Laurie

New pick up! Loved the trial on PS Plus, so I had to go ahead and buy Mafia: The Old Country.

Bih-vu-ack! 😂 good luck

Just finished the last cup on Mario Kart World (Rainbow Road!) The game is simply brilliant. The music is so magical, it looks wonderful and the racing is so well balanced and fun. Excited for a new 3D Mario that’s even close to being this polished.

Credits rolled on Silksong! I’d keep going, but my son is desperate to play it so it’s now on loan to his Switch 2.

Just caught up on the Xbox Developer Direct - thought all the games looked incredible. Will definitely play them all, so Gamepass will be justifying itself for another year!

I can't fathom how the rest of Congress can't devise a way to retire the mad bastard. He's lost the plot and the world is suffering as a result.

Completed Act 1 of Silksong and can safely conclude that this game is utterly brilliant.

Hmm I dunno - tried it but it seemed extremely boring and pointless. It’s no Forza horizon that’s for sure 😂

Mario Kart World is so damn good. Love the new power ups and characters, and some of the courses are classics. (Although maybe don’t mention the performance in four player split screen as that’s a shocker)

PS5 owners are in for a treat - don’t sleep on Avowed when it arrives in Feb, it’s brilliant! It’s like a huge open world fantasy game, but designed in a way so that it’s not at all overwhelming.

It’s not surprising that the Switch 2 had an underwhelming Christmas. It’s been selling like mad to hardcore gamers (i.e. you lot), but it’s too expensive for most parents to buy their kids, especially when PS5 was retailing for £290.

A red haired cockerpoo named Yoshi

This guy. He waits like this if he can’t follow me into a room.

Yep, was planning a big family trip to Orlando, but we will just do Disneyland Paris now instead, and maybe Universal in Japan. So sad to see as I love America and my past visits there.

One PS5 in each room, perfect

Wouldn’t suit my room, but I still love these super bold colours

The 15 best Xbox Series S/X games to play in 2026 This now venerable hardware remains an ideal platform for classics such as Minecraft and daring experiments from the brightest new developers

@keefstuart.bsky.social - heads up, you need to remove Death Stranding 2 from this list! (may I humbly suggest swapping it for Avowed, Keeper, or South of Midnight instead?) www.theguardian.com/games/2026/j...

A 3d object/space though is usually made out of loads of polygons all stitched together (i.e. a simple room is made of six panels). In DKB you can just smash walls and they recreate themselves as needed on the fly.

I'm really enjoying DK Bananza. It's just so much fun to explore and destroy everything - from a game design perspective I can't imagine how hard it is to create a level that can be almost completely destroyed but still works.

Finished stranger things - a few plot holes but they did a great job of capping it all off in a satisfying way. If you look at the whole five seasons (and the play) as a complete story then it’s a pretty damn epic bit of storytelling.

Proper underrated gem

These were my top games of 2025. A stand out incredible year in my book, I’ll remember these games for a long time. Love how many of the below games are all new IP too. Hat tip to Gamepass too for keeping me so well entertained.

I've played little else since starting it. So much fun and completely batshit too, which is always good.

It's an easy win for Ghost Town for me, but Of Lies and Rain deserves a mention too. Hitman VR is remarkable, it's like 20+ games in one as each level is like it's own holodeck playground to get lost in - worth buying PSVR2 just for this one game IMO.

Being alive feels debatable today tbh...

Cheers Mark, HNY to you too!

Happy new year Bluesky! I opened my Switch 2 over Christmas and I've been loving DK Bananza, MK World and Mario Party Jamboree so far. Had some great Jamboree fun with the kids over the holidays.

Sounds ideal, if that’s all you want to do. Norfolk is lovely (although maybe v cold in Jan 😂)

100%. After a few years of game key discs, people will just think what’s the point!

Possible, but I reckon it would be a standalone unit with a cable if so. They won’t want the complexity of an integrated solution.

Digital sales on PS5 increased from 70% to 76% year on year. So yeah, given the trend will continue for the next few years, there’s no way PS6 will have a disc drive.