As another summer slowly fades, we sit on the precipice of a huge autumn for gaming. Marvel’s Wolverine, Silent Hill: Townfall, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and (of course) Grand Theft Auto VI are all on my play-ASAP list, and there are others that I’ll probably buy and play at some later point. It’s been a solid year for gaming so far, and I’ve been spending time playing through some recent releases and short games to pass the days before the flood gates open. I’m trying to make sure I don’t have too many lingering must-plays before I find myself stumbling from one big release to the next. The highlight has been Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game I am thrilled finally saw release after years of fan begging and desperate rumors, but I’ll save that for last. Until then…
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls
I was around nine or ten when Street Fighter II first came out and like a lot of kids back then I became obsessed with it and, a year later, Mortal Kombat. I would go to my local arcade or corner store, wait patiently for my turn to play against a stranger or friend, and proceed to get my ass kicked (half the time, anyway). I bought the home versions for SNES and eagerly awaited new fighting games like ClayFighter, Primal Rage, Rise of the Robots and more. Most of them ended up lacking the polish, balance, and personality of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but my friends and I ate them up anyway. I think of it as my only real fighting game phase. I periodically become obsessed with a single fighting game (Street Fighter Alpha 3, Soulcalibur II, Street Fighter IV, Injustice 2), but I haven’t been quite as immersed in the scene since the ol’ golden days of fighting games.
So I feel very lucky to have done the copywriting on Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and I could tell from the earliest briefing that I would like it. The art style is a bright blend of colorful Marvel characters and slick anime coolness, and I love all the character animations and background cameos/easter eggs. One of the first things they mentioned in the briefing was that it was a team-based, 4v4 deal, which was the only element that concerned me. Arc System Works makes great games, the art looked amazing, the inclusion of Marvel characters was exciting… but when I was younger I found team-based fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom to be a bit overwhelming. They were still fun and had incredible animations, but I always felt unprepared to effectively swap between characters, learn synergies, all that. It was hard enough learning a few character’s moves, but a bunch of moves plus team combos and balancing? Young me was stressed.
Lucky for me, the character switching in Tōkon is constrained and feels much more natural (at least in single player, I don’t have much interest in playing online matches). You don’t even have access to all of your team members right away, so that limitation helped ease me into the tag team shenanigans, plus I didn’t even feel like it was necessary to master that system. I happily played through all of the story mode and some other modes mostly using my first two team members (and the natural team-based combos). Speaking of combos, another nice thing for a casual fighting game fan like me is how easy the combos and special moves are. As much as I appreciate a good half circle fireball or down down back forward something-or-other, some of the flashiest, most useful combos in Tōkon are easily performed by landing a few of the same hits in a row or pressing a two button combo. There are plenty of more complicated combos for the hardcore fans, but I was happy to keep it simple and still feel like I was doing cool, powerful moves. So, yeah, overall I loved my time with Tōkon. I think my favorite fighter was Spider-Man. He felt very fast, fluid, and fun. I was also surprised by how much I liked Magik. I didn’t know much about her as a character, but I might have to pick up some of her books. I love her attitude and she seems like a badass. Carnage was also fun, especially in some of his story mode scenes. Deadpool was very funny. And I really liked the Promoter. She was a fun, quirky new character with a great voice.
Halo: Campaign Evolved
I was an Xbox hater in the very beginning. Not long before the first console’s announcement, I had finally given up being an exclusive Nintendo fanboy and embraced the PlayStation, which I also previously dismissed. So I wasn’t ready for yet another new company coming in with another console and exclusive games I couldn’t play. And the fact that it was Microsoft, the biggest and most powerful tech company in the world at the time, made it worse. I was convinced they were just going to come in and try to buy everything up and ruin gaming. And, well… I guess my fears weren’t totally unfounded. Regardless, I did eventually get an Xbox, tempted by exclusives like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and, yes, Halo: Combat Evolved.
I did appreciate how fast and smooth the first Halo felt, but I didn’t really fall in love with it until Halo III, which I played an absolute metric buttload of. It was a lot of fun revisiting the original with Halo: Campaign Evolved, though it felt a bit odd. It looks great, so the nostalgic blast of the amazing music with the first mission on the Ring was powerful, but then playing some of the missions, designed over 25 years ago, it felt its age – especially later, when the stupid deer-tick-looking flood enemies kept pouring through doors and vents, making me waste all of my ammo. But it still felt great to play, looked slick, and of course there was a unique kind of thrill to be playing the original Halo on a PlayStation console. Wild times we live in. And, yes, the pistol still feels pretty broken.
