Instead of Triage, I switched over to Vandal. Triage was basically a support and all about healing teammates, which is what allured me. But from everything I’ve read, Triage is also a much harder character to play and I’m bad. So I’ve been playing as Vandal instead and having a good time. I might switch back to Triage just because I prefer support in games like this, but I think it’s important to try various characters in games like this that I really love because I need to experience as much variety as possible and get outside of my comfort zone. 


My routine has been the same for weeks now. It’s summer and so I’m finding myself retreating to the bedroom at night and chilling with open windows or the AC depending how hot it is. I generally start the night by messing around online, be it tinkering with my website that I’ve built to help recommend games I should play; then I do an hour or so of Marathon runs and then I end the night with some Slay The Spire II because I’m still obsessed with that game. And on Thursday nights I play a really old game. What can I say? I’m a man of habits. 


Anyway, I’ve learned to really embrace the risk and reward of Marathon. I’ve decided that it’s most fun when I throw caution to the wind and just bring all of my best gear with me. The truth is that when I bring awesome guns and awesome shields and awesome gear, my chances of survival go way up. And frankly I know that my safety net is that if I lose all my gear I can just use a sponsored kit for free and loot more stuff. That said, the safety net is fine but risking it all makes the runs feel way more serious and way more thrilling. And at the end of the day, you can’t take it with you. The seasonal wipes make it like, who cares? So let’s just go hard.


Exfils are so exciting when successful. It seems silly to say that like succeeding at the game is satisfying. But I mean it really is. I’ve had so many close calls. So many little crazy stories worth remembering. But nothing is so amazing as hopping onto an exfil and getting shot from afar and crawling around in those final moments only to somehow elude death and make it out with a Run Complete message. It’s an amazing feeling. 


And yet the worst part of being a Marathon fan in 2026 is the constant discourse. On the one hand, I find myself lurking the game’s Reddit nearly daily. The enthusiasm there is amazing. And yet on the other there’s been articles on mainstream non-gaming outlets like Forbes multiple times a week calling out the difficulties that Marathon has been facing. 


Forbes’ Paul Tassi has seemingly made it his current passion project to track the trajectory of Marathon. Listen, I don’t fault the guy. He’s consistently been a thoughtful games journalist who has to toe the line between being a hardcore gamer, while also appealing to a non-hardcore gamer audience. He also has to approach games from a more business standpoint, which I appreciate fully. I legitimately get the feeling that Tassi genuinely enjoys Marathon, but at the same time his reporting doesn’t seem to be doing the game any favors. 


Around the time of season two’s launch, we also saw the official end of Destiny 2 which was devastating to many. Then there was a Tech Insider article that revealed that Marathon had resulted in a $765M loss, which is obviously not good. By the end of June we’d see massive layoffs at Bungie - literally half of the Destiny 2 team would be let go, while the rest were merged into the Marathon team. I mean, to some degree we all saw this writing on the wall. It makes no sense to keep staff on a game that is no longer in development, but it’s also sad that half of Destiny 2’s resources were laid off rather than brought in to truly show Marathon as a true replacement. 


As a fan, it’s a really difficult place to sit. I really want Marathon to succeed. I want it to grow. I want it to thrive. And yet it’s the first time I can think of in a very long time that I’ve been so in love with a game that I feel so worried about its survival. I didn’t play Concord. But I suddenly feel bad for those that did play it and loved it. Because I’m legit scared that Marathon will not hang in there. 


I have to think that it makes sense to keep Marathon going. You’ve got this game that cost so much money and now you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket by killing Destiny 2. Obviously that angered many fans, but that bridge was burned. If Sony were to kill Marathon then the Bungie studio is pretty much over. They have no other game in development that we know of. So then what? 


It’s a weird position to be in. And I mean that for Sony, Bungie and the fans. It feels like Marathon was launched and Destiny 2 was sunsetted with no real contingency plan. And I’m scared. Mostly I’m scared because Marathon is absolutely awesome and I want it to keep going. But the divisiveness from the audience; the constant doom and gloom from the media - it doesn’t feel good. It’s hard to proudly sing the praises of Marathon. 


