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A few days late! – End of February update – I’m still an Outlaw!

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Play

Star Wars Outlaws (PS5) - Playing

Still playing Star Wars Outlaws.

Currently exploring Akiva and unlocking it's many mysteries.

I'm really enjoying this, it's easily the best Star Wars game I have played. Space Combat took me a while to figure out but it has now clicked. You just need to figure out which combat options you want and upgrade the defences.

 

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (PS5) - Playing

It's Ramdan so I've not had much time to play it

 

2026 Gaming Resolutions

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

Still intact, no further changes

 

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, I have been tempted by pre-owned Steam Decks.

 

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!

Still intact, no new games purchased, the kids used up some my PSN credit to purchase some Resident Evil games.
 

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, no FOMO

 

Backlog

Digital Games (37) - No new additions 

PS+ Monthly (19) - Same again nothing new added

Physical Games (11) -Ditto, nothing new added

Total = 67 Games


Shopping

2026 Target is spend less than £100 - Total spent £0.00  

Kids spent £7.98 of my PSN credit on Resident Evil 5 & 6

 

Want

Nothing new, to be honest I have not really been following up on gaming news

 

Bin

Severe lack of gaming time due to Ramadan and just life!

Spider-Man 2 (PS5): COMPLETED!

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It’s not often I play a big all-the-graphics modern games these days. In fact, even Spider-Man 2 is now a few years old. It does look amazing but the important thing is how it plays.

Very few games are this much fun to just get from A to B. Batman: Arkham Knight was, and the first Sony Spider-Man was, but most other games don’t give you the freedom and the tools and the verticality that just make it a joy to get around. This adds gliding and air-streams to the original, making long distance travel even faster – which is just as well as the map now covers more of New York. Or you can just be boring and fast travel, which actually looks all fancy because there’s no loading thanks to The Power of the PS5 SSD. Which, as I said before, is only fast in-game, not when doing file management. Tch.

So actually being the Spider-Man, or Spider-Men, or Spider-Mans (it is debated in the game as to the correct term) is a lot of fun, but the story needs to be good in order to take you through. And it is, if not quite as good as the previous instalments. You’ve got Pete still dealing with the death of Aunt May, and trying to mentor Miles while getting fired from a teaching job and generally not having any time or money, and you’ve got Miles who has college applications to sort and his dead dad to get over and him feeling increasingly concerned about Pete when, well, spoiler if you’ve not already heard about it, Venom makes an appearance. Plus all the Spider-Stuff they’ve both got going on, Harry Osborn on the brink of death for most of the game, and a number of Spiderfoes all being broken out of jail so that Kraven The Hunter can take them down meaning, weirdly, the Spider-Men have to save them.

It’s a lot.

And that’s before you get all the random side quests and street crimes and Sandman B-plot and photos you have to take and everything. I think this might be partly why the story just doesn’t hit like it did in the previous games – there’s too much distraction. That said, Kraven really isn’t a top tier Spider-Man villain like Doctor Octopus was, so it’s not the only reason. Sure, there’s Venom, but, I was expecting the Green Goblin. Maybe in Spider-Man 3? If they ever make it.

In conclusion (written like an AI, I know), it’s an excellent game, with lots to do and some amazing combat and traversal mechanics. Please don’t make me buy a PS6 for the next one.

Spider-Man 2 (PS5): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

It’s not often I play a big all-the-graphics modern games these days. In fact, even Spider-Man 2 is now a few years old. It does look amazing but the important thing is how it plays.

Very few games are this much fun to just get from A to B. Batman: Arkham Knight was, and the first Sony Spider-Man was, but most other games don’t give you the freedom and the tools and the verticality that just make it a joy to get around. This adds gliding and air-streams to the original, making long distance travel even faster – which is just as well as the map now covers more of New York. Or you can just be boring and fast travel, which actually looks all fancy because there’s no loading thanks to The Power of the PS5 SSD. Which, as I said before, is only fast in-game, not when doing file management. Tch.

So actually being the Spider-Man, or Spider-Men, or Spider-Mans (it is debated in the game as to the correct term) is a lot of fun, but the story needs to be good in order to take you through. And it is, if not quite as good as the previous instalments. You’ve got Pete still dealing with the death of Aunt May, and trying to mentor Miles while getting fired from a teaching job and generally not having any time or money, and you’ve got Miles who has college applications to sort and his dead dad to get over and him feeling increasingly concerned about Pete when, well, spoiler if you’ve not already heard about it, Venom makes an appearance. Plus all the Spider-Stuff they’ve both got going on, Harry Osborn on the brink of death for most of the game, and a number of Spiderfoes all being broken out of jail so that Kraven The Hunter can take them down meaning, weirdly, the Spider-Men have to save them.