The Isle Tide Hotel
I was sold on The Isle Tide Hotel based on the cover art, for some reason. It gave me Knives Out vibes, plus I’ve been fascinated by FMV games recently (as we’ll see more of below), so I got it a while back and finally got around to trying it out. It’s… odd. Maybe too odd for my taste? It feels more David Lynch than Knives Out in the sense that it introduces a lot of strange characters doing strange things and explains very little. Some of it is surreal and fantastical, too, which is fine, but ruins some of the mystery solving for me. I can’t really try to use logic and reason to understand and attempt to solve puzzles and mysteries that aren’t actually based in reality. And the story also felt caught between grounded in reality and obscured in fantasy, so I just ended up disengaging halfway through without anything to really feel invested in.
There were some colorful, odd characters that were fun to meet, though I do wish I’d had more time with them. This might be one of the best-produced FMV games I’ve played, but the “seams” as I call them (indicators of budget, like ill-fitting costumes or generic props/set dressing) are visible, a constant reminder that I’m watching/playing a low-budget visual story and not living in this world. Ultimately, that’s the allure of an FMV game, right? The feeling that you’re truly living and moving in a movie/reality? So, I feel bad criticizing The Isle Tide Hotel because I see the vision and I think they pulled off something very interesting (with some solid performances), but it fell short of what I think could be something truly great.
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
When they showed the announce trailer for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds at Summer Game Fest 2025, I posted this to Bluesky:
“Me watching the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds reveal: Yeah, thanks, but I think I’ll be playing Mario Kart World for the forsee-
*Persona music starts playing*
Me: *sigh* Where’s my wallet?”
I did, indeed, play a ton of Mario Kart World, but I was very intrigued by CrossWorlds and its inclusion of other Sega characters and music. Nintendo seemed to be going in that direction with the Mario Kart 8 DLC characters/worlds, but it seems they’ve pulled back from that for some incredibly confusing and mysterious reason. So a new kart game that I could play on my PS5 and had Joker from Persona, Pac-Man, Minecraft characters, Spongebob, Hatsune Miku, and more? Plus I heard some people saying that it was actually better than Mario Kart World. Despite at least a few people saying that about every kart game since Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing (and always being wrong), I was in. Maybe it would be better!
It’s not. I mean, I have my problems with Mario Kart World, but it’s still an incredible Mario Kart game. And while I did have fun with CrossWorlds, it has a few things that I couldn’t quite get over. I didn’t love that the last course of each circuit was just the first three courses mashed together. The powersliding also felt very loose and hard to control, though maybe I would have gotten the hang of it if I’d played more (but I did beat all of the grand prix and played several time trials). The biggest offender, however, was the rubberband AI. Yes, I understand that all racing games have rubberband AI. But a good racing game balances the rubberbanding with skill. Yes, CPU racers can keep up with a wide swath of average players, but if you’re really good and are racing very well, you should be able to pull away usually. It’s supremely frustrating nailing power slides, boosts, items, stunts, and then a CPU racer cruises past you doing nothing particularly impressive. My least favorite Mario Kart, Mario Kart Wii, suffered from the same problem. Nintendo was so preoccupied with their Blue Ocean strategy with the Wii that they increased the rubberbanding in Mario Kart Wii so that any grandma or distant uncle who’s never touched a Mario Kart game could effortlessly sail past a seasoned racer who is bringing all of their tricks to the track. Can you tell I’m a little bitter?
So, yeah, I was quite frustrated by the unbalanced AI in CrossWorlds and ultimately didn’t play it as much as I thought I might, but I can see why people really like it. It does borrow a lot of solid elements from Mario Kart, and it has the very cool benefit of mixing in characters, carts, and music from Persona, Yakuza, Super Monkey Ball and more. Maybe I’ll return to it some day, especially if they end up adding more Persona characters (and with Persona 4 Revival coming, it seems possible). But more than that, I hope they take these good elements and improve on the weak points for a sequel in the next few years.
Bubble Bobble
Bubble Bobble is the kind of classic NES game where the mere mention of its name instantly triggers the music in my head. When I saw that this week’s installment in the Console Archives series was this amazing game, my brain went de ni niiiii ni ni niii ni ni ni ni-ni niiii, de ni ni ni ni ni ni niii de ni ni ni niii niii niiiii do you hear it? in your head? I’ll continue, de ni niiiii ni ni niii ni ni ni ni ni ni niiiiiii no? Nothing? Okay, fine, well, get whatever song you want stuck in your head.
The point is, the music in this game, as limited as it is, is a banger. And the game is also very fun. For a while, anyway. Upon revisiting it now, it does get a little boring after a while, but hey, I didn’t have much else to do when I was a kid playing this in Chicago. The colorful art, cute characters, fun level designs, and catchy music had me and my sister hooked. It was one of the few multiplayer games she was into, so we played it a lot. Good times. de ni niiiii ni ni niii ni ni ni ni-ni niiii, de ni ni ni ni ni ni niii de ni ni ni niii niii niiiii Still nothing? At all?
Speed Dates Summer Edition
I continued my recent foray into the FMV world with Speed Dates Summer Edition, a dating sim where you have three rounds of “dates” with your choice of five different beautiful… Turkish women? I think? I was basing that on language and vibes, but I just checked and the developer is Icarus Interactive Entertainment, and they’re based in Turkey so… I am basically Carmen Sandiego. Please clap.