But if I’m being totally honest, right now in the middle of 2026 I deem Marathon as my second favorite game of the year, followed only by Slay The Spire 2. So consider that very high praise. 

When Hearthstone was released in 2014, it created a routine for me. Basically, I always seem to have some card game going that’s my go to game at night. Like, if I’m not specifically spending time with some other game and I’m not sure what else to play but I have an hour to kill before bed? I need a card game. There was lots of them. Good ones. Bad ones. Everything in between. And then there was Slay The Spire.


Slay The Spire came out on Switch the week my daughter was born in 2019. And the crazy thing is that it remained my go to card game until the day Balatro was released in February of 2024. That is really saying something. 


And so I’ve been plugging away at Balatro for the past couple years and then all of a sudden Slay The Spire II is kind of just out there. But it was only on Steam. And in Early Access. So I figured I’d probably end up waiting until it was released more widely. To be honest, I’m not much of an Early Access kind of guy. So probably I could resist the urge to get the game early. Right? 


The thing is a month later Apple released the MacBook Neo. And this was kind of a big deal for me. Let me try to give the short version of the story here. Basically, when the G3 iBook was released in 1999, right as I got into college I wanted one so bad. It was by far the coolest looking laptop I had ever seen. It came in all kinds of bright colors. It looked like a fun laptop. But it was also $1,600 and there was no way that my parents were spending that kind of money on a solid-C student who was heading into community college. 


And thus, sour grapes set in. In school, I had pretty much learned how to compute on Apple II and classic Macintosh machines. They were part of my DNA. But now there was this incredible looking iBook (and iMac) that I tech-lusted for so hard and just couldn’t afford. And so I acted like I didn’t need Apple in my life. 


I kept the act up for years. In the mid-2000s my buddy Kevin gifted me his old G3 Powermac. I acted like it was no big deal. But I secretly loved using it. I loved its blue tower. I loved the monitor. Believe it or not, I loved that puck-mouse. When my mom gave me an iPod nano that she someone won (the details were fuzzy), I used that G3 as my iTunes jukebox server. But as the years went on and the G3 got old in the tooth and I needed to upgrade, I had a problem. 


I wanted the newly announced Mac mini so bad. The problem is that I was young and broke. At  the time, my wife and I were living in our first apartment. We were both working retail jobs at a book store. I would bring home any computer magazine that featured info about the Mac mini. I was just enamored with the thing. But I couldn’t afford the admittedly low price of $500 given that there were cheaper options. So again, I swallowed my pride and pretended that Apple just wasn’t what I wanted.


Fast-forwarding 20 years later, I’m a very different guy in a very different situation. It’s ironic that friends and family now kind of know me as the Apple guy. My sister wants to get iPads for her kids? I’m the guy to ask. My co-worker needs new Earbuds? Ask me about them! I evangelize the latest iOS updates and bemoan my IT department’s insistence that we use Windows 11. 


My current lineup had been an M4 Mac mini as my daily driver with the most recent iPad for internet browsing and some light gaming in bed. And then Apple announced the MacBook Neo in February. I knew I didn’t “need” a new laptop. But I wanted it so bad. The idea was simple: what if we took the aesthetic of the G3 iBook and made it affordable? It was such an easy sell. It would be the cheapest laptop that Apple ever produced by wide margin. It would also come in various fun colors. I spent the following weeks reading everything about it; watching every video I could find. Eventually my wife told me to just pre-order one so I could stop talking about it. So the Indigo model arrived around breakfast time on release day. 


That night I opened up my MacBook Neo and felt like a wrong had been righted. I couldn’t afford a G3 iBook, but nearly three decades later I could pre-order the Neo. I needed a new game to test this thing out and here we are finally talking about Slay The Spire 2.


