Stop me if you’ve heard this one before - I tried this game before a few years back (With my friend Sean in Co-op) and didn’t mesh with it. Retrying it now solo, there’s a perfectly okay game here if you don’t mind the game feeling a bit closer to a demo and some hit or miss humour.

Jade didn’t have time for It Takes Two this month as planned so we settled for a different game we both had from prior conversations - Tick Tock: A Tale for Two. Originally on mobile, the game promises complex puzzles in a mythical world. In a one sentence review? It’s not going to stand the test of time for me.

An unfortunate aspect of games is their lack of preservation and futureproofing. Games are developed for specific platforms and can be lost to time when newer hardware comes in. Licencing can also mean that a game becomes no longer available in a digital format, leaving people to scramble for whatever physical copies remain. These games can end up with a mystique about them (Pardon the X-Men Pun), a mythical status as an incredible game. Deadpool is an example of this and with the release of the third movie, it jumped price to upwards of £600 – a ludicrous amount for any game. Luckily I had a copy from before and to celebrate the anniversary of the first movie however many February’s ago, I elected to play it.

After 100%ing the base game (but before the final boss), I took on the game’s DLC, The Mask of Darkness. The plot of the DLC has you hunt down the most mysterious member of the Immortals – Radjen, who admittedly kind of disappeared from the story in the main game. Fair warning if you choose to play, this DLC is a fair bit harder than that which has come before.

For whatever reason, I didn’t get around to playing The Lost Crown last year, something which I sought to remedy this year. I’m glad I did because this game would have easily been in my top 5 of last year – I’m not even that big on 2D Platformers and Metroidvania’s but this is just /that/ good.

As part of a joined New Years resolution, myself and Jade decided that we will play and complete a Co-op title every month of the year. First game on the list was Operation: Tango, spy thriller of I expect you to Die meets relationship testing of Overcooked.

Any good self respecting sequel primarily needs to improve upon the elements of the previous title before it can afford to do anything else. Sonic Adventures was fun but had a lot of bloat and jank. Sonic Adventure 2 manages to fix vast swathes of these problems though it isn’t perfect.

Save for injury or loss of game/console, I don’t think it’s ever taken me so long to complete so relatively short a game. I suppose it comes with the caveat that this was my game that I played on lunch breaks, night shifts and travelling but even then, there’s something about Sonic Adventures that had me both apathetic about returning to it and somehow still playing it to completion.

I’ve been a fan of this series since I was a child and have played most of the 15 odd games that have released. Yet there’s 4 that have alluded me even as an adult – not through rarity but opportunity and time. One of them is Secret Agent Clank, a spin off released on the PSP. Thanks to PS Plus premium, I was given the chance to play it for the first time. Despite what I’ve heard, I had a decently good time with it.

In the leadup to the release of Into the Pit and my 52in52 Journey, I figured a return to Help Wanted with it’s PS5 version was in order. As I did the first time, I had a great time with what I consider to be one of the best FNaF experiences out there.

My original plan here was to wait for the leaked Little Nightmares PS5 oirt and then play both games in the lead up to Little Nightmares 3. The former hasn’t materialised and the latter is delayed until 2025 so that plan was a little scuppered. With Sony putting the game on PS Plus, I just caved and played it now. It’s not a bother though as Little Nightmares 2 is a really fun experience.

Despite playing games for around 20 years now, there are still major gaps in my gaming experiences, one of which is Sonic the Hedgehog. Save for mindlessly mashing through Sonic Heroes as a kid, I hadn’t played any. Thankfully the semi modern trend of rereleasing collections of older games (Sonics been doing it for years to be fair) means I can enjoy the series from the beginning. This is going to be a difficult review to write since my feelings were all over the place during these games.

While corporate meddling has always been a problem, it feels like a long time ago where games in the AAA space were allowed to be games rather than thinly veiled money making schemes for executives. The PS3 era was a haven for the linear 10 hour game. Legendary video game Auteur Suda51 had a couple of these in as many years, both of which are seeing remasters this year. In honour of that and just wanting to play them, enjoy a two part pseudo series of reviews, rounding out with the second game – ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’

Continuing the trend of dipping into their gold mine, Daxter has found his way onto the PS Premium service. Releasing three years prior to last months rerelease, Daxter is seen as the better of the two PSP released spin offs and I can certainly see why.

The final game in the Jak and Daxter series (save for the HD Remaster collection on PS3) as well as the latest game canonically, The Lost Frontier has made its way to PS+ Premium. As a big fan of the Jak series, I was excited to play this one (and Daxter which was since added to the service). Developed by High Impact Games following their work on Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank for the R&C series, the community generally looks down on this one however I wanted to form my own opinion. While it’s definitely the “Least good” game in the series, there are still aspects worth praise here.

While it’s been on Playstation Plus’ premium tier for a good while now, the retroactive addition of a Platinum trophy sparked my interest in playing the game. That mixed with enthusiasm from Jade meant this one shot to the top of the list. How did it fare then?

For a while, I had considered cancelling my subscription to PS+ Premium, thinking I wasn’t getting my money’s worth out of the service. Trust Sony to then reveal their hand and offer classics that I actually want to play, including but not limited to the main PSP game I played, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters. An old favourite, years on the internet would have you think this one was as awful as they get. Thankfully after playing, my opinions on the game hold strong.

Despite being a PS1 and PS2 platformer kid, I never actually played the original Sly trilogy. I had played the Ratchet and Clank games, later playing the Jak trilogy but Sly was my blind spot until I played the HD collection in 201N and absolutely loved them. So when Sony finally sorted their PS Plus Premium tier to have some actual bangers like Sly Cooper on, I was happy to dive in again.

While corporate meddling has always been a problem, it feels like a long time ago where games in the AAA space were allowed to be games rather than thinly veiled money making schemes for executives. The PS3 era was a haven for the linear 10 hour game. Legendary video game Auteur Suda51 had a couple of these in as many years, both of which are seeing remasters this year. In honour of that and just wanting to play them, enjoy a two part pseudo series of reviews, starting with the first game – ‘Shadows of the Damned’

With the release of the Mochi Madness event for mythical Pokémon Pecharunt, we are officially at the end of the life cycle for the mainline Generation 9 games, Scarlet and Violet. I have played through the base game in its entirety twice, as well as a single playthrough of the DLC. Now is as good a time as any to give my overall thoughts and review. In general, I’d say the game is good with an asterisk.