With the summer over and my break coming to an end, it also means I will have less time to play video games. Which is a real shame because there are some great games on the horizon. I’m particularly looking forward to the new Rayman game and to Emberville, which sounds like it’s a game made for me with a fabulous voice cast. But with the summer behind us, I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about some of the video games I’ve played over the past couple of months. I decided back in 2024 that it was time for me to create a proper gaming backlog list and start tackling it head-on. I had a habit of buying games that seem fun when they are on sale and saving them for later. This then turns into a library full of unplayed games. So I made a list. I’ve bought a ton of games that were on deep discounts or in bundles or were part of free giveaways that steam and epic sometimes do, so I didn’t want to bother trying every game in my library. Steam alone has over 200 entries. The list I ended up making only had titles on it that actually interested me and was “only” around 60 games. I’ve since then gotten it down to 20. Not bad right? Today, let me tell you about some of the PC games I’ve played recently and what my thoughts on them are.

The Bioshock Trilogy

Don’t worry, I played Bioshock a long time ago and was absolutely smitten with it. One of the best story games out there and incredibly fun gameplay too. Would you kindly has become an iconic phrase and for good reason. But I never actually played the second Bioshock game before. The main reason for this was that I got that game through a buddy of mine and when we put the disk into my laptop, it tried to install Games for Windows Live. If you’ve ever had the displeasure of using that software, you know how difficult it was to get the game to work. Even when we got it to work it would constantly crash so I ended up giving up. So I skipped it and moved straight to Infinite which was alright. I like the setting of Infinite a lot, and some of the story in the early game is definitely intriguing enough, but once you get to the plot twist at the end it’s gotten so out of whack that I can’t really believe the plot anymore. The same however cannot be said for the first two games, which are absolutely amazing. In Bioshock 1 you take the role of Jack, who is trying to help Atlas in getting out of Rapture. Rapture is a city at the bottom of the ocean where corruption and drug use have gotten out of hand and where splicers roam the halls. Splicers are drug addicts who need Adam. Adam is harvested from young girls that are turned into “little sisters” ; each little sister is accompanied by a “big daddy” , a mindless man in a suit that protects her at all costs. You need to get through the city, harvest enough Adam to power up and decide if you want to harvest Adam by killing the little sisters or if you want to save them instead, granting you less Adam, but getting you a better ending. The dark setting combined with the somewhat scarce ammunition – especially if you’re not great at games, which I am not – makes for a scary experience and the story is super well written. The second game continues the themes of the first with a new main character and although it never quite reaches the highs that the first game did, I found the ending of the second game very satisfying too. And Infinite is a joy to look at, even years later, so I still highly, highly recommend all three games. Probably one of my favorite series of games of all time with Bioshock 1 being up there for best game of all time.

Dishonored 1 & 2

I’m not a big fan of stealth games, so I initially went into Dishonored 1 with a bit of a “guns blazing” attitude. I tried the stealthy approach but as soon as I got caught I gave up and just killed everyone in my way. This doesn’t work in a game like this. Well, it does and it doesn’t. You can definitely progress through the game that way and I’d say it makes the entire experience a lot easier. The big downside of it all is that you end up with the bad ending, and I was so displeased with that ending that I went back and played the game again. That’s where I changed my approach. Instead of getting really good at being stealthy, I started to treat it more like a puzzle game. Saving and reloading every few minutes to make sure I approach every scenario in the most optimal way. This became very fun, and I managed to get the good ending in both games. For those of you who are completely unfamiliar with these games, in Dishonored you are trying to avenge your queen and lover who was assassinated before your eyes. To do so, you make a deal with a strange deity called “The outsider” who gives you special abilities like seeing through walls, teleportation and possession. Using these abilities and a crossbow and blade, you make your way through the city of Dunwall, uncovering mysteries and slowly taking out enemies of the throne until you can put Emily – the rightful heir – back on the throne. The second game takes place much later, and here you can pick between playing as Corvo – the protagonist of the first game – or Emily who is now an adult. The kingdom is once again in peril and this time you leave Dunwall behind to deal with a witch’s plot to take over the kingdom and take care of her allies. I played as Emily and the mechanics were somewhat different than in the first game, but still very good. One thing I did struggle with during the second game was getting absolutely zero kills. It’s not needed for the good ending, but I often found that I completed a level and it said I had killed 1 or 2 people and I had absolutely no idea how or where it happened. Still, I finished both games and had a blast with them.