As a side note, I apologize. My Hades II write-up was also a stealth review of the Switch 2, and so Slay The Spire II is all about MacBook Neo. But yeah, short version: the Neo is the coolest, most fun, and absurdly impressive laptop I’ve ever used. And over the many years, I’ve had more Windows, ChromeOS and Linux “budget” laptops than I can even count. The Neo kills them all - even the $1,000 gaming ones - but a long shot.


And Slay The Spire II has been the perfect MacBook Neo launch game. Tetris was meant for Game Boy, and this game was meant for this laptop. 


Maybe the best and simplest thing I can say about Slay The Spire II is that it is just like the first game. Almost to a fault. In a way it feels like a deluxe edition at first blush. But then you start to unlock things and realize that it is so much bigger, so much more and so perfectly tweaked and refined. It is indeed a proper follow up. The original game was perfection and this is just as perfect and somehow even tighter. 


The game eases you in by starting you with familiar characters/decks. You can feel at home thanks to the familiarity, but you can also see how things have been adjusted for the better. 


The Ironclad took me about nine hours to clear. He was my least favorite deck in the original game, and nothing changes here. He’s fine. He’s not bad, but he’s pretty much meant as the tutorial deck. So whatever. 


The Silent was my favorite deck in the first game, so it’s no shock that I cleared this one on my second attempt. It took me just over an hour. I love the Silent. My favorite strategy is just to build up a lot of block while also inflicting a lot of poison. Basically, poison is stackable passive damage each round and all the while I’m hiding behind walls of block. It’s so satisfying. 


The Regent was confusing but interesting. My main strategy was all about forging, which is adding stackable damage onto a big sword that you need to draw a card to use. So again, play defensively and build up to a giant single attack. It was fun, but also took me a whopping 18 hours to master. So I got burned out after a while. 


The Necrobinder was by far my favorite deck here. She’s got a pet… bone hand? And it takes damage before you do, so acts as a second shield. Her big gimmick is dread, which builds up much like poison but doesn’t trigger until you’ve filled dread up higher than the enemy’s remaining HP. It’s a neat mechanic once you’ve wrapped your head around it. I had a blast figuring this one out and cleared it in about four hours. 


The Defect was the final deck and also a repeat from the first game. I was a fan of his back then, though. He was easily the weirdest in the original. But it was like riding a bike and I knocked this one out in five hours. My favorite strategy was basically just obtaining more orb slots and continually triggering lightening with pretty much anything I did. Play a power card, lightning. Play lightning, more lightning. And so on. The final boss was a joke at that point. 


After 60 hours I am putting down Slay The Spire II unofficially. I’m calling it “beat,” for the moment because I cleared all of the base decks. But that’s not how these games work. Instead, I’ll be playing it - probably nightly for years ahead, well into the final official release. And I will love it. 


I’m only writing this in April, but this will have a very strong point of being my game of 2026. I don’t say that lightly. And even if many more amazing games do follow this year, Slay The Spire II will easily be slotted into the top tier of games that I played this year. 

Don’t you just love a bargain? I know I do. I’m a sucker for free games. Admittedly, plenty of them are bad. But think about the hours I’ve spent enjoying things like Fortnite or Apex Legends or Hearthstone. Sometimes free games are great, and so why not give them a try if they won’t cost me a thing? That’s my way of thinking.


So when I saw Arknights Endfield released I figured why not. But which version to play? Ideally, I was hoping that the Mac and iPad versions would have cross progression so I could play it easily at my desk or on my iPad, but no dice. Apple Arcade has really spoiled me it seems. Instead, I opted for the PS5 version and using Remote Play on iPad, so close enough.


Look, let’s just get this out of the way: it’s impossible for me to not compare this game to Genshin Impact. Genshin Impact is a really big deal in my house. I played so much of that game on PS4. And then it became the first game my daughter ever really got obsessed with. She’s played hundreds of hours of it over the past two-plus years. 