Anyway, this was a very simple, very short game. I played through two rounds of dates in less than an hour. The women are indeed beautiful, and it was fun playing through these short encounters, but ultimately you only have to answer a couple of very obvious questions each round (she’ll say something like “I really like chips.” And then you’ll have the options “Give chip” or “I don’t like,” stuff like that), so it’s very easy to advance with the girl you like. There’s no real story, no particular reason to come back to it very much. I’m not mad that I played it, though, with how short it was.
Heroines Through My Lens
Aaaaand another romance-themed FMV game. This one had much higher production value than Speed Dating, and reminded me a lot of the Chinese FMV games I’ve played (though this one is from South Korea, I think). In Heroines Through My Lens you play a young man who is thrown into a new job as a photographer at a fashion company because of debt incurred in a bad business venture. You end up having to take photos of several young women in very simple QTE segments where you just press a single button at the correct time. You also make some dialog choices to try and advance your relationships with the women, who all seem to want you, of course.
Though the budget for this was seemingly still small compared to something like a feature film or TV production, it was (like the Chinese games) impressive how many sets, costumes, and props there were. I realized as I was playing this one why I’m so fascinated with FMV games recently. It’s not the sex appeal, as even the most risque of the ones I’ve played have been PG-13 at the most, with some cleavage or a clothed butt shot being the most sexual things we see. It’s not the stories, characters, or writing, which are all a bit cheesy and silly. I think it’s the fact that they exist at all. Like, there are casts and crews behind these. As I’m watching/playing, I’m constantly wondering about who these actors are, what a production day is like, who comes up with the ideas, who writes the lines and all that. And that in and of itself is kind of fun. Heroines Through My Lens wasn’t the best, most engaging game ever (I was especially frustrated that they do that thing with dialog choices where they give you “safe” options that end up actually being bad, so it started feeling like I was guessing at random to try and woo these women), but I had a decent time playing it and going along for another fascinating FMV ride.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced
The year is 2013. I am a poor, stressed out grad student. After two years of mostly putting gaming in the backseat to focus on my studies, I am hyped to get a PlayStation 4 at launch and get back into the hobby I love so much. The PS4 is launching just before Thanksgiving break, so I’ll have a whole week to play my shiny new console. There is a sale to support the launch. Buy two games, get one free. The two paid games I pick are Killzone Shadow Fall, because I want a first party game, and Call of Duty: Ghosts, because that seems like an obvious, safe pick. I’m not thrilled with my third pick, as I mostly have sports games and PS3 ports to choose from, but I take a chance on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. I’d never played an Assassin’s Creed game and I guessed it could be fun. I barely touched Killzone and Call of Duty that week. It was all Black Flag, all the time. I fell for it so hard, despite being “just” a PS3 port/upgrade. It would have been my very first platinum trophy if not for the required online trophies that I refused to get. I 100%ed the single player content and wanted more.
I was, of course, among the many fans calling for a remaster or direct sequel to it in the ensuing years. Video game discourse is funny because generally I hear people complaining about remakes and remasters, but there are a few exceptions that everyone seems to agree merit one. Black Flag was one of them, and I think the remaster does it justice. Like other good remakes/remasters, it nails one of the most important features of a revisit in that it feels like the original, but it looks like a brand new game. They’ve refined things like stealth, ship combat, sword fighting, and more, but it all still feels fantastically familiar.
I was weirdly worried before diving into the game, though. What if it wasn’t as good as I remember? What if it felt dated or I lost interest after a few hours? Silly me. I stepped right back into that pirating world, ready to get my Jackdaw back and sail the beautiful crystalline seas of the Caribbean. That is still one of my favorite things about this game. Sailing around, the sun sparkling on the waves, small clusters of mysterious islands begging to be explored. I did end up spending money to get the fiery ship and outfit DLC, where I look like a demonic captain set on revenge. And that’s kind of how I roleplayed this playthrough. In 2013, I felt like a new sailor, just getting my bearings and earning my sea legs. Having played many Assassin’s Creed games (and tons of Sea of Thieves) since, I felt a lot bolder and more willing to indiscriminately cut my way through as many slavers who dared exist in my presence. And it was a lot.
I did have fun reliving the story, too, and upgrading my ship, sending my fleet out to gather materials and money, fully furnishing my pirate mansion, and embarking on side missions to collect cool gear or upgrade my lieutenants. Anne Bonny is still a hottie and I had her with me as much as I could. I was a little sad that I only discovered the skeleton crew cosmetic right near the end of my playthrough. It would have been so amazing to have a deck full of skellies on my flaming hot demon ship, but alas. Also, the harder legendary ship battles are annoyingly difficult. Overall, though, I absolutely loved my time returning to the Caribbean. And I finally got my platinum trophy.
A New Game Plus 