Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: 2026

The state of my gaming , 2026, part three

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I want to talk some more about me and gaming. Here is yesterday’s post in which I talked about indies versus AAA games. Funnily enough, one of the big debates this year for The Game Awards is what is an indie game versus a AAA game. Why? Because Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) is nominated for (among other awards) Game of the Year, Best Indie Game of the Year, and Best Debut Indie Game of the Year. Polygon wrote a great article about this, including the fact that CO:33 feels more Double A than indie.

To me, I think that if a game is up for Best Game of the Year, maybe it should not also be up for Best Indie AND Best Indie Debut. I know that CO:E33 does qualify for all these categories, but I would liek to see the love being spread around. I didn’t realize just how loosey-goosey The Game Awards are, and they really don’t mean anything (other than attention for the winners). Basically, different outlets nominate games in the different categories, and then people vote. There is no curating of the choices, so if a thousand people want to write in a decade-old game for one category, they can.

That’s why there are so few surprises, really, and why tthe awards skew towards the popular. I’m not saying that as if it’s a bad thing, by the way. Just that smaller titles aren’t going to get the love that the behemoths get. Or the critical darlings that everyone rallies around. They are safe choices, ones that go down agreeably with the masses.

Again, I am not slamming the awards for that–ok, yes, I am. Just a little, though. Can we at least have one category that is for the freaks and weirdos out there? A category that recognizes truly small games–and that is not a diss on Hades II (Supergiant Games) or Silksong (Team Cherry). They worked hard and they deserve all the flowers they get.

But, I will always have a very warm space in my heart for the oddballs and the misfits. The devs with so much heart, even if their games aren’t beloved by more than a very dedicated small group of people. I have several games that I played this year which would fit into this category, and in fact, I may do a whole post on them at some time closer to the end of the year.

Here’s the thing. I don’t care for many of the more popular categories (I’m talking about multiplayer games, mostly). That leaves out a huge swath of games that I will just never touch. I also don’t have a Switch or a Switch 2, so I don’t play Nintendo games. I’m fine with taht as most of them don’t seem like my type of game, either. Or, if they are, I can find similar games on the PC.


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The state of my gaming, 2026, part two

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Let’s talk more about the games I like and the games I want to play next year. Before I get into that, though, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by one game in particular this year, but I am not going to talk about this now. You can probably suss the reason why, but I’m going to leave it purposefully vague. In the last post, I talked about why I did not like the (heavily assumed) game of the year for this year, but that is not what I want to talk about in this post.

Let’s talk briefly about the game I was most anticipating this year, Hades II (Supergiant Games). I have mixed emotions about this game as well. When I bought the first game, it was after it came out of Early Access. I did not like how it felt when I first started playing it, but by the twentieth or so run, I was into it. I still wasn’t any good at it, but it had it hooks on me.

When the sequel was announced, everyone was surprised. Supergiant Games was known for trying a completely different genre with every game. Hades was their fourth game, and it was drastically different than the game before. So, even though Hades was outrageously successful, everyone assumed they would do a different kind of game for their fifth game.

They followed the same ppath with the sequel–It was in Early Access for over a year, and there were constant updates. True to my nature, I pretended it didn’t exist until it was actually launched for real. Then, I jumped in, curious to see if it lived up to the original.

For the first few runs, I would say that it exceeded my expectations. It was faster, slicker, and felt better (probably because I was already used to the layout from the first game). Except RB being used as the interact button. As a FromSoft person at heart, RB is and always will be light attack. I don’t think I could change the controls, but I don’t remember.

I’m not going to get too into it because I have written umpteen posts about this game as well. I will say that the charm wore off somewhat, and I will never forgive or forget what they did at the end of the game. Yes, they patched it and made it better, but still.

I’ll be honest. I am not getting my hopes up because there is no chance there will be a new FromSoft game next year. Well, except the one that will be exclusive to the Switch 2 and multiplayer. I will not be playing that game, sadly, nor do I have much interest in it. Though FromSoft has said reppeatedly that it isn’t going to stop making single-player action adventure games, I have my doubts. I don’t know why, but I feel like they’re ready to move on. Permanently.


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The state of my gaming, 2026

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This year has been a weird one in many ways, but I’m going to talk about it from a gaming standpoint today because I can. And because it makes sense after talking about the ten games that define me. I have played many games this year, more than I normally do. New games, I mean. (Not new as in totally new, necessarily, but new as in new to me. In other words, I was cleaning up my backlog. But, also, new games.)

Usually, I play a few new games and then stick to FromSoft games for the rest of the time. They are my comfort games (along with some casual games), and I return to them when I need to nurture my soul.

This year, I feel like I’ve played a bunch of games–more than I normally play. The one I want to start with is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) because it’s going to win every award known to humankind, and I want to vent my spleen about it because once again, I am in direct opposition to it being the game of the year, and I am registerirng my protest here.

I have played the whole game, and I have written several posts about it. As much as I did not care for the game, I could not quit it. I should have after the first act ended, but I did not. Why? Well, for a few reasons. One, it had its hooks in me. I will admit that it has that ‘keep playing’ feel to it. Two, I wanted it to get better. I so desperately hoped it would get better. To sum up what I’ve said before, the prologue was solid, though overwrought. The end of the first act was a shocker and really effective, until I started thinking about it more. And until the second act happened.

The second act threw everything and the kitchen sink at me, and the story was a hot mess. Everyone is gushing over how great it is, and I’m just not seeing it. I saw the twist coming a mile away, and I kept hoping the story wouldn’t go how I thought it was going to go. Then, at the end, you have to make a choice between two miserable endings. And it was, again, what I thought it was going to be.

Everyone went crazy for Maelle (main character), but she left me cold. I’m not going to get into it in this post, but her character really ticked me off. Luna was my favorite, but she didn’t get much screentime. I could not stop thinking of how everything in the game felt forced. Such as, this thing happened because this thing had to happen in order for the following thing to happen. I know that’s the way plots work in general, but it felt very obvious to me in this game.


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