Hello nerds welcome to my internet blog. You can follow me on a more consistent basis at my internet twitch or on the Deep Listens Family of Podcasts. Here is my internet list.

Biggest Disappointment: Dragon’s Dogma 2

It’s not that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is bad, it’s that they intentionally made the same game again but bigger and also it runs the way that first game did on the 360, which is to say “somewhat compromised” even on my still solid mid-range PC setup. It might be something I get back to, now that it supposedly runs better, but it was disappointing to see that the weird rough edges that were endearing 12 years ago have only been exacerbated with this sequel.

Runner Up: My Spending Habits

It hasn’t been a great year for me in a mental health sort of way, and god I can tell with how many irresponsible purchases have been made this year. While the biggest threat is less to my personal livelihood and more to my backlog, I just need to stop buying shit for a bit. It really doesn’t help that video games not made by Nintendo go on sale almost immediately after launch, with the most immediate example being fucking Dragon Age Veilguard already being 35% off on Steam less than a month after it came out. Thankfully I didn’t buy Dragon Age; someone generously gifted it to me for Christmas, which means yet another thing for the backlog.

Basically, if you see me enthusiastically talking about a video game released in the first half of 2025 within days or weeks of its release, feel free to shame me. The one thing I might budge on is Monster Hunter Wilds, but I really shouldn’t be buying things I’m not going to play just for the brief dopamine hit. I’ll get around to Rise of the Ronin, I swear.

Best DLC Thing: Thrones of Decay for Total Warhammer III

What you fucking thought you could get away from me talking about Total War Warhammer for one of these? No. Of course not. I’m going to keep buying these $20+ DLCs every six months until they stop making them, because Total War Warhammer III is one of the greatest and most excessive strategy games ever made and you should play it, nerd.

After Creative Assembly’s dramatically bad 2023 (see: Hyenas being a $100 Million, five year boondoggle, Total War Pharoah being a full priced thing, Shadows of Change DLC being drastically overpriced for the amount of stuff in it) they wrote a long, extensive mea culpa where they promised their fans they’d do better. And for the most part, they’ve managed it. There are obvious cynical explanations for this, like how various management shuffles at the studio led to some clarity for where their bread was buttered, but from a fan enthusiasm perspective I cannot emphasize enough how much work they had to do to get from “Total War is dead” to “Total War is Back.” I think CA Sofia probably didn’t deserve to be saddled with the brunt of Pharaoh's disastrous launch, but it seems like they managed to turn that game around and make good on it with the Dynasties update, sort of merging it with Troy to create a big-ass Bronze Age Mediterranean slugfest. Moreover, they’ve taken on something of a custodian role for Warhammer updates, assisting the main DLC team in dealing with engine-level tech debt and updates for legacy content.

Thrones of Decay felt like the real make good for Total Warhammer. Not only are all three lords (+1 free lord) fun to play with interesting campaign starts and a slew of goofy overpowered mechanics, but the reworks that came along with them are fundamentally promising for the future health of the game. When Total Warhammer III launched, Nurgle was easily one of the rougher factions to play on the campaign map (probably second only to the forever bottom place Daemons of Chaos) and when Immortal Empires launched both the Empire and Dwarf campaigns were in rough spots, never quite having adjusted to the larger size and scale of the campaign map. All of these have been addressed, and somehow all three are among the most fun factions to play in the game. It has made me optimistic that the game still has it after all these years, and will hopefully be supported for years to come.

Runner up: Pretty Much Everything for Age of Wonders 4.

Unlike Creative Assembly, I had nothing but confidence in Triumph Studios to continue making Age of Wonders 4 (my #2 game last year) a better experience over time. They’re somehow the only studio under the Paradox umbrella who haven’t been fucked over by their corporate overlords, if the grumbling around the current states of Cities Skylines 2, Victoria 3, and Stellaris are anything to go by (to not even mention fucking Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 or their treatment of Harebrained Schemes.) No, nah. Triumph puts out new stuff for Age of Wonders 4 at a reasonable clip, the new stuff feels proportionally priced for the amount of stuff in the stuff, and a bunch of base game features are tweaked and improved even if you don’t want to buy the stuff. It’s the ideal representation of how long-term support for these kinds of games *should* work.

