Games I Played in 2026 [2026-???-??]

Hello, 2025 is coming to a close, and as with last year I want to summarise my feelings on the video games I played this year. I'm changing the format somewhat, including new sections on the multiplayer games I put the most hours into, and a couple of smaller games which it didn't feel right to rank. The main list consists of all the games I got at least one primary ending in, ranked from least to most favourite.
This year for me was dominated by visual novels, I'd never actually given them a proper try before so I was quite surprised by how much I've enjoyed reading them. This has mostly been an extension of the running theme this year, which is me getting seriously into the BL genre, which doesn't really exist out of primarily reading works, barring some live action television shows I simply do not care to check out.

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--- RANKED LIST ---

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--- HALO SERIES ---

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Certainly the weakest game in that Halo series that I have played. Combat Evolved has a slightly off feeling to it, which I would attribute to it being such an early and infulencial title. At the time when it was made there wasn't really a concept of the prestige FPS campaign that you'd see in later Halo titles, Call of Duty, Gear of War, etc. This almost feels less like it belongs to that group, and more like it belongs to the group containing Doom, Wolfenstien, and the original Marathon.

The story is short and the cutscenes are minimal, like it doesn't know whether the player will care about its storytelling or not. You can also tell that many of the levels were made as sort of tutorials. Like the first level serving to introduce the player in a narrow space the more resembles previous FPS games, or the second mostly just showing how the warthog works. ???

There is something to be said of the design and atmosphere of this game compared to the others. It's a little off, and you can tell that the world had not been fleshed out as much. There's a sort of metallic purple gloss over everything in the world, it makes even the natural environments look oddly artificial. You can feel the anime influence more here than in any other Halo too ??? It's not even clear if the Chief is a human or a cyborg in this one. As much as Halo went on to define a very strong look and tone, it's a shame so much of the original's atmosphere seems to have been lost.

What about the gameplay though? Does the gameplay suck? Kind of, yeah. Certainly it's the worst in the series. I'd attribute that to a whole host of factors like a very small weapon sandbox, little enemy variety, and a serious backtracking problem combined with repeated environments between levels that make the game feel very small. The introduction of the Flood halfway through the game does shake things up a bit, but you figure them out pretty quickly. Though while much ink has been spilled over "the Library", and while I do think it has its problems, I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. At the end of the day it's quite fun to walk through a long room blasting Flood with a shotgun. And this is where the game does work for me: the enemies, weapons, and levels are all quite limited, but because of that they all feel like they have a place and a purpose, and when they align the game feels very good.

A quick note on the Anniversary edition and it's graphical updates: the suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

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Immediately better than Combat Evolved. Starting Halo 2 feels like I was holding my breath for an entire game and then breathed in. It's immediately apparent that Bungie picked up on and expanded everything that worked about the first Halo, and fixed everything that didn't.

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