Since tournaments are now predominantly online, we rarely get to see scenes where people react together in the same space. Back in the day, tournaments like WCG and ESWC were the source of many such memories—perhaps some of you even participated in them. There was a Korean StarCraft player named SlayerS_BoxeR; he was practically worshipped in Korea, and his every moment was captured on record.

I tried to get my gf to play something with me a few times but she never wanted to until she ran into some girls on TikTok talking about It Takes Two and other co-op games hahaha. She has never been a gamer in any sense of the word, so ofc I jumped at the opportunity when she showed some interest and got the games set up for us.

Playing Split Fiction now (we finished It Takes Two) and we already have a few games she wants us to play next lined up. Water Me & You when it comes out, a similar co-op adventure game she found on TikTok which looks pretty good, it also has a bit of base building from what I’ve seen which sounds cool. And she really wanted us to play Orbitals but that will have to wait, we don’t have a switch 2 yet and it's an exclusive.

When she was starting out, she struggled with the basics, which I expected, moving around with a controller is not intuitive to someone who hasn't used one before. The struggle for me was keeping my mouth shut. Every time she missed a jump I would have to stop myself from telling her how she should have done it, because she only wanted me to help when she asked. I could tell it was frustrating for her when I would just tell her what to do, and it was frustrating for me to watch her struggle with something that looks so simple to me and not being able to help.

I realized it was just my decades of gaming experience, I was so used to the tricks developers used that I could pretty much instantly understand what we needed to do. You don’t realize how much ingrained gaming knowledge you have until you experience something like this. Literally NOTHING is obvious to a non gamer, you know how people joke about the yellow paint in modern games, well for her she wouldn’t even follow obvious cues like that, cuz she wasn’t used to them.

But I learned to keep my mouth shut and let her try as much as she wanted to before she asked for help, it took some willpower but it was so worth it, cuz now she is slowly turning into a bit of a gamer and I am overjoyed.

for me probably Scylla and the sirens, i swear everyone I knew said she was very easy for a third boss and I got absolutely destroyed by her.

Oh and then pinwheel but he was easy.

also hades 2 is absolute peak

Ones that break you, make you cry, tear you down but don't rebuild you into something improved, makes you smash your head into the nearest wall before your controller, makes you rip the pubes off you, have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in your ear, eat the rotten asshole of a roadkill skun-

Can't believe not more people are talking about this game. It's my game of the year for 2026. Incredible concept, the time factor and what not.

This has got potential to be it's own big thing like the Witcher.

I had trouble coming up with a good title. Finally someone is doing something about games being taken offline. Honestly I am surprised that it has taken this long. This is a welcome development. How many characters do I need? Oh okay there we go.

Had so much fun making version 1 of the prediction and seeing everyone's response to it, I decided to make another version listening to the comment's feedback from various communities :)

I decided to replace 007 with Mina to have an Indie rep in the GOTY category (love making it the opener - gives of Celeste vibes also from 2018),
while also changing songs for Control: Resonant to 'Obsessive Compulsive Order' (could hear it as fast strings which would sound beautiful) & picking a more "bombastic" part from RE9's theme. I actually did a version where the closer was the main Zelda theme taken from the 40th Anniversary concert to make it bombastic, but the ocarina and the title theme is just too iconic - so it must be kept.

GTA VI & FE: Fortune's Weave's ost choice if they get nominated are also guaranteed to be their respective main themes.

What do you think of this orchestra order and the NEW 6 GOTY Contenders?
What would you change?

Hello! iI'm hosting a mostly gaming related Family Feud night and want to ensure the survey included actual game players, please please if you can fill out my form (all questions are optional) you'd be helping a great cause (me)! https://forms.gle/nB6CgooV11cabfSC7