Most 7/10 Video Game Award for Excellence in Mid: Alone in the Dark 2024

I am probably like one of six people who played Embracer’s attempt at rebooting Alone in the Dark (the third attempt at rebooting it, no less), a game that received barely any attention when it came out, sold terribly, and reviewed mostly with a heavy shrug. The studio who made it was shuttered and I was the one person out there talking about the knock on effect of all of this being a grand negative for the state of mid-tier european developed games. This is one of those things that I don’t feel like gets talked about enough in the face of Microsoft laying off a bajillion people after pinky swearing to the FTC they weren’t going to do that exact thing, but a lot of talented mid-size studios have suffered from the overexpansion of video games during the pandemic and the ensuing contraction when people had to go outside again. I want more weird mid-budget European games to survive, damn it, and the loss of legendary(?) studios like Piranha Bytes aren’t just a loss for Eurojank, or for German culture, but for me, personally.

But I’d be here all day if I went off about The State of the Industry (which is a fucking mess) so instead I just want to point to one of two blogs I wrote this year on the subject. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I feel like I wrote a fairly definitive take on Alone in the Dark 2024, a game that is definitely not *great* but has enough moxie and understated qualities that I cannot help but advocate for it. You should read it. I should write more things. Maybe I’ll write more things in 2025. Fuck, maybe I’ll write more things and then turn those things into video scripts and then make edited videos. Who’s to say?

Runner Up: Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League

So here’s the thing about SSKTJL: I didn’t have to pay money for it, I didn’t have many expectations going in, and I had a perfectly solid 10 hours with the main story. The goofball antics of the B-tier villains are fun enough, and there’s just enough snappy mechanical juice with the traversal to remind anyone involved that Rocksteady made some very good Batman games NINE YEARS AGO. It’s the kind of movement tech that would greatly benefit from being in a game that wasn’t Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

As a games as a service? It’s an absolute failure. It’s not just about incremental loot numbers, incremental skill trees, the hastily removed shadow of a “gear score” or the ever poisonous spectre of “The Destiny Cursor UI.” I’m saying the game fails at making a compelling loop that would make you want to engage with any of that treadmill nonsense in the first place. There are like four different generic open world mission types and they’re all incredibly dull, which is a problem when you make a game around doing those mission types over and over again. It reminded me a bit of when Off the Deep End™ did our episode on Anthem. If you cannot make a compelling enough feedback loop for your forever game, it falls apart immediately. There are interesting bones there, but when credits rolled and I was confronted with “post game” nonsense, I uninstalled it immediately. Please let Rocksteady make a good video game again kthx.

Shame, Shame, Shame award for game that I’ll definitely get to at some point definitely just you wait mister: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and friends

One of the potential dark holes for me to go down next year is “ArbitraryWater’s Backlog of Action JRPGs of Varying Quality Personal Hell Quest.” I apparently collect these things the same way a squirrel hoards acorns for the winter, with at least three games by Tri-Ace, two-ish Tales of games, and probably some older garbage that exists for my silly internet podcast. Between Granblue Relink, FF VII Rebirth, and Final Fantasy XVI featuring Ben Starr, I’ve added three more problems to this subgenre pile this year and I hate myself for doing so. I’ll definitely get into them this year, with FF 7R2 being one of the higher priorities.

I’ll also play 1000xResist at some point. Really.

Best Early Access Thing: Selaco

Of the many early access boomer shooters that refuse to be released in a 1.0 state, the one I’d be most unequivocal about recommending to people *as is* is probably Selaco. While ostensibly built on the GZdoom engine, it’s a shooter much closer in sensibility to FEAR, with some really good, really intense firefights, solid weapon roster, and a lot of “I can’t believe they’re doing X in the Doom Engine (even though it’s not really the Doom engine and this is like a weird ship of theseus thing where you need to ask yourself how much of original Doom is still in GZDoom.) As is, the product currently sold is a really solid 10 hour campaign for like $15, and I have no problems recommending it.

