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End of January – C’est Magnifique

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Play

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 (PS5) - Completed

Believe the hype!

Just tick off the checklist below and go and play.

1. Do you enjoy turn-based action RPGs like the old school Final Fantasy games?

2. Do you enjoy a story with a great cast of characters?

3. Do you enjoy a lovely soundtrack and gourgeus graphics?

It also has waterfalls!

Star Wars Outlaws (PS5) - Playing

Sticking with the physical backlog time to enjoy some science fiction action with Star Wars Outlaws.

You play as Kay Vess a young theif/scoundrel who has to escape her home planet after a heist mission goes wrong, with her companion Nix she escapes and lands on Tosharra a planet covered in windswept plains & canyons.

You can explore the planet on your speeder and find treasure, interact with one of the many factions including the Imperials to unlock contracts & missions. You also have the Trailblazer ship to explore outerspace & begin your adventure!

Yes, it has waterfalls!

 

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (PS5) - Playing

The Claptrap Boys are back! with a weekly PMG enjoying another Gearbox game in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands which is set in a fantasy-themed tabletop world. It plays just as you expect, you get lots of missions and lots of loot!

I've gone with the Spore Warden class which also has a toxic mushroom companion that helps attacks nearby enemies.

It's good to be back playing with the crew and thankfully everything worked smoothly with party chat! 

The game also has waterfalls! 

 

2026 Gaming Resolutions

1. Purchase no more physical games until I have reduced my backlog to 3 titles (currently at 13!).

Still intact reduced down to 11 (Started Star Wars Outlaws/Tiny Tina Wonderlands).

 

2. I did well in 2025 and avoided buying the PS5 Pro and Switch 2, I need to keep that going in 2026, no new hardware purchases except if required PS5 controllers.

Still intact, nothing purchased.

 

3. I have £80 on PSN credit and this all I can use until I reduce my digital backlog to 10 titles (either by playing or dropping, currently at 35 games). No more shopto top up codes!

I will renew PS+ at the essentials tier in November, I don't need the extra tier it just adds more titles to my backlog!

Still intact, no new games purchased, I spent £13.99 from the exsisting PSN credit on Star Wars Outlaws season pass.

 

4. I did really well this year with FOMO, I did not go back to Fortnite even with the Simpsons map or the BTTF skins, I also avoided purchasing Arc Raiders. I don't have the free time for these type of games. Need to avoid the hype and just play what I already own.

Still intact, I have been tempted by ARC Raiders but thus far have managed to avoid being weak! 

 

Backlog

Digital Games (37) - +2 added The Witcher 3 DLC that I purchased a few years ago but have never played.

PS+ Subscription - I scrapped the PS+ Extra list because it is not a backlog for games that I have purchased just titles that are avalable on the subscription service that I want to enjoy.

PS+ Monthly (19) - Unchanged, my main focus in on the Physical Games list.

Physical Games (11) -2 Started playing Star Wars Outlaws & Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Total = 67 Games


Shopping

Star Wars Outlaws Season Pass £13.99 (from exsisiting PSN credit)

2026 Target is spend less than £100

 

Want

I did enjoy playing the demos of Tainted Grail which scratched my Skyrim itch & Dragon Quest VII Reimagined just looks gourgeus!

Both added to the wishlist. 

 

Bin

Nothing at all this month.

Super Mario World: lost in chocolate

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I have got further than ever before, but that’s not saying much. I own Super Mario World on multiple systems – SNES, GBA, Wii, Wii U, 3DS – as well as having emulated it on the Raspberry Pi, the iMac, and (shh) my work laptop. I have played the start of it many times over, knowing to go left at the first map screen and turn on the yellow switch, then progressing right up the map to Donut Plains. I know about the secret exit in Donut Plains 2 to get to the green switch palace. I have, very often, given up at the ghost house in Donut Plains because I just hate the way the enemies move and the need for constant vigilance.

Not this time, though. Playing on the Switch (and then the Switch 2), I pushed through, and found new life beyond the ghosts in Vanilla Dome, Twin Bridges, and then the Forest of Illusion. And at this point it became really annoying.

