Blue Prince

I mentioned at one point that I had beaten Blue Prince – inasmuch as one can truly believe they have fully plumbed the depths of the bottomless puzzle pool that is Blue Prince, which at this point I fully believe I have done. But did I like the game?

First, an anecdote: a few weeks ago now I was a guest on the Blizzard Watch Podcast, and we asked editor-in-chief Liz if she liked Blue Prince. We then poked fun at it later because she hemmed and hawed about the game, talked about a number of things she did or didn’t like, discussed the weirdness and the puzzles and the worldbuilding and whether or not things like the letter I missing from every keyboard matters, and never got around to actually saying whether or not she liked the game. This is, I am finding, something of a common refrain.

1000xRESIST

Sometimes you play a game, and maybe that game is fun for a while, but when you’re done, nothing really sticks with you. You bring nothing to the table, you take nothing away, and you’re finished with it, done and dusted. I find this to be a pretty common experience with AAA games these days, to be honest.

Transistor

I decided at some point (probably after surveying my enormous Steam backlog) that I was going to start keeping track of games when I finish them, so that I remember to talk about them. Anyway, the first game of the year finished in 2025 was Supergiant Games’ Transistor. I actually own Transistor twice; once on the PS3, which I bought, and once on Steam, where my friend Maxine was kind enough to gift it to me for Christmas and thus remind me that I never really got too far into it. On the PS3, I both found the text size on screen infuriatingly small, and also found the combat system just way too hard for some reason, so I abandoned it not far into the game – which is a problem, because there is such a good game under the surface here.