That said, Fallen Aces also seems really cool. Can’t wait to play the final version in 2029, given how long these New Blood games seem stuck in Early Access.

Best Boomshoot: Legacy of Rust for Doom + Doom II

Those madmen at Machine Games and Night Dive have done it again, with another new episode for an old id game. While perhaps not as exciting as their work on Quake and Quake II, nor as devious as John Romero’s Sigil duology, I’ve gotta say that one could probably live off a supply of well-made doom levels. There’s a very sharp sensibility to how these ones are made, even if they occasionally run too close to slaughter map territory for me.

Runner Up: Forgive Me Father 2

In the last five or six years, the throwback retro shooter (colloquially known as “Boomer Shooter”) has experienced something of an explosion of popularity. The thing is, a lot of them are bad or mediocre. The first Forgive Me Father was one such game, feeling more like an art style than a satisfying run n gun shooty shoot move-y move. The second game fixes this by making the video game part good, with things like “interesting level design” and “the enemies will flinch if you shoot them.” Vast improvement, would recommend.

Game Number 11: Cryptmaster

This year was good enough that I had to make multiple cuts to this list, including stuff that’d probably be on here depending on the day and my general feelings on the subject. Songs of Conquest is the modern Heroes of Might and Magic game that I needed, rather than deserved, There were no less than two very solid top-down survival horror games between Crow Country and Conscript, which unfortunately didn’t make it on if only because I couldn’t pick between them. Hell, if I’d played more Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance I’d probably have put that on here, and it’s still the Atlus RPG from this year that I’m most interested in playing more of (I own metaphor I’ll play metaphor please don’t yell at me). Finally, Balatro is the people’s deckbuilder, a game that didn’t destroy me in quite the same way as it did others, but I can’t understate how well-constructed it is. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred got me to give a shit about a blizzard game and Diplomacy is Not an Option is like They Are Billions but good.

Of all of those though, Cryptmaster is the most “no listen here you fuckers, you need to *see* this” game of the bunch, with its word puzzle based antics, dungeon crawler aesthetic, and deeply dry Kiwi sense of humor (humour? Do they use unnecessary vowels over there?) It’s a very original, unique, and clever game that I frankly think deserves more attention than it got.

Why are all of the games this year associated with major tarot arcana? Because I was bored and wanted a gimmick. Or maybe I was thinking about how I didn't play Persona 3 Reloaded.

10. The Chariot: Call of Duty Black Ops 6

Call of Duty is as consistent a feature in video games as Madden at this point, and based on the developer you tend to get a pretty solid idea of if this year’s game is gonna be “good” or not. I don’t have it in me to really opine that much about the gulf between the faster, arcade-y style of Treyarch’s games versus the slower, more “tactical” approach from Infinity Ward, because I’ve liked games from both devs and even thought Sledgehammer’s Modern Warfare III (2023) was a pretty fun time when I didn’t have to pay $70 for it. This year’s Call of Duty is good. You can tell because I played a lot of it and will probably play more. The omni-movement sprinting stuff might be the slickest movement the series has had in years, which combined with the general higher time to kill makes engagements very zippy in a fun way. I’m less enthusiastic about some of the issues the game has had with spawns, but with how quickly you can move from one end of a map to the other, I also get it.

Black Ops 6 also has the special distinction of being the first Call of Duty campaign I’ve bothered to play from start to finish since the original BLOPS back in 2010. There’s something fucking adorable about the way modern Call of Duty single player campaigns will briefly pretend to adhere to modern trends, with characters in your ear going “you can take this quiet or loud.” It’s a weird window into the world where COD is someone’s only video game for the year, and also probably a reminder that there are people at Raven Software (who were in charge of this year’s campaign) who’d really rather be making anything else. That doesn’t really change the fact that the campaign itself is two very good levels with a barely coherent story framework to justify them.

