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.

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.

- Pokémon 2

- Twilight Princess

- Symphony of the Night

- Red Dead Redemption 2

- Xenoverse 2

- Crazy Taxi 2

- Megaman Zero

- Ninja Gaiden 4

- Tekken 2

- Silksong

- Shadow the Hedgehog

- Xenoblade Chronicles 3

- Wario Land

- Devil May Cry 4

- Prototype 2

- Splatoon 2

- Shin Megami Tensei V

- Hades II

- Five Nights at F***boys 2

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-

Need for Speed Underground 2 had so many iconic cars, but everyone seemed to have that one car they always went back to.

For me, the customization and cruising around Bayview made the car you chose feel surprisingly personal.

What was the first car you chose when you played Underground 2?

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.

There 100's of game that are considered good.

One may have amazing gameplay. One may have amazing story, And one might make you deep questions.

But there are very few that can all of those and do them right.

Those are what I consider masterpiece.

Dishonored is that Masterpiece.
I can sit here and talk about all the other things that Dishonored does so well.....

but the part that ruined games for me was

The player freedom.

This game gives you ridiculous amounts of freedom

and variety in the consequences of your decisions.

HOW DID THEY DO IT? IT'S BLACK MAGIC.

Either I’ve been playing it obsessively, or I’ve just completely lost myself in its world.

Right now, I’m hooked on Wardogs—it’s consuming me in a way I haven’t experienced in a long time. I’ve always loved Call of Duty, but that series has really gone downhill over the last few years; Wardogs, however, brings the feeling of war back to my screen. 😅

Persona 4 on the PS2 for me

It was 2008 and I saw a video of someone on YouTube saying it's good so I decided to check it out

Months of playing the game and I still just let the intro play and vibe to it, I was in college and my brother who worked as nurse would come home to the house and hear the themes of Persona 4 playing constantly

It's been years, I have bounced around jobs and now I'm 5 years into a office job, my brother still works as a nurse in a senior role in a different state

Yet the family still keeps in touch through a messenger group, and to an extension me and brother keep in touch through video games

It's become such a vivid memory for me that even now that the intro brings me and my brother back to the past when we hear the OST of Persona 4

I can still remember the layout of the living room , where I sat and even how the room smelled

Recently or at least for a year now, me and my brother have been playing Zenless Zone Zero, a year in and we still send each other videos of our gacha pulls, he still will flex his 5 star early pulls at me

Damn gaming is so fun , with the negative miasma around gaming now , I think a bit of a walk to older generation of consoles can do us good in looking at what is still even now such fun games

As the GOTY predictions start filling my feed, here are my final 6 GOTY nominees and also a prediction on the orchestra order :)

Would love to see more orchestra predictions - loved hearing fan theories on how it would transition, especially people who try composing it themselves (i just mesh them together... no that well :))

How do you guys think the orchestra will go with your predictions?