In an effort to actually finish the game, I tried to ignore the red blinking dots that told me there were alternative exits to the levels. I went straight through each level, to the obvious end, making progress. And then in the Forest of Illusion, taking the obvious exit no longer worked; I ended up going around the overworld map in circles. I did find a secret exit in Forest of Illusion 1, but that just took me to the ghost house which I had already accessed from Forest of Illusion 3. The ghost house exit took me to FoI4, and then the exit from there went back to FoI2. I was frustrated for ages until I found the secret exit from FoI3 which was hidden in a pipe I was sure I’d been down multiple times before, just before the normal end of the level.

Keeping a Yoshi seems to make life a lot easier.

Through Roy’s castle, and onto Chocolate Island. I was doing fine until Chocolate Island 3, when I found that the exit led me into a loop which took me back to Chocolate Island 3. I explored CI2 for ages, because there was a sign at the start indicating that if I collected a certain number of coins or finished at a certain time I would get a different exit, but no amount of experimenting gave that result. There didn’t look as if there could be a secret path leading from the ghost house or CI1. And then, met with a facepalm, I realised that the arrows at the end of CI3 were pointing to the right, showing me where I had to go. I rode Yoshi along, swallowed the blue koopa to give me wings, and then made my way over to the other secret exit.

I’ve left it at CI4, which has a lot of diagonal platforms to slide down. Hopefully I won’t get lost again.

Viewfinder: completed!

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World four turned out to be quite long and complex, and the overall tone of the game turned much darker. Many of the level foundations became purple and grey, which could not be destroyed by laying photographs or photographed themselves. What seemed to be a restriction actually quickly became another puzzle, where (for example) a photo of a battery inside a purple cage could be placed as just the battery. Where walls were made of standard material but floors were made of purple, the walls could be vanished with the application of a photo of the sky, leaving a clear path through. I struggled a fair bit with a couple of the levels, before I suddenly realised an obvious solution.

And then onto World 5, where the story became more ominous and the mood ever darker. Cait the cat didn’t want me to find the weather device. Bits of building and objects just hung in the air, with gravity seemingly forgotten. Levels became ever more complex and foreboding. At one point I went back to the first World to explore a bit and find the collectible ducks, just for a break.

One of the more freaky things about the last World is the timed camera, which allows you to run around and take a photo of yourself. Remember in Portal, at the start of the game, when you place a portal and then can see yourself running into it, through the other portal? Imagine that, but instead of seeing a human character you see a mess of interference lines which vaguely take the shape of a person. Placing that photo instantly teleports you to the location of your silhouette, and you need to make sure you have multiple copies if you need to teleport out again.

Even with the rewind function, floating stuff gives me vertigo and a fear of falling off the edge

And then the final level, which suddenly introduced a time limit and required all the different skills that had been present throughout the game. In the end the time limit was more than enough to complete tasks, but working out how to do them was more of a challenge. I think it took me five attempts, before I finally found the science experiment and departed from the simulation.

Really fun as a game, and it certainly didn’t overstay its time; as with all the best games, it introduced new mechanics regularly and only used them a few times before assuming they were now just part of the repertoire.

Lunistice (Switch): COMPLETED!

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A while back, I played the demo of this and enjoyed it enough to stick it on my wishlist until it went on sale. Eventually, it did!

While it might not look like anything special, and there are a million late-90s style 3D platformers around, what this has that most of the others don’t is a properly controllable character. As in, the jumping and “steering” physics and controls feel right. You know how on the Super NES, Mario in Super Mario World feels right, but Bubsy the Bobcat is a horrible slidey imprecise mess? Now see how most 3D platformers from the Mario 64 era (and those that ape it) are more like nasty Gex 3D and not Banjo Kazooie in the same way. Well, Lunistice isn’t and clicked immediately with me.

It isn’t a huge game, with only a handful of worlds with most only having two acts, but it is inventive, varied and fun. There’s bits like Sonic Adventure, and bits like Mario 64, and bits like Crash Bandicoot (only good), but it still manages to be its own thing. Nice music, new-retro 32bit console aesthetic graphics, and a draw distance the PS1 couldn’t even dream about.