The third and final game in the Mass Effect trilogy, the Reapers have finally arrived in this galaxy and it’s not truly a war but a fight for survival. Being the climax of quite a rich trilogy of stories, Mass Effect 3 had to stick the landing and I’d wager it’s done it. I might go as far as to say it’s my favourite in the trilogy.

It’s not often I go straight from original game to sequel but Mass Effect had its claws in me. It’s one of those sequels that just improves on everything the first game did – it’s bigger, better and improves upon the original in almost every way.

One of many iconic franchises that somehow slipped by me over the years, Mass Effect has been high on the list for me to try. The impending Mass Effect likes – Exodus and The Expanse: Osiris Reborn – have given me the motivation to start them. Playing via the Legendary edition, I can see why people love this franchise even after all of this time.

I always intended to return to Re-Pac after trying and bouncing off it three years ago. This summer was going to be the occasion anyways but an announcement of a Pac-Man World 2 Repac coming in September brought this to the top of my list. Not sure why I gave up last time – Pac-Man World Re-Pac is a simple but surprisingly fun platformer.

Bakeru is a 3D platformer that’s been on my radar for a little while now. Released originally in Japan in 2023, it saw a western release date in September 2024 - the same week as Astro Bot… so naturally my attention was elsewhere. With Astro Bot content in the rear view and Bakeru pencilled in for the Summer of Platformers, I finally got around to it. It’s a good time and has the potential to be more but it’s never great and that is a shame.

Launching alongside a major console release is a massive gamble – you could get lost in the mix of premier launch titles or be seen as slop trying to capitalise on hype and the much smaller selection of available titles. For the longest time, I thought KeyWe was the latter – the cover-art didn’t help but as I was looking for Co-op titles for Jade and myself I discovered it was the former. It’s not without its glitches but this is a solid co-op gem.

In what will become an annoyingly reoccurring introduction this year, I originally tried DOOM 2O16 back in March of 2017 but dropped it after 1 level as I wasn’t feeling it. Now, 8 years nearly to the day I decided to go back to it thanks to the upcoming sequel, The Dark Ages. What I got was solid shooting goodness bolstered by solid level design but let down by vague storytelling attempts.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before - I tried this game before a few years back (With my friend Sean in Co-op) and didn’t mesh with it. Retrying it now solo, there’s a perfectly okay game here if you don’t mind the game feeling a bit closer to a demo and some hit or miss humour.

Jade didn’t have time for It Takes Two this month as planned so we settled for a different game we both had from prior conversations - Tick Tock: A Tale for Two. Originally on mobile, the game promises complex puzzles in a mythical world. In a one sentence review? It’s not going to stand the test of time for me.

An unfortunate aspect of games is their lack of preservation and futureproofing. Games are developed for specific platforms and can be lost to time when newer hardware comes in. Licencing can also mean that a game becomes no longer available in a digital format, leaving people to scramble for whatever physical copies remain. These games can end up with a mystique about them (Pardon the X-Men Pun), a mythical status as an incredible game. Deadpool is an example of this and with the release of the third movie, it jumped price to upwards of £600 – a ludicrous amount for any game. Luckily I had a copy from before and to celebrate the anniversary of the first movie however many February’s ago, I elected to play it.

After 100%ing the base game (but before the final boss), I took on the game’s DLC, The Mask of Darkness. The plot of the DLC has you hunt down the most mysterious member of the Immortals – Radjen, who admittedly kind of disappeared from the story in the main game. Fair warning if you choose to play, this DLC is a fair bit harder than that which has come before.

For whatever reason, I didn’t get around to playing The Lost Crown last year, something which I sought to remedy this year. I’m glad I did because this game would have easily been in my top 5 of last year – I’m not even that big on 2D Platformers and Metroidvania’s but this is just /that/ good.

As part of a joined New Years resolution, myself and Jade decided that we will play and complete a Co-op title every month of the year. First game on the list was Operation: Tango, spy thriller of I expect you to Die meets relationship testing of Overcooked.

Any good self respecting sequel primarily needs to improve upon the elements of the previous title before it can afford to do anything else. Sonic Adventures was fun but had a lot of bloat and jank. Sonic Adventure 2 manages to fix vast swathes of these problems though it isn’t perfect.

Save for injury or loss of game/console, I don’t think it’s ever taken me so long to complete so relatively short a game. I suppose it comes with the caveat that this was my game that I played on lunch breaks, night shifts and travelling but even then, there’s something about Sonic Adventures that had me both apathetic about returning to it and somehow still playing it to completion.

I’ve been a fan of this series since I was a child and have played most of the 15 odd games that have released. Yet there’s 4 that have alluded me even as an adult – not through rarity but opportunity and time. One of them is Secret Agent Clank, a spin off released on the PSP. Thanks to PS Plus premium, I was given the chance to play it for the first time. Despite what I’ve heard, I had a decently good time with it.

In the leadup to the release of Into the Pit and my 52in52 Journey, I figured a return to Help Wanted with it’s PS5 version was in order. As I did the first time, I had a great time with what I consider to be one of the best FNaF experiences out there.

My original plan here was to wait for the leaked Little Nightmares PS5 oirt and then play both games in the lead up to Little Nightmares 3. The former hasn’t materialised and the latter is delayed until 2025 so that plan was a little scuppered. With Sony putting the game on PS Plus, I just caved and played it now. It’s not a bother though as Little Nightmares 2 is a really fun experience.

Despite playing games for around 20 years now, there are still major gaps in my gaming experiences, one of which is Sonic the Hedgehog. Save for mindlessly mashing through Sonic Heroes as a kid, I hadn’t played any. Thankfully the semi modern trend of rereleasing collections of older games (Sonics been doing it for years to be fair) means I can enjoy the series from the beginning. This is going to be a difficult review to write since my feelings were all over the place during these games.

While corporate meddling has always been a problem, it feels like a long time ago where games in the AAA space were allowed to be games rather than thinly veiled money making schemes for executives. The PS3 era was a haven for the linear 10 hour game. Legendary video game Auteur Suda51 had a couple of these in as many years, both of which are seeing remasters this year. In honour of that and just wanting to play them, enjoy a two part pseudo series of reviews, rounding out with the second game – ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’