2026 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[odessasteps]

I had itch to play it again after I did my RDR1 streams, but I knew I had other stuff on the horizon, like MLB 26  and the starfield update.

[tbarrie]

13 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Uncharted and Spidey were the PS games I wanted to play once I finally got a PS5. Still haven’t played any of them. 

Spider-Man and Ghost of Tsushima for me. Haven't started Ghost yet; played a bit of Spidey but felt I wasn't mowing down mooks as easily as Spider-Man should be able to, so I resolved to start over on a lower difficulty. Haven't gotten back to it yet.

[Ramo2653]

Love the Uncharted games! 3 is probably my least favorite even if I did like the story. I agree that 2 and 4 are the best overall. I liked Lost Legacy too. I also still haven't touch Ghost of Tushima or Spiderman despite having both on disc.

[Technico Support]

Spider Man 1 remastered is on PS+ right now, and it includes the DLC stories as well.  Really fun game.  

[odessasteps]

4 hours ago, tbarrie said:

Spider-Man and Ghost of Tsushima for me. Haven't started Ghost yet; played a bit of Spidey but felt I wasn't mowing down mooks as easily as Spider-Man should be able to, so I resolved to start over on a lower difficulty. Haven't gotten back to it yet.

I’ve played Ghost and the 2 Horizon games. Still never played Ragnarokeven though it came bundled with the PS5.

[StevieNippz]

Ragnarok was fun but I had no desire to finish side quests and endgame bosses because the backtracking was too tedious. A very good sequel if you were into the story from the previous game 

[Contentious C]

These posts make me more and more convinced we could use a Pile of Shame thread.

[J.T.]

I do not want to discuss my backlog. It will just make me angry.

[odessasteps]

3 hours ago, Contentious C said:

These posts make me more and more convinced we could use a Pile of Shame thread.

What’s funny is I don’t really have any shame for not playing them. I watched people stream Spider-Man so I feel like played it. Most of the famous games I’ve not played is because I’m not interested in the genre (Halo or Mario Kart for example) or they’re multi-player centric.

[Craig H]

On 5/14/2026 at 11:55 PM, J.T. said:

Well if you ever wanted to do it for money, there seems to be a market for LoL Twitch streams where players lose their shit. I have been watching poor Nissaxter try to get promoted to Gold for years. Profanities delivered in rapid fire Spanish never gets old.

 

At this rate with being unable to find work for, checks notes, 14 months now, I may as well give streaming a shot too.

[JLSigman]

8 hours ago, J.T. said:

I do not want to discuss my backlog. It will just make me angry.

I don't because it will just make me want to do stupid things to get a new computer

[RIPPA]

At some point, Hades 2 will stop surprising me. This morning was not that time

No - this morning Melinoe and Nemesis

Spoiler

Fucked on the floor of the House of Hades

And now Moros is a little... confused

Same with me buddy. Same with me

[odessasteps]

 

[J.T.]

22 hours ago, Craig H said:

At this rate with being unable to find work for, checks notes, 14 months now, I may as well give streaming a shot too.

Apparently the key to success in LoL Twitch streaming is to 1) Be a female 2) Get tilted at least twice per stream and  3) Use a lot of swear words.

Preferably in Spanish:

Or Korean:

Edited May 18 by J.T.

[Eivion]

Used the current PSN sale to pick up Diablo II Resurrected & III. Started playing II a few nights ago and am enjoying it quite a bit. Loved playing it a decade+ ago so its nice to have that familiar feeling again. Will be nice to finally play through Act V. Never went far in it my during last game as that was when I finally got a new system and started playing III originally. Never beat that one since I focused too much on trying so many characters at once. Trying to avoid that somewhat with II right now though its not easy when you find gear you know others can make such good use of. Only using the Assassin and Amazon right now though I might end up going with a third at some point.

[Cliff Hanger]

Right at 50% in Spidey 2 (Pete just got his shit rocked at the belltower, Miles found the first pursuit drone and I ended up doing that whole chain.) The drone chases are kind of annoying, but only one took me more than two tries, and the payoff was neat. 

The museum heist feels like a dispatch from a better world, even if throwing Gabe Jones in with all the real-world icons was a little weird. But devoting even just an hour of game time to hitting Miles and the player over the head with "you should care more about jazz," complete with a walkable museum exhibition and a thief whose motive is "colonization" would have been cut if the game had come out 18 months later. 

Mr. Do! is my third-ever Plat trophy; it took me about 90 min of play. (I'm pretty surprised these ACA2 games have them.)

[RIPPA]

9 minutes ago, Cliff Hanger said:

Right at 50% in Spidey 2 (Pete just got his shit rocked at the belltower, Miles found the first pursuit drone and I ended up doing that whole chain.) The drone chases are kind of annoying, but only one took me more than two tries, and the payoff was neat. 