We have never spent a penny on Genshin Impact, which I’m sort of proud to say. We’ve gotten six or seven new characters in that time. And we’ve spent money on merch like stuffies, and stickers and bookmarks. But never spent any money in game, which now makes me feel guilty given the hours of entertainment we’ve gotten out of it.


All that said, I’ve struggled to truly get into gacha games outside of Genshin. It’s kind of the best of those games. Or it’s the first one that grabbed me and that was enough. I tried Hoyoverse’s follow-ups like Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai: Rail Star, and neither grabbed me enough to pull me away from Genshin Impact.


Arknights Endfield isn’t Hoyoverse, though. I’m not familiar with this developer.


Arknights looks great. I’ll give them that. I dig the sci-fi setting. It reminds me of a mix of many games. I see bits of Nier Automata, Phantasy Star Online 2, Xenoblade Chronicles X and so on. 


I have no idea on the story though. It’s all nonsense. I just skip all the cut scenes. I don’t care. 


Having said that, the game is much more linear than Genshin Impact. Endfield holds your hand a lot. Or at least it tries to, which is saying something because there’s so much to learn. And maybe that’s why it didn’t love the game right from the start, which is something I can say about Genshin Impact.


Arknights Endfield is a game that is really linear, so instead of easily exploring its gorgeous world early on, you’re forced to just follow the bouncing ball. Add to that the over-complicated menus and button prompts and it becomes a bit of an exercise in frustration. There’s just so many menus and sub-menus that even finding simple things like how to equip a new weapon is a chore. Add to this that buttons aren’t contextual, so you might have to hit Square in one menu but L2 in another with no real sense of obviousness. 


At least the base building is interesting. Although it also feels a bit superfluous. In theory, I like the idea of things like having to plan out electrical lines to power things and so on. But I can also see how that half of the game would slow down the flow of the exploring and fighting half. And ultimately, I have no idea how actually important the base building even is. I’ve seen some Reddit posts suggesting that it’s really only there for those that want to dig into it. I mean take a forum comment with a grain of salt. But if that’s true, then why put so much focus on it? 


Plus, and maybe this won’t shock you, the base building is way more complicated than it needs to be. Again, multiple menus, unclear objectives and all that.


I guess my final verdict is that Arknights Endfield is an interesting game. It’s intriguing. But it just doesn’t do it for me. I realize that there’s no reason for me to compare it so vigorously to Genshin Impact, but I can’t help it. It seems like the kind of game that could have hooked me if it weren’t for already playing and loving a similar game for so many years. 

I’ve never been a big “cozy game” kind of guy. Which is not to say that I can’t see the appeal. I remember when Animal Crossing came to Gamecube in 2002, my buddy Mark gifted me a copy for Christmas. At the time I was in college and living in a tiny shack out in the country. I had no cable TV and internet was dial-up. And so Animal Crossing was a lovely way to kill quiet lonely time late at night for me. 


But as a whole, I never really gravitated towards the genre. Now and again a game might grab my attention. Stardew Vally was one of those games I guess. But they generally don’t last that long for me. Even when Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out right smack-dab in the middle of Covid and the entire world seemed to be playing it, I got bored after ten or so hours. I can tell you I played way more Splatoon 2 during Covid than I did Animal Crossing.


And yet I still decided to go ahead and give Heartopia a try. Given that it’s a new year, I guess I was itching to try out a 2026 game. Heartopia was getting some pretty decent reviews, and it was free on iPad, and it did look fairly cute. I guess I like when developers try their hand at making clones of much bigger and more successful games. So why not? 


Now, going into a game in a genre that I’m not a huge fan of is already starting on the wrong foot. But right off the bat, Heartopia did some things that I’m just not crazy about. Call them odd decisions, but I feel like Heartopia wants to be a bigger game than it is. Like it wants to be console game, and yet relegates itself only to mobile.


In the modern day of Mac silicon, I can’t help but almost expect (or at least hope) that any games I grab off the App Store should be playable across all my current Apple devices. Maybe Apple Arcade has spoiled me a bit, but I love that games like Balatro or Cult Of The Lamb can be installed on both my iPad and my Mac Mini and I can just pick up progress right where I left off on either device.


