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Like many JRPG series, it feels as if the Tales Of series has made strides in popularity in recent years. Both 2016’s Tales Of Berseria and 2021’s Tales Of Arise had charming worlds and flashy combat, and the latter has found a home on our picks for the best of the genre.
Now the series is adopting the other dominant JRPG trend of late: remakes and remasters. Tales Of Graces f Remastered, a revision of the 2009 entry in the series, is out now.
The announcement of a new Tokyo Xtreme Racer for the first time in 18 years was a welcome surprise at the end of 2024. It now has a release date: January 23rd. It’s an Early Access launch, but I am excited to drive a gaudy monstrosity on a Japanese highway.
Blade Chimera is a cyberpunk metroidvania from Team Ladybug, the team behind the really very good Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. As with Deedlit – one of our favourite ‘vanias – I’m drawn to it partly for the opulent real-time RPG combat, and partly because, to be very superficial, the protagonist is taller than I’m used to in games like this. Sometimes he feels too tall for the levels.
Following the Republican victory in the US 2024 elections, several US companies have experimented with “pivoting away” from Diversity, Ethics and Inclusion, a collection of employment practices aimed at challenging bias and prejudice in the workplace. Facebook owners Meta, Amazon, Walmart, McDonalds and others are reportedly scaling back their DEI initiatives to stave off backlash or litigation from conservative pundits and politicians, who regard DEI guidance about discrimination as a form of discrimination in itself. Following the election, I’ve also noticed a couple of video game company executives express misgivings about DEI – misgivings that, amongst other things, illustrate that “DEI” has come to mean a lot more than just annual training about micro-aggressions.
I have an on-and-off-again relationship with boardgaming based mostly on the fact that I have nobody to play boardgames with. I used to be part of a boardgaming circle, but then I missed a fateful opening round of Twilight Imperium, and then the pandemic started, and then everybody lost patience with Tabletop Game Simulator.
In what has become fine tradition, I have learned of an amazing mod on the same day I have learned that the mod has been kiboshed by publishers. The mod in question is the GTA 5 Liberty City Preservation Project, a six year project that rebuilds GTA 4’s Liberty City in GTA 5’s world. It launched earlier this month – and now it is no more, for Rockstar have descended like briefcase-wielding peregrine falcons and performed what is being called a “friendly takedown” on modding team World Travel. My brother did a “friendly takedown” on me once, and my elbow still doesn’t bend the right way.
The world looked upon the Nintendo Switch 2, and saw that it was good. Or is it? Observe its enlarged, bezel-shaved screen. Its all-black colour scheme. Its redesigned, more sculpted controllers. Clearly, this is a naked attempt at ripping off and cashing in on the real best gaming handheld of 2025, the Steam Deck.
I, for one, won’t stand for it. Here are five reasons why everyone excited about the Switch 2 is wrong, and should buy a Steam Deck instead. Or maybe the Steam Deck OLED, that one’s better.
Last year’s defining indie smash hit, Balatro? Not nominated for the IGF grand prize. Animal Well, which turned damn near every games journalist into a tiresome obsessive? Not nominated for anything. UFO 50, an impressive, important, big boy achievement snubbed by our own 2024 list? It did get a Grand Prize nomination.
I don’t disagree with any of the nominees or absences in this year’s Independent Games Festival Awards, so I don’t mention any of the above to stir up trouble. Instead I look at this list and think: wow, video games are more varied than ever, so much so that there’s no longer a dominant cultural narrative even within the specific niche of indie gaming.
Lonely Mountain: Snow Riders was one of the best demos I played last year, because it felt so good to gracefully slide down its white-powdered mountains (and clumsily crash into a tree). It might have been one of the best games I played last year, who knows, but it was delayed into 2025. Now it’s got a fixed release date again: January 21st.
My feelings about Forest Reigns are equal parts enthusiasm and disappointment, inflation and deflation, straight off the back of the announcement trailer. On the one hand, as a fan of weird forests, which is to say all forests, I’m keen on the prospect of an FPS set in a post-apocalyptic Paris that has been overrun by sentient, pissed-off trees. It’s from a team led by a former S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developer, too, and those S.T.A.L.K.E.R. alumni certainly know how to post a good apocalypse. On the other hand, the announcement video suggests a game in which you will mostly treat the frenzied flora as a source of “emergent” cover and terrain traps. Have a look.