It’s a lot.

And that’s before you get all the random side quests and street crimes and Sandman B-plot and photos you have to take and everything. I think this might be partly why the story just doesn’t hit like it did in the previous games – there’s too much distraction. That said, Kraven really isn’t a top tier Spider-Man villain like Doctor Octopus was, so it’s not the only reason. Sure, there’s Venom, but, I was expecting the Green Goblin. Maybe in Spider-Man 3? If they ever make it.

In conclusion (written like an AI, I know), it’s an excellent game, with lots to do and some amazing combat and traversal mechanics. Please don’t make me buy a PS6 for the next one.

Puzzle Bobble (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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New Evercade cartridges arrived last night! one of them is the Taito Arcade 3 compilation, the highlight (for me) on it being Puzzle Bobble. The original one! In the arcade!

As I already knew, it’s great. Only, because it’s the arcade version, it only has 30 levels so I was done within an hour. 30 levels! I’m sure later home versions had many hundreds of them or randomly generated endlessly, but no.

Tomb Raider: Greece and Egypt

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Having decried the lack of verticality in the Peruvian levels, St Francis’s Folly more than made amends. The main part of the level has you scaling up and down a central room, opening doors with levels and solving puzzles in rooms names after Greek mythology1.

The permanence of enemy deaths is very noticeable here, where the bats you shoot at the top of the room can sometimes be found lying on the ground at the bottom; when using original graphics there was more than one occasion when I thought there was a medikit in the corner and then was disappointed to find a bat carcass. Theoretically, there doesn’t need to be much backtracking, either, since you could pull the switches to open the doors as you descended the central column, and then entered the rooms when returning to the top. In fact, however, the necessary exploration to find the switches meant that I descended and ascended at least five times before unlocking the exit.

The game has continued to throw new ideas and puzzles at me, of which I only vaguely remember some from the previous time I played. I remembered the Midas statue, and Lara’s unfortunate death when jumping on it; I didn’t remember that it actually had a use in terms of turning lead bars into gold. I remembered climbing the sphinx; I didn’t remember the need to climb the front and the back to put two different ankhs in place. I certainly didn’t remember the nightmarish mummies jumping at me from dark corners of a pyramid.

I have continued to flick between modern and original graphics, so that I can actually see what I’m doing at times.

I’ve been progressing through rather slowly, trying to get the high ground to attack enemies (since, other than bats, they all seem incapable of jumping off the floor). The remaster’s addition of saving anywhere does rather diminish the peril that Lara might face – it’s all too tempting to save before flicking each switch – so I’ve tried to be conservative in my use of saving, only doing so after I’ve got past a section that has taken me a few attempts to clear, or saving when I have to get off the train, for example. I also discovered, accidentally, that the new photo mode can be used to explore with no danger, to an extent – you could theoretically go into photo mode before entering a room, fly the drone inside and see what awaits you, before entering properly. Again, I am resisting that temptation, even if it does mean I’m dying more often than I’d like.

It is interesting to compare this to modern, similar games – most recently, for me, Rise of the Tomb Raider. Beyond the obvious difference in controls and mechanics, there are many similarities – but the scale of what is expected is different. Rise is set over a much larger, contiguous world, but any puzzles or actions occur in smaller, defined areas. The separate levels of Tomb Raider (I, 1996) are at the same time smaller, but also more sparse and more involved. You frequently find yourself having to explore a previous section for the door that opened when you flicked a switch. Sometimes there’s a short cutscene to show the door opening, but you can’t always identify where that was.

Anyway, I have now slaughtered many more endangered animals, including many black panthers who seemed to be built from titanium given the number of bullets they could absorb, and have collected the scion pieces from all three locations. Chasing Pierre through multiple levels, with him running away each time, added a sense of purpose to progression. Some of the levels have been really cleverly designed, particularly the Cistern (altering water level is always fun) and the Coliseum (again, populist Greece is partially Roman), and others have felt like a never ending maze of corridors. Unfortunately, Natla’s turned up, stolen the artifacts, and Lara’s only just escaped by diving into a chasm, landing in the river below. We’re off to an island somewhere to stop her destroying the world.

  1. Well, almost. The four rooms are named after Atlas, Neptune, Damocles, and Thor. Neptune is a Roman god, and it would have been better to use Poseidon instead; I’m guessing they went for brand recognition. Thor is a Norse god, and while you could argue that Zeus is a close comparator (lightning, ruling the skies), the main reason they chose Thor is because they wanted the puzzle room to contain a giant hammer. ↩︎