Heartopia isn’t like that, though. Instead it is a purely iPad (and iPhone game, if you want to really go nuts). Unless you count Jeopardy Daily, I don’t play games on my phone so I fired up Heartopia on the iPad. 


And right away I was baffled at how demanding this game is. I have the base model A16 chip iPad right now. So fine, it’s not an M-series, but I mean this is kind of the stock standard iPad that you can just go to any store and buy right now. I don’t have any stats to support this, but I’d guess that the majority of iPads actually in people’s hands right now are this model or lower. And yet Heartopia quickly made my iPad start to heat up. I don’t like that. 


To go back to my previous point, if this was a game I was really into and it was available on Mac Mini as well, I’d just play it there instead because the M4 chip would handle it no problem. So again, it’s like a console game that the developers have forced us to play on mobile. 


So I went into the menu and lowered the graphics settings to less intensive on the iPad’s A16 chip. This made the visuals look like crap if I’m being honest. So there’s a trade-off. Either you want it to play well or look good, but this choice could have been bypassed by - say it with me - just making it playable on Mac. 


I also couldn’t find any way to make Heartopia work with a controller. Seriously? It’s 2026 and this is a game that looks and feels like it wants to be on a console but there’s no controller support. I have to say, that feels like an anomaly. I play so many games on my iPad using my Dualsense controller and it feels great. I honestly use my iPad as a portable device way more than I use my Switch 2 that way. 


As you may be starting to gather here, I found Heartopia more frustrating and annoying to even play that I found it hard to even get into it from the start. I mean I did try but it’s all so boring to get started in these kinds of little cozy games. You start a new town and pick a new house and go and gather some sticks and stones and then use those to craft some tools and then go back out to collect more junk with the new tools and… ugh.


At the end of the day, how many of these cozy games am I supposed to care about? Every once in a while I may find one that grabs me for a few weeks. But frankly, it has to be something special. And at the minimum, it has to be inviting to the player. Let me play it on all my devices, let me use a controller and so on. By this point in time we have big hitters out there. You’ve got The Sims in the computer space, and you’ve got Animal Crossing on consoles and you’ve got Stardew Vally as the indie darling. I just don’t need Heartopia enough in my life to put up with all of its annoyances. 

2020 was possibly the year we all went a little crazy. Certainly, we can categorize times both before and after the Covid-19 pandemic. And so 2020 was a strange and uncertain year. We were locked in, scared, confused. To add to this, we had a child who was born in 2019. So yeah, we were new parents trying to navigate such waters all while the world felt like it was in some kind of chaos.


There is a small handful of games that I associate strongly with 2020. Or rather, I associate them with a year of confusion and isolation. I actually found myself playing a lot of Splatoon 2 and Fortnite during this time, I think in an effort to feel I was attached to a human element. I think I felt like if I was playing with a bunch of strangers, there was a comfort in knowing they were out there looking for the same kind of normalcy and human interaction that I was. I also played Animal Crossing: New Horizons, because I think every Switch owner did that year. Maybe being shut-in leant itself to the fantasy of starting a new life with animals in a little town and trying to make things perfect. I don’t know.


But I also played a lot of Hades in 2020. It was a sort of isometric action hack and slash kind of game, not entirely dissimilar to something like Diablo. It had a Greek mythology slant. It was immensely challenging. But perhaps most important to me, it utilized roguelike systems. In the years prior to the release of Hades, I had started to really get into the whole thing where roguelikes were getting mashed up with other genres. 


Spelunky (2008) was probably the game that opened my eyes to the beauty of procedural generation. Derek Yu’s Boss Fight Book on the making of the game really taught me a lot and also made me appreciate such elements even further. Dead Cells (2018) took the Spelunky formula and applied it to Castlevania’s blueprint. And then next thing I knew, I was attracted to all kinds of games that used roguelike concepts. To this day, even the many single player card games I become hooked on (Slay The Spire, Balatro) all owe more than a little to the original Rogue (1980). Or maybe Beneath Apple Manor (1978). But I digress.