Finally, I still think COD Zombies sucks ass and people should play a game with a good horde mode. That’s all I have to say in that regard.

9. The Fool: UFO 50

I’m not a NES man. Given time, there’s probably about a dozen titles for that console that I’d willingly play in [CURRENT YEAR] and most of them are the obvious picks that probably have “Mario” in the title. It’s not an aesthetic that inherently appeals to me and outside of like… Shovel Knight, I’m not immediately one to jump in excitement when I see it replicated for a modern game. So you’d be right in assuming that a collection of 50 of *those* is not something I’m going to immediately jump at. And then I surprised myself and actually this shit is super great.

The greatest quality of UFO 50 is the sheer variety of weird stuff on offer. There are plenty of platformers and side-scrollers, unsurprisingly, but also multiple tactics games, at least two or three deckbuilder-coded thingies, a full point and click adventure, and what appears to be a 10-ish hour JRPG set in the old west. Not all of it hits for me, and likely not all of it will hit for even retro-sickos, but I had a tremendous time just goofing around with it as a collection. It’s easy to see why this took something like a decade to come together, and the final package was well worth my time.

8. The Moon: Rise of the Golden Idol

If you thought Case of the Golden Idol needed more bad 70s fashion and corporations fumbling around with new age bullshit, I have great news. The video game about putting nouns and verbs into slots by using deduction with dioramas is back, and a continual reminder that I’d probably fucking love Obra Dinn. I don't have much else to say beyond that, because piecing together the narrative is half of what makes it so fun.

7. The Emperor: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine II

Space Marine II’s campaign might be one of the most impressive big dumb campaigns I’ve played in a while, especially with the aid of two friends. It’s a throwback to the classical 6-8 hour linear 360 set piece in the best way, with all of the violence and weird shit one would want from a big budget rendition of the 40K setting. Captain Titus and his meathead brothers are going to have interpersonal melodrama about how fascist they’re supposed to be, Tyrannids happen, and then the *other* boys in blue show up and I get very excited. Looking forward to seeing what else Saber puts out because this was a very impressive showing. It's a deeply stupid, deeply fun power fantasy where you run around as a giant space truck and shoot bugs in the face with your giant gun before ripping them apart with your bare hands. And they fucking *nail* that.

The multiplayer didn’t grab me for quite as long, however. While the PvE missions are good and cool, there just wasn’t quite enough of them for me to stick with it. The PvP, on the other hand, is like… funny in a very Xbox 360 multiplayer way.

6. The Magician: Unicorn Overlord

If Unicorn Overlord didn’t have the most stock bootleg Fire Emblem SRPG writing imaginable it’d probably be even higher up on this list, because goddamn is it great to see a modern take on Ogre Battle outside of the indie space. Do I like micromanaging different unit compositions to ensure optimal outcomes on the battlefield? Of course I do; who do you think you’re talking to? It’s a style of SRPG that feels so undersung, so having that plus the usual vanillaware art stylings is a pleasant treat indeed.

Even if some of the unit roles are a bit too rock paper scissors with hard counters, there are enough of them and enough variables to make that aspect rewarding instead of easily solved. That said, much like Fire Emblem have you considered just recruiting a bunch of flying units and making a beeline for the enemy HQ? Because you can get away with that, sometimes. Always be using flyers. Except when there are archers, I guess. (solution: put a big heavy guy to block the arrows in the flying unit)

5. The Hermit: Skald: Against the Black Priory

While it aesthetically evokes the CRPGs of the late 80s and early 90s, Skald is actually far more approachable than anything it’s drawing influence from. I say that mostly because I know trying to sell the genre to people is hard enough (well, maybe less so in a post-BG3 world) without having to explain that a normal person could play it without needing to stare at a guide or spreadsheet.

What’s left is one of the sharpest short-form CRPG experiences I’ve had in years. It’s 15-ish hours long and gets in and out with some of the best gloomy vibes and cosmic horror stylings I’ve seen, period. Hell, ZombiePie and I did a whole podcast episode on it because it’s one of our favorite things from this year.