The Witcher 1 & 2

Man this post is getting long, I am glad I decided to split it up in two posts beforehand. I went into the Witcher with a simple goal. Completing the first two games would take me 20 to 25 hours if I just went for the main storyline. That way I had a good grasp on the world of The Witcher by the time I got to the third game, which is considered to be a big improvement on the first two iterations. And with a fourth game coming out next year (if we’re lucky) now seemed like a good time to do so. What ended up happening instead is that I fell in love with the story of these games. I ended up completing almost every sidequest I could find, talking to every NPC on the way and exploring as many of the dialogue options as possible to learn more about this world. I’m now fully convinced that I should watch the series and read the books at some point as well because I am in awe at how well written these games were. Now, that’s where the praise ends. The gameplay itself is pretty damn bad. The combat in the first game is the worst combat I’ve experienced in any game and although the second game improves when it comes to the mechanics of its combat, the balancing is beyond awful. I spent a good chunk of the first four hours extremely frustrated and yelling at my screen. It was only once I started unlocking a few skills and abilities that the game got fun, but there were still moments where I would just get killed in seconds by a random enemy. I recommend you play on easy difficulty and adjust it to normal when you feel like you’re properly equipped. That’s probably the best way to enjoy this game. There’s also two paths in each game. I didn’t feel like your path mattered much in the first game, but from seeing some scenes from the alternative in the second game, I feel like they’re quite different and if I didn’t have another 20 games lined up I might even play it a second time to explore the other route. But if you’re curious, in both games I ended up siding with the Scoi’atel, the rebel forces fighting for equality with questionable methods and morals at times, but ultimately I figured it was better than siding with the racists. We hate racists in this house. Great RPG though, and with these foundations already in place I am excited to eventually dive into the third and fourth installment of this series. I just hope Witcher 4 comes out in one piece and isn’t a disaster like Cyberpunk was on launch.

Palworld

I was aware of Palworld when it was first released and some of the lawsuit stuff surrounding it because Nintendo is the lawsuit company and is pure evil and a blight on the gaming industry (anyway, my review of Nintendo Switch games is coming soon, I am a hypocrite). Luckily, it seems that despite Nintendo’s best efforts, Palworld was given the opportunity to thrive and since the 1.0 release came out somewhat recently I picked up the game. I played through the game with a bunch of friends. Apparently you can host a game server through Discord with Nitro boosts. I didn’t have Discord Nitro, but for something like this I didn’t mind. I didn’t know a ton about the game, so my expectations were simple. Get gun, build hut, catch pals. That’s the extent of what I knew. I didn’t have an idea how much depth there was to this game. There is a crafting and technology system that upgrades gradually alongside your leveling. Both of these felt like they were going at a solid and continuous pace. I did feel that some of the crafting was a bit slow when I was playing on my own afterwards, because with the server everything was on 24/7 with at least one person online or AFK. Now I need to keep my game running to get some materials. It’s running in the background as I’m writing this post! If you like a game with constant progression and not a ton of grinding until you get to the later part of the game where if you want to have some of the endgame items you will have to grind a bit. And you will want these items because there is quite a bit of endgame potential in this game with a new biome to hunt pals, bosses and hard versions of the towers you clear throughout the game. I was very pleasantly surprised by Palworld and would recommend everyone to check it out. Especially considering it’s a third of the price of any Pokemon game and just as much fun.

And that’s mostly it. I’ve played some smaller games in between and continued to play Black Desert Online, which is nearing the end of its first big act. They announced it like that but I wonder how many plans they even have for the second act. Either way, there’s something comfortable about playing a game for over a decade, even if it was with a few breaks here and there. I’ve also replayed Borderlands 1, 2 and the Pre-Sequel to make sure I covered every single DLC as well. I also tried playing Disco Elysium as it came highly recommended but I haven’t really been able to get into it. I might give it another go though, because I don’t like quitting. I hope you were convinced to check out some of these games, because they were all very fun. Like I mentioned before, a recap of Switch games is coming soon, and there’s some great titles on there too, so look forward to that. Thanks for reading!