There was only one that was really really bad and it was the one in downtown that was a really short but because of all the skyscrapers it had really tight turns and I keep smashing into the fucking buildings. That was the only one I came close to "skipping activity"

[Cliff Hanger]

2 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

There was only one that was really really bad and it was the one in downtown that was a really short but because of all the skyscrapers it had really tight turns and I keep smashing into the fucking buildings. That was the only one I came close to "skipping activity"

Mine was either the UES or the Kitchen, whichever one has the second drone with the rail gun. Not sure why, but it took me 6 tries and if I'd failed again I probably would have skipped.

[SirSmUgly]

On 5/17/2026 at 9:00 AM, RIPPA said:

At some point, Hades 2 will stop surprising me. This morning was not that time

No - this morning Melinoe and Nemesis

  Hide contents

Fucked on the floor of the House of Hades

And now Moros is a little... confused

Same with me buddy. Same with me

I mean, if you want to see some

Spoiler

confusingly illicit fucking,

just wait until Melinoe

Spoiler

hooks up with Eris! 

In other news, Nintendo dropped a batch of Virtual Boy games on VB NSO, and now I'm going to also tier rank Virtual Boy games. I only owned seven back in the day, so now that I have access to (almost) the full set of releases (probably no Waterworld or Virtual Fishing, sadly) and also a couple of unreleased games, it's time to do a definitive tier-listing for that glorious little shitbrick of a console, too. Almost no one would say that Nintendo was on a roll in 1995 and 1996 with the Virtual Boy and N64 releases. Almost no one. Because dammit, they were on a roll in my eyes. 

Anyway, N64 games!

Games ready to be placed: 

None yet, but we're getting closer on a few.

Games that I'm currently evaluating:

Hybrid Heaven - I actually didn't get to dig into this because...

StarFox 64 - ...I played StarFox 64 some more instead, for one. Those fucking searchlights in Zoness, man. Anyway, I also played StarFox 64 3D on the 3DS, and it's actually a worse game overall. I mean, you can see underwater in Aquas, so that's cool, but the boss has worse design with the amount of projectiles spewing out of its sides to block your bombs. It's not a matter of skilling up; they just made the design worse to draw the boss battle out. Also, the base 3DS was made for tiny hands. I think playing a game like SF64 on it gave me arthritis somehow. Anyway, I should just place this game on the Essential level already, but I feel the need to run through a few more paths before I do so.

Fighters Destiny - The N64 has a small cadre of fighting games, but most of them stink (Netherrealm before they were Netherrealm were not handling the shift from 2D to 3D well, and I say this as someone who likes janky-ass MK4 quite a lot). This game, however, struck me as having quite a few echoes of Virtua Fighter in its design. Then, I looked up the game, and sure enough, a group of devs who worked on VF3tb ports worked on this game (and I suppose the equally grammatically questionable title Fighter Destiny 2). 

Actually, how I'd describe this game is that it mashes up Virtua Fighter (P+K+G as your attacks, throw on P+G, special moves and light combos-heavy) with Bushido Blade (one mistake on either fighter's part can be a killshot). The difference here on throws from a typical VF is that, since the game works on a point system - default is first to eight - and a successful throw is worth two points, that means that you can counter a throw by tapping P+G in what I think is a decently sized window. That counter allows you to twist out of the throw and land on your feet behind your opponent, which gives some danger to attempting a throw and requires you to stop spamming them. As someone who plays a throw-heavy Wolf in VF, this is a challenging adjustment (in a neat deal, when you're fighting the CPU and you surprise them with a throw, a little exclamation point pops above the CPU opponent's head, signaling that you did a good job of mixing up your moves and will earn the points - nice feedback for any player to get). 

Standard point values range from a single point earned for a ring out (characters can catch themselves on the edge of the raised ring and climb back in if you don't knock them off - another neat deal) all the way to four points for landing your super-special move that requires you to dizzy your opponent and then chain together a string of button presses as one does when completing a super move in a typical fighting game. The extra layer of strategy around which type of victory to go for at different points in the fight is a welcome one. 

This game is fucking cool, is what I'm saying. It's the best non-pro-wrestling fighting game on this console (sorry, Mace: The Dark Age and War Gods). I could be wrong about that because Fighter Destiny 2 is on my list, and I recognize that I'm going to have to shell out for a loose cart to play that one. There also might be some fighting game that I forgot about that could take that crown. Anyway, I'm going to keep playing, but I've played quite a bit in spurts and have gotten better at it (as far as one can by fighting only the CPU). This game deserves more flowers, though.

Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness: This game could have been called Ms. Pac-Man World, really. It's fine! I think that Ms. Pac moves a bit stiffly; working around a maze full of enemies with her isn't necessarily hard to do in this relatively simple and fairly easy (so far) game; it just doesn't feel great. I don't think I should be typing this about a game in which one controls any of the Pac-Man Family. I do appreciate Namco's attempts to re-think Pac-Man gameplay in a 3D collectathon world, but though they are in different genres, I think this game (and PMW) are struggling with some of the same 2D-to-3D transition issues that Mortal Kombat struggled with. 

NFL Blitz 2000: My hot take is that these initial NFL-licensed Blitz games are solid, but Blitz didn't get truly great until the Blitz: The League came out. Blitz: The League II is a perfect game. You can't convince me otherwise. This is tprobably he best of the N64 Blitz games because it has the play editor, but it's also the worst of the Blitz games because it reminds me of when the Seahawks had no defense and Jon Kitna at QB. It's probably not essential, but give me a little more time with it. 

[twiztor]

19 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Anyway, N64 games!

 

it really bothers me that the first game is called Fighters Destiny, but the second one is the singular Fighter Destiny 2. i own one of them. the first one, i believe, but i'd have to check.

i have only played NFL Blitz [98] on the n64, and honestly i didn't pay enough attention to know that there were follow-ups. i am going to have to do some reading and check out the improvements year-over-year. i think Blitz is an incredibly fun, if not very deep, game. In the similar vein, the n64 predecessor of NHL Hitz, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, fills that same niche in a different sport. I much prefer Hitz 2002 (GameCube) to the n64 iterations, however.

[SirSmUgly]

2 hours ago, twiztor said:

it really bothers me that the first game is called Fighters Destiny, but the second one is the singular Fighter Destiny 2. i own one of them. the first one, i believe, but i'd have to check.

i have only played NFL Blitz [98] on the n64, and honestly i didn't pay enough attention to know that there were follow-ups. i am going to have to do some reading and check out the improvements year-over-year. i think Blitz is an incredibly fun, if not very deep, game. In the similar vein, the n64 predecessor of NHL Hitz, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, fills that same niche in a different sport. I much prefer Hitz 2002 (GameCube) to the n64 iterations, however.

I have one of the Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey games as well as its speedily-produced-for-the-Winter-Olympics-in-Nagano offshoot Olympic Hockey '98. I am planning to mess around with those in the summer. 

Alright, I'm going to tier list some of the Virtual Boy games that I've spent a lot of time with since the app launched a couple of months ago. I've only spent twenty hours in the app, but these games are so short (as they have to be since the player is staring into a glowing red light that shatters cones and rods) that I've actually been able to work through the core gameplay loop of most of these pretty quickly. 

Games ready to be placed: 

Virtual Boy Wario Land - This is still the best game on the console, though I think it garners a challenge from a game that I'm still evaluating (more on that below). The platforming is just fine, as it is in Wario platformers generally. Wario is such a chunky, huge sprite on the screen that most of the platforming challenge comes from fighting bosses (though there are a couple of touchy parts in the main game levels and the NGP+ with all the spikes everywhere does add marginal challenge. The real joy of this game comes in exploration, trying to balance finding the secret treasures and enough coins with efficiency and getting out with a good enough time to fly home with your riches on a magic carpet while seated next to a Playboy bunny. I think the time is fairly generous - I believe it's ninety minutes to get through the game with all treasures and enough coins saved - and the final boss perfectly balances challenging your timing with being fun. 

This game also sounds wonderful, with one of the best OSTs of the time period. Not the best on the Virtual Boy, in my opinion, because Mario's Tennis exist, but it's a great OST. In general, that Virtual Boy sound chip is probably the best thing about the whole console. These games tend to sound great in both music and effects. TIER: ESSENTIAL.

Mario's Tennis - If you like sports games, this is the best one (pending an update of the VB NSO with Space Squash, which might be a contender). I also like it better than almost any of the other Mario(s) Tennis games, so there's that. These newer Mario Tennis games with all the tech aren't particularly fun for them. I think these games peaked in the GBA/DS days, quite honestly. Anyway, I love the art direction in this game. The winged Buzzy Beetles flying by in packs or the fireworks going off in front of Peach's Castle...man, these backgrounds have some style. The Virtual Boy is both eye-shattering to look at and also full of cool art, particularly in the Nintendo-developed games. TIER: ESSENTIAL.

Galactic Pinball - I dig the heck out of Galactic Pinball. It is not a must-play game, and Colony is the only table that I think stands out as particularly fun and good, but this is still an enjoyable table collection with a good OST (shocker!). The slippy-slidey pucks having different-feeling physics than a bouncing pinball is also an interesting and enjoyable twist on the typical table play. It's worth purchasing at the price that I see it at, which is expensive for a retro game because, y'know, Virtual Boy, but not insane in price (like Jack Bros., for example) because enough copies are still floating around out there. TIER: GENERALLY WORTH COLLECTING.

