Starfield (2023-2024)

If you've played any Fallout or Elder Scrolls games, you won't be surprised to hear that Starfield is exactly the same game, using exactly the same game engine, and exactly the same controller buttons. Swap the post-nuclear wasteland or high fantasy settings for outer space, make the main protagonist a 24th century miner on Mars and...well, you know what you're getting with a game made by Bethesda studios.

Knowing what you are going to get with a Bethesda game also includes the standard 'ordinary character is destined to be the saviour of the world / galaxy' main questline, endless loading times, the near-constant worry that the game is going to crash for no reason at all, broken, incompletable side quests, and lazily carbon-copied loadouts, with abandoned bionics factories and communication relay stations replacing toxic junk yards or Disneyesque castles. These are always good places to grind for XP and find loot, but you end up feeling like you're a supporting character in Groundhog Day after clearing out your 257th cryogenics factory in a week. 

Having made the game sound tedious, frustrating and completely unplayable, I have been addicted to Starfield since September 2023. It is a truly beautiful game. The narrative is genuinely well-written and interesting, with chapters and quests that have been, in turn, laugh-out-loud funny, heart breaking, tense, and gripping throughout. 

I don't want to finish this first playthrough. I know that if I do, it isn't the end of the game, and I can continue roaming space for ever, but I have become so involved in this playthrough of the game, I don't want it to end.

Diablo IV (2024)

The Diablo series of games has been one of my go-to franchises since the beginning of time (well, 1996, when the first one came out). Each game is identical in presentation, style, look, sound and feel: there's no freedom to explore, the quest / storylines are pedestrian at best, repetitive and cliched at worst, and each game is little more than a dungeon-crawling loot 'em up. They are loud, pompous, and present an endless array of procedurally-generated dungeons featuring the repetitive, mindless slaughter of monsters by the hundreds. There is no need for the player to consider tactics, to proceed with caution, or to take a diplomatic or stealthy approach. Instead, they simply enter an area, encounter horde after horde of pestilent, zombified creatures, and cut a swathe through them with massively overpowered weapons. The only choice the player makes is at the start of each game, when they choose which weapons these will be, via opting to play as a barbarian, archer, or spellcaster. It's mayhem. It's silly. It's also oddly therapeutic. 

Diablo IV is no different, but as it has been made for next gen consoles, it's very pretty when played on an XBox X. And, as always, I play on the easiest setting there is to ensure I don't let my lack of ability prevent me from making progress. It has this odd 'power' to keep bringing me back for more, and I don't know where that pull comes from, or why. I will literally sit in front of my console, not wanting to play Diablo because it's boring and repetitive. And within 2 minutes find myself playing Diablo. Why is that?!

Forager (2024)

I'm not a fan of 'cosy games', though I can understand their appeal as a form of game-based therapy. I wanted to play something a little different, so gave Forager a go because it was free on Game Pass, looked like fun, and was worth a quick 10 minutes of my time. 

I ended up spending about 70 hours with this 2D open world game, which is simply a never-ending blend by exploration, farming and crafting, and very similar to games such as Stardew Valley, Terraria and Zelda. I only stopped playing because I'd explored and built on every square inch of land, maxed out my character, and after those 70 hours, came to a sudden realisation that there was nothing else to do. 

I will be honest - Forager has added RPG elements such as weapon crafting and combat with the occasional invading monster, and these were possibly the only things that kept me playing after I'd gathered, crafted and built pretty much everything that could be gathered, crafted and built.

Is it oxymoronic to have violence in a cosy game? 

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2024)

Another game I had for the PS4 and first played ten years ago, I bought the XBox One version of The Witcher 3 in CeX for £8 on a whim. I am so glad I did, because I adore this game, and it gave me the opportunity to play it for a second time, making different choices than those made in my first playthrough, so getting a different ending to Geralt of Rivia's story.

I'm not really clued-up when it comes to Witcher lore - I've not read any of the books, and while I did manage to watch three episodes of the Netflix series, and while I can see why it has such appeal (over and above Henry Cavill), it's not really for me. But I love this game. it's ribald and droll, it's great fun to explore the open world in which it's set, the combat is fluid and fun, quests never become repetitive or dull, the storyline is simple to follow and genuinely interesting, movement is fluid, the graphics are gorgeous, and I cannot wait for the newly-announced Witcher 4 to come out in the next year or so. It will be a 'must play' for me.