4. Death: Silent Hill 2

This shouldn’t have happened. I should be telling you about how the Bloober Team remake of Silent Hill 2 is an atonal disaster, a dramatic failure, and otherwise an entirely accurate fulfillment of my expectations. Instead, they did it. They nailed it. I cannot express how unsatisfying it is for my “bitch eating crackers” stance on Bloober Team that the Silent Hill 2 remake manages to capture what makes that original game so meaningful and powerful 23 years later while also playing like a modern video game.

Sure, I could probably go down a hole talking about how it doesn’t quite manage the same deftness with level design, resource management, and puzzles as Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes, but from a storytelling perspective they did it. They made a worthy refresh of one of the best horror games of all time. I’m upset that it’s great and I was proven wrong.

3. The Devil: STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl

I issue this with the caveat that anyone who is interested in STALKER 2 and hasn’t already bought it should probably wait for a few more months for the game to be in a more stable, optimized state. While I personally haven’t encountered anything more egregious than a couple crashes and goofy AI spawns, I’ve heard enough things from enough different people that you wouldn’t be remiss in picking this up in like… June.

That said they did it, they made a sequel to STALKER with all of the weird intentionally hostile world design, sad slavic guys, and grimy vibes that you’d want. Peak Slavjank is back, and this time it has genuinely impressive production values on top. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who likes it when the guns jam in the middle of a firefight or a constant need to be ruthless about inventory weight. God, what a great time. Hopefully my save won’t get corrupted before I finish it.

2. The Tower: Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is chaos incarnate, a cooperative multiplayer game where excessive amounts of friendly fire, high death counts, and just bullshit constantly exploding on screen is ideal. The first game had plenty of this too, but the translation from overhead to third person gives the entire experience a more intimate, visceral quality as your fascist shock troopers inevitably get blown the fuck up or killed by bugs or killed by your teammates in truly stupid quality.

The secret sauce of the game isn’t merely how it plays; if I wanted a good mature co-op game with a solid amount of “forever game” I’d probably stick with Darktide (btw all of my issues with Darktide have more-or-less been addressed so get on that, nerd). It's the communal storytelling aspect that adds a lot of fun to the experience, with a lot of push and pull between what the devs expect from the player base and what the player base actually accomplishes.

Now, admittedly, it took Arrowhead *months* to fully address the game’s matchmaking and stability issues, and then a couple more months to address their tendency to balance weapons by nerfing anything that was too popular into the ground. The game still will jank the fuck out on occasion. But even when the servers were melting and the only primary gun worth using was the plasma gun at the bottom of the free unlock tree, it was still tremendously fun. Now that most of these issues have been addressed, I have no compunctions about recommending it to anyone “with friends” or at the very least “a willingness to inflict themselves on randos”

1. The World: Astro Bot

In one sense, Astro Bot is less a delightful celebration of Playstation as a brand and a legacy as it is a graveyard reminding you that Sony used to make many different kinds of games instead of exactly One Kind of Game. Because the bots you find are in a semi-linear timeline, there’s a very notable gap that happens when you get through the PS2 era and enter the PS3 and PS4 stuff. It goes from “oh wow here’s a delightful cameo or callback from a beloved classic game that hasn’t had a new installment in 20 years” to “here’s Aloy, I guess.” No matter how hard they try to push it, I’m never going to see Horizon as a big top-tier franchise. I’m not sorry.

It’s fine though, because outside of the nostalgia bait for sad depressed millennial trash such as myself, Astro Bot offers an exceptional amount of creativity and originality at every step of play. Astro’s Playroom was already one of the best games for the PS5, so a bigger, more comprehensive sequel did not disappoint. Every level has something unique going on, never overstays its welcome, and is generally cheery, colorful, and a good time. It's the closest I've seen a non-Nintendo developer get with creative 3D Platformer design.

Thank you for reading my internet list maybe I will write another one someday.