Hades was an uphill challenge for sure. It was brutal but also beautiful and although I sadly never managed to beat the original game, I do feel like it helped get me through that difficult and weird year that was 2020. In some ways, the punishing brutality and the tenacity that kept you going for just one more run may have felt like an analogy for the pandemic year that we were pushing through.


Five or six years later now, I’m playing Hades II. While the original game has a sort of association of an exhausting year attached to it, there’s been enough time in between to approach the sequel with a fresh perspective. And it turns out that Hades II is absolutely everything that a good sequel should be. For one thing, it looks and feels very much like the original game, so it’s familiar. And yet, there is so much love put into crafting a proper follow up that I must commend Supergiant Games for taking as long as they did to get this sequel just right. Actually, this reminds me that I’ve never gotten around to playing any of their pre-Hades games - all of which were pretty well reviewed: Bastion (2011), Transistor (2014) and Pyre (2017). I should probably rectify that at some point. 


One thing that’s nice timing for me is that I kind of got back into Greek mythology in 2025. I don’t know if it was dabbling in some of the God Of War games, or just playing Jeopardy and realizing that my memory of mythology had slipped a bit since college. I actually picked up a copy of the book Lust, Chaos, War and Fate by Jason Boyett and have been thumbing through it here and there to remind myself of some of the major names and events from Greek mythology recently. Hades II had me flipping through this book and consulting Wikipedia to learn who Scylla even is. It’s the sort of thing I’ve done with God Of War, or even The Talos Principle. 


Anyway, as 2025 was coming to a close and my wife was asking me to give her a Christmas list, I struggled to pick a new game to ask for. I was leaning toward Metroid Prime 4, mostly because I couldn’t believe it was actually a real game that you could finally buy. But then as the reviews of Prime 4 trickled out and I was reminded of Hades II while watching The Game Awards, I changed my mind and asked for Hades II instead. 


We spent Christmas Eve dealing with my daughter’s stomach bug (possibly norovirus) and when we all dragged ourselves downstairs around ten in the morning, I found both games under the Christmas tree along with a nice new 4K monitor for my Mac Mini, Playstation 5 and Switch. We spent the next several days still dealing with the little one’s stomach bug and I squeezed in some Hades II sessions as I could.


I want to shout out how much I appreciate these duel Switch and Switch 2 copies of games that some publishers are putting out. While the physical copy of Hades II comes in a Switch 2 box, it also contains the regular Switch edition of the game. That was great because I didn’t have a Switch 2 in 2025. But I did end up using some gift cards I got from family members to pay for half of a new Switch 2 console just after 2026 rolled around.


I wasn’t actually intending to get a Switch 2 anytime soon. In my mind, the only exclusive I really cared about was Mario Kart World, and that could wait until there were more exclusives I cared about. The original Switch was long in the tooth, sure. But it also has a ridiculous library to continue digging through, so what was the rush? But then we stopped at Target and me and my daughter played some Mario Kart in the store. There was something about the size of the handheld screen and the premium feel of the hardware and the upgraded visuals that just really made me start to get tempted. The gift cards pushed me over the edge and yeah.


Much like Hades II, the Switch 2 is a console iteration done right. It is very much like the original console except just improved in nearly every department. The screen is huge and looks sharp (though in fairness, I mostly play Switch docked). The joycons feel bigger and more rugged (though in fairness, I opt to use a Dualsense to play my Switch games anyway). The fact that Switch 2 can output 4K when docked is a huge seller for me personally. Remember, I got this nice new monitor. Also, it might sound silly but I really love the stupid addition of using the right joycon as a mouse. And the fact that Gamecube (and soon Virtual Boy) games are part of the Switch Online service on Switch 2.