Tales of Arise (2024)

On occasion I like to play Japanese RPGs, because they are just...very, very fun but very, very odd. I'm not adverse to the odd Final Fantasy game, and though I'm not generally a fan of Japanese animation, I do like Tales of Arise's anime-style graphics, get immense satisfaction from landing combat-based special moves, and didn't really mind having to practise a number of special moves and button combinations that were the best for my team of 6 avatars. It didn't take long, the learning curve was gentle, and as the game isn't too difficult, I felt none of the frustration that constantly dying and having to reload often leads to. 

Tales of Arise, quite simply, is a refreshing change of pace and style for me. It isn't set in an open world so it's nice to play something that feels a little bit more self-contained. It's loud, it's garish, and it's surreal. There are fishing and owl-collecting(!) mini-games, beautifully crafted but totally impractical weapons that would be impossible to pick up let alone use in real life, totally impractical outfits, very bad voice acting, and there is probably a narrative somewhere but I've been skipping the cutscenes because watching them would only confuse me further.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024)

As an avid fan of Tomb Raider, I was looking forward to playing this - Indiana Jones is basically Lara Croft with a bullwhip, so I was confident I'd be able to beat the game with relative ease.

The first few hours exploring the first couple of locations was some of the best fun I've had gaming in a long time. So much fun in fact, I realised I was belting out the Indiana Jones theme tune as I played, sneaking by Nazis, cracking them on the head with a saucepan or smacking a fly swatter between their legs then punching them in the face as they fell, I had a big grin on my face throughout. Climbing over rooftops, swinging from building to building with a bullwhip, discovering ancient treasures in trap-riddled tombs, solving puzzles and gathering evidence...this was a magnificent experience, with mind-blowing graphics, an interesting narrative, and some great voice acting. It was like taking part in a really good movie.

Then I got to the third level, and it all fell apart. Try as hard as I could, I just could NOT sneak my way into a Nazi-occupied weapons factory in Giza, locate an office key, infiltrate said office, locate vital information therein, and sneak out again. After many (well, 4) attempts, I managed to get the key and find the information...but I just could not get out of the building without being slaughtered by loads of German soldiers with guns. All I had was my trusty bullwhip, bad timing skills, and a candlestick to fight with. The final straw for me was when my friend, who was also playing the game, messaged me to say that the level after Egypt was "bloody hard", even though he had switched his difficulty setting from 'Normal' to 'Easy'. I was already playing at 'Easy' and having problems with the previous level. His closing statement: "There is no difference in difficulty between 'Easy' and 'Normal!'" did it for me, and I deleted the game from my console, though I haven't written off returning to it at some point to try again. 

Silent Hill 2 Remastered (2024)

Alongside Tomb Raider, the other franchise that captured my heart back when I was a young'un was Silent Hill. I'm a fan of the horror genre, but more into psychological, weird, uncanny, disturbing stuff than the out and out gore provided by slasher and torture porn fare. So I've never been interested in games like Resident Evil, or the thousands of zombie-based games out there, but I do adore the weird, oddly beautiful and unsettling premise of games like Silent Hill. It's also another in a rare series of games that I have completed, and played through again and again. And of all the Silent Hill games, Silent Hill 2 is my favourite. 

The narrative that drives the game is heartbreaking, shocking, sad, and sort of horrific, and to reveal it here would ruin the game for those who haven't played it. Suffice to say, it starts with protagonist James Sunderland staring at himself in a public restroom mirror, contemplating a letter he has received from his wife Mary, asking him to join her in their favourite place - the town of Silent Hill. James immediately drives to the town to meet Mary, but the elephant in the room is that Mary died three years ago. And so the game begins as James starts to search for his wife, and I shall go no further so as not to ruin the story.

In October, Silent Hill 2 was reconstructed from the bottom up and for next generation consoles. Well, console. And the console in question is the PS5, which I do not own. Cue months of (ongoing) wanting to buy a PS5 and justify it as necessary as it's 'useful for my research', but I can't really justify spending over £500 on a console and one game, so I'm wrestling with this even as I type. I mean, my elderly Ps4 is on it's last cathodes, and I do have a lot of PS4 games I can play on a PS5, and..nope. Still can't justify it.

So, to save money, I've watched many, many hours of gameplay on YouTube, and this has not helped. In fact, this reimagining of Silent Hill 2 looks bloody magnificent, and has made my longing for a PS5 worse. Taking the "we don't need to buy a MacDonald's because we have burgers at home" approach, I dug out my old XBox 360 version of 2012's Silent Hill 2 and 3 HD Collection, and I played for a good couple of hours...but, as with Tomb Raider before it, found it frustratingly clunky to play, and just made me want to play the shiny new version even more.

The struggle is real.

EDIT: I wrote this post on the morning of the 6th January, 2025. At 8.30pm on the same day, I bought a PS5 and a copy of Silent Hill 2. I have no will power, and apparently, money to burn...