Nintendo Golf - This is probably the second-best sports game on the console. I dig the ball-striking mechanism - it's a neat way to do a meter. There is something satisfying about letting the meter snake its way along that image of a golfball and then stopping the point right in the center for a long drive or bottom-center on a chip onto the green. My big complaints about this game are that a) the game ramps up shot difficulty on later holes not via course design, but by just having the wind shoot up to near-hurricane-level gales, b) there is only one course in the whole game, and c) there is a dearth of game modes. Still, the mechanics place it on TIER: GENERALLY WORTH COLLECTING.

Games that I'm currently evaluating:

Red Alarm - I played the hell out of this game as a pre-teen. Coming back to it now, it's basically StarFox 64 in red wireframe, but not nearly as good. Which means that it's still good! I have to be clear about that!

Teleroboxer - I wish that Nintendo would make a limited amount of wireless Virtual Boy controllers and then sell one to me like they sell controllers for their other NSO consoles. I say this because the VB controller's double D-Pads simply feel far better for this specific game than having moves on left analog (at least if I'm using the Pro Controller, which I usually am when on NSO). Anyway, this is Punch-Out!! except one of the opponents shoots her tits at you. I mean, you like Punch-Out!!, right? I need to think more about how I feel about this game when I know I'm not playing it in the best possible way because Punch-Out!! games are sports/puzzle hybrids and having the one Punch-Out!!-like on this console seems like a good idea, even if I'm having less fun with it on NSO because of the lesser controls.

Jack Bros. - I'm not sure that this is a good game, and yet it still is the most tolerable Shin Megami Tensei game to me. This game would be fifty percent more tolerable if Atlus's devs made all the collectibles bigger and more distinct from the background of the platforms that they are laying on, I can tell you that much. I'm going to have to beat this a couple times before I place it, but as much as I love the opening scroll of Halloween night in the town (and the cool sundown effect as day turns to night), then the game actually happens.

Mario Clash - This could be the best game on the console. I don't think it is, but if you thought that it was, I would totally get it. I've never been a big Mario Bros. guy. To me, the Mario series only got anything better than "decent" once Super Mario Bros. came out (and then took another leap with SMB 3, but that's another story). In any case, Mario Clash took Mario Bros., gave it both verticality and background-foreground play, and then threw in a bunch of tricky enemies and the ability to charge a shell by slamming it into multiple enemies without dropping it, and it is a genuinely great game o its own merits. I always complained about Nintendo not remaking Virtual Boy Wario Land for 3DS when they had the chance, but Nintendo not remaking Mario Clash or doing a Mario Clash-like on 3DS might be the bigger missed opportunity. 

Virtual Bowling - If there is a bowling game that had good pin action and ball physics and that came out before Brunswick Pro Circuit Bowler on N64, a) I have not yet played it because b) this game certainly ain't it. Let's hope for a Nestor's Funky Bowling NSO release so that I can do an in-depth comparison of the two bowling games on this console. 

Vertical Force - Instead of background/foreground, this vertical shmup does a high-altitude/low-altitude deal in which you can switch between them at will. It's a neat game! It also must not be challenging because I made it pretty deep on the first playthrough without having to continue. I will say that the ability to attach weapons like in Gradius is always a welcome addition to any shmup. The red tint does make dodging bullets somewhat challenging, however, which I think is the biggest struggle that any game developer would have with this type of game.

I have spent minimal time with The Mansion of Innsmouth, Space Invaders Virtual Collection, 3D Tetris (it's just a dogshit version of Tetris as far as I can tell) and V-Tetris (it's just a solid version of Tetris as far as I can tell), so more on those later. 

 

Edited May 19 by SirSmUgly

[Ramo2653]

Current unplayed game stack of shame:

Cyberpunk

Control

Ghost of Tsushima

Nier: Automata

Spiderman

Borderlands 3

Both Horizon games

FFX

Mass Effect trilogy

The second and third newer Tomb Raider games with "young Lara"

Untitled Goose Game (started but never finished)

An insane amount of PSN free games that I claimed but never downloaded.

12 year old me would by impressed by the number of games I have but also disappointed that I don't play more of them. 

[J.T.]

4 hours ago, Ramo2653 said:

Current unplayed game stack of shame:

Borderlands 3

Mass Effect trilogy

You are dead to me, Ramo.

[RIPPA]

Quantic Dream is shutting down its MOBA Spellcasters Chronicles

It had launched in Early Access in Feb (so technically they are ending development on it)

Servers are shutting down on June 19 and everyone will get full refunds

[Cliff Hanger]

2 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Quantic Dream is shutting down its MOBA Spellcasters Chronicles

It had launched in Early Access in Feb (so technically they are ending development on it)

Servers are shutting down on June 19 and everyone will get full refunds

Their first mistake was forcing you to hold the "grip" button and make a circle with the mouse to exit the spawning chamber.