Brandon K(ftw)

While I am deciding how I'm approaching this Mass Effect LE run, I will share some deets:

- FemShep, fav gender
- Engineer, fav class
- Sole Survivor/Colonist background, b/c double the crippling trauma is great to RP

Will share more thoughts that I haven't shared publicly as I play.

I appreciate David Cage's style of storytelling, and I liked playing through Detroit: Become Human, but it left me with no desire to go back and play Beyond or Heavy Rain.

I felt like the writing was a bit too stilted and preachy at points, but overall, I was fine with it.

I'll have my thoughts on Detroit: Become Human later on tonight, but I swear I gave my next game an honest spin. I SWEAR. Trade-off is that I'll play Concrete Genie between ME2 and 3, and will play a soon to be released indie between 1 and 2.

I have no plans to put an Andromeda run on the wheel. 😆

This is the news I didn't want to wake up to. Trump going full Lord Farquaad. Yet another of 1000+ reasons to hate this administration, and Bibi helping him is a terrible, terrible idea.

This is the new one.

As long as I remember, I will be utilizing a wheel spin app to determine some backlog games going forward. This is the one I used last night, but since I couldn't save it, I switched to another site that could and made some substitutions. 👍

If my next game is MELE, I'll laugh.

Neva: Prologue DLC is $2.99 well spent. About 70 minutes to beat. No new achievements. Still worth it. Definitely meant to be played after the story, despite being a prologue. Some tricky platforming that would fit in the mid-game of the base story.

YouTube video by MrHulthen the curse of being a Mass Effect fan

youtube.com/shorts/OM6zR...

Nothing gives me anxiety like pending major snowfall.

Look at this perfect bell curve of a tier list of Far Cry games. Curious if it'll move around at all as I (potentially) play some of them for the first time since launches as the coming weeks/months progress. Maybe. Possibly.

Unrelated, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has both aged gracefully and horribly at the same time. Still a bizarre game after all these (13!) years. It helped to scratch a part of an itch for Far Cry that I've been having these past few days. I have a desire for more at some point.

I am dumbfounded by this. Yes, Bluepoint has been quiet since the Demon's Souls remake, but maaaaan. Shutting them down just isn't it, PlayStation. Similar sort of angle as XGS took with Tango and Arkane Austin.

Corpos making video games just isn't working out at the moment.

Sometimes I need to shut up and play a game. Spent way too much time tonight working out logistics of what to play and when. I'm not as concerned with new releases at the moment, so now I'm just wasting time. 🤞 I can decide on something by tomorrow afternoon when I'm off work.

What a wild State of Play. Looking forward to lots of games shown during it! 😀

The Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy (2013, Rise, Shadow) still hits after all these years. I've gotten 100% on both 2013 and Rise so far. Just started Shadow. They are so much fun to play, even if the stories are paper thin. Rise, especially, has aged like a fine wine.

I'm 8 hours into Death Stranding (1), and I'm enjoying it. However, I am finding myself in a mood for a "comfort game". Something familiar.

- Fable
- Tomb Raider
- Mass Effect
- Dragon Age
- Elder Scrolls

.. and with the 1st two getting new games this year, I'm very tempted.

The ending of the Real Madrid/Benfica match is the reason I love soccer/football so, so, so much. Magic moments like a goalkeeper scoring a header on a free kick to push the GD difference by *one* goal to make the knockout stage of the Champions League.

Kudos, Benfica. 👏

I played 2 hours of the original High on Life earlier today, and I remembered why I put it down after 2 hours back when it first came out.

2026 is going to be a year of (hopefully only a few) "failed" playthroughs of games as I work through my backlog. On to the next one!

After finishing a long video game, it always takes a little bit longer to choose the next game to play, but I have a couple ideas. Thankfully this Q1 is a bit lighter for me with new releases, and most of my backlog games are < 20 hours long. I can make a solid dent.

Phantom Liberty is 🔥. The depth of the side content is insane in both PL + the base game. Night City is the most "alive" open world I've experienced in a long time. Great music and sound design. I'm going to miss it.

I think I'll come back to Night City in the future. /end

a man sitting in a car in a futuristic city with a sign that says geoland ALT: a man sitting in a car in a futuristic city with a sign that says geoland

So I've spent a chunk of the last 2 weeks or so putting in 100+ hours into #Cyberpunk2077 + Phantom Liberty.

Not perfect, and I could nitpick it, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I am mad at myself for not playing it sooner. Brilliant. This game is special. /1

An update:

2025 has been a bad year for me. Probably the toughest since 2011 when I was struggling with adjustments to college life. I've been blessed by almost a decade of *relative* calm, but now with some heavy turbulence again, I need to focus in.

I'll be back on socials in 2026. Happy Holidays! 🙂

a painting of a samurai with the words mike detective on the bottom ALT: a painting of a samurai with the words mike detective on the bottom

I've got a lot of insanity IRL, so I should share it now before I focus on that.

2025 was rough for me, but games provided solace. For me, I wanted an escape, and nothing gave me that more than @suckerpunchprod.bsky.social's Ghost of Yotei.

That is my 2025 Game of the Year. 👏👏

My GOTY announcement is delayed, FYI. Will be later in the month. Had some things come up. All is good.👍

It is important to note that I haven't played pretty much any of the front-runners due to either (a) lack of interest, (b) lack of hardware, or (c) lack of time. This feels like my most personal list, and I love it.

Expect my Game of the Year to be shared this upcoming weekend.

2025 has been a weird year for me in games. I played just shy of 20 new releases, and focused on my Xbox gamerscore. With that done, and my 2026 plans coming together, I am ready to share my "GOTY Shortlist":

⭐️Despelote
⭐️Dispatch
⭐️Ghost of Yotei
⭐️Sword of the Sea

These #WorldCup2026 groups are 🔥. Can't wait until March to see the last teams in!