I didn’t really mean to make this Hades II write-up be a review of the Switch 2, but what can you do? I tend to ramble.


Anyway, back to Hades II. The controls are silky smooth here once again. Like I said, I prefer to use a Dualsense as it’s probably the greatest controller ever made up until this point. It just feels right in my hands. And Hades II feels great on a Dualsense. The game looks stunning. The hand-drawn art, the dramatic colors, I love the visuals here. The writing and voice acting are both top notch. It’s rare for me to play a game like this and not skip cut scenes, but that’s been a thing here. 


Most importantly, Hades II to retains the core roguelike loop from the original. You’ve got all these perpetual upgrades that you can unlock that make you feel like you’re making legit progress and not a single run feels wasted. 


The boss battles are absolutely no joke. I think I managed to take down Hecate my first real night devoted to playing the game seriously. But the battle against Scylla took me most of my Christmas vacation to pull of a victory. I almost got to the point of rage-quitting if I’m being honest, but finally taking her down the first time felt so very satisfying. 


Then there’s the roulette and risk vs reward of the Chaos levels that bring a whole other dimension to your runs. And I guess that’s my point for praising this game: there is always some task or unlock to focus on, always some new bit of story being seeped in, or always something new to see or experience no matter how many hours you sink into your attempt to make it to the end of the game. And that is the exact loop that made Hades so special to begin with. The sequel has just tightened everything up and perfected it even further.


Although Hades II was the last game that I played in 2025, it was without a doubt the finest current release game that I played in 2025. 

I’m a trivia nut. That’s no secret. I enjoy learning new stuff. I enjoy trying to recall the stuff I’ve learned. I’ve been a huge fan of Jeopardy for ages, and have been pretty religious about watching it for the past fifteen years or so. I’ve spent the past decade playing trivia with coworkers at lunch everyday. When people tell me I should go on Jeopardy, I usually admit that there’s too many blindspots in my knowledge, but my plan is maybe when I’m 50. So I’ve got about five years to train.


I was a huge fan of James Holzhauer’s run on Jeopardy. I even watched him on The Chase. I remember him saying that he crammed by reading kids’ non-fiction books which always struck me as brilliant. You need to keep it simple, stupid. Luckily I have a six year old so I also have access to lots of kids’ non-fiction books. I have learned a ton about space and speaking Japanese amongst other things thanks to this method.


Anyway, when Jeopardy Daily came to Apple Arcade in September, it was an instant download for me. I’ve been playing Jeopardy games since the 8-bit era. I played the original NES version when I was pretty young and horrible at it. I remember when Sony brought Jeopardy to the Sega CD. I still own the game on PS1. I found a copy on PS2 when I was in my early 20s and for some reason it was autographed, allegedly by Alex Trebek. I don’t know the story there, but I stupidly sold it when I was low on cash. I wasn’t yet the Jeopardy mega-fan I am today. But my point is I love Jeopardy hard now and have for quite some time.


Initially I convinced my friend Tom to download it so we could compete on friend leaderboards. He did, but then his Apple Arcade trial ended so he let it lapse. But as I write this I’ve got an over 100-day streak going. I tried to get my mom to download it but she couldn’t didn’t want to pay for Apple Arcade. My dad likes trivia, but he has an Android phone and doesn’t know how to download apps. So whatever. I bought my wife an iPad for Christmas so I’ll get her to download it soon.


Jeopardy Daily is so simple. Everyday you do three categories and a daily double. The goal is to of course rack up as many points as you can each week. You can choose to type out answers, which normally I’d love but most people are playing multiple choice and I prefer a level playing field. 


Normally I wouldn’t take the time to write about a pretty casual mobile game. I mean normally I don’t play mobile games other than ports of more major games. But I’ve made Jeopardy Daily part of my daily routine. People love Wordle, but not me. This is my daily game. It’s part of my morning routine. Sometime after my first coffee and really getting the day going, I do Jeopardy Daily. And who knows how long my streak will go but hopefully it gets me ready for my audition five years from now.