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Gaming Report Q2 2025

Kind of a short list this quarter, but I did put more emphasis on my Playdate, and I should have at least one new review coming up over there pretty soon. Here's everything else.

1000xResist

a screenshot of 1000xResist. A woman dressed in blue, named Watcher, stands in an orange room talking to a woman dressed in orange, saying 'Did... Principal speak with you?'

This definitely falls into the category of "media that is too smart for me", but I still found myself engrossed in it to the point that I pretty much burned through an entire weekend. I don't really want to say much on what this game is about because it's really better to just figure it out as you go along... I guess as a very, very basic overview, there is a self-contained, futuristic habitat of women who all bear the face of the Allmother they revere... and then stuff happens.

Despite enjoying my time overall, I couldn't help but feel a little dissatisfied at the end. Some things didn't make sense to me⁠—not really in a "I didn't put the pieces together" way, but more in a "this is counter-intuitive and seems like an oversight" way. A larger focus on Watcher's relationships and life in the habitat would have been nice. And the ending... well, let's just say that the game presents a dozen decisions at once, and instead of saying "wow, let me make some thoughtful choices here", my game-brain instinctively goes "there's no way a developer is making enough endings to cover a dozen decisions, this must be an all-or-nothing situation". Which was, for once, not the case, and I suffered through two depressing-as-shit "you dumbass" endings before getting one of the canonical ones. They were at least kind enough to go "yeah, you cocked it up, but we'll reload you right back at decision time so you can do it again", but like... shame on me for having some understanding of the history and limits of game design, right? I dunno. I'd still play it again.


Mosaic of the Pharaohs

a screenshot of Mosaic of the Pharaohs. A worn stone tablet overlays a grid of numbers and colors. The tablet has a pixel art image of a cow and reads Bull of Apis: The Apis bull was a sacred animal worshipped at Memphis as the earthly manifestation of the god Ptah. Recognized by specific markings - including a white triangle on the forehead and a scarab-shaped mark under the tongue - the Apis bull lived a pampered life, kept in luxury by the temple priests. When it does, it was embalmed and buried in massive underground sarcophagi in the Serapeum, a temple complex devoted to its cult. Successive Apis bulls were believed to be the reincarnations of the same divine spirit, making the Apis cult one of the most enduring and elaborate in ancient Egyptian religion.

This is the newest entry in the Mosaic series of games, which is a Minesweeper-like tile-filling puzzle game spread out over a large canvas. You may recall I previously played Proverbs, another game in this style. This one was Egyptian-themed, and despite the unfortunate "white British explorers coming to loot ancient tombs" imagery, it might be a bit better than Proverbs was. Upon completing a section of the canvas, rather than being awarded an old-timey idiom, you now get a snippet of Egyptian history. It isn't the "same old stuff everybody already knows" kind of trivia either; it actually gets pretty detailed and spans across many eras of the Egyptian empire, covering important figures, neighboring nations, and everyday life. On the other hand, you don't unlock animated minstrels in this game like you do in Proverbs, so maybe it's not as good after all.

For those curious about these games, the dev put out a freebie that covers news topics of 2024. I haven't played it because working through a puzzle to constantly remind myself of all the depressing shit that happened in 2024 doesn't really sound like fun to me, but hey, it's an option!


Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping

a screenshot of Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping. In the background, an anthropomorphic duck and an anthropomorphic alligator question an anthropomorphic deer. This is overlaid with a sepia filter. A larger image of a duck wearing a trench coat and fedora - the Detective - says 'It was time to do some snooping.'

Just as the Duck Detective is addicted to bread, so too am I addicted to Duck Detective games.


Oblivion: Remastered

a screenshot of Oblivion. A forest valley at sunset opens up to the horizon beyond; ramparts of a city wall can be seen beyond the trees.

Because Oblivion was my first Bethesda game, I am obligated to state that it is the best. It's the only one Elder Scrolls game I ever feel like replaying, anyway. And now's a good time to do it!

I know everyone says it looks good, but dang it looks good. I was on the road north out of Bravil and looked through the trees up at the mountains and thought "holy shit that's Frostcrag Spire up there". For those of you who don't understand this reference, that's basically being on the south end of the map and seeing an impressive wizard tower poking up out of the mountains all the way on the north end of the map. Wild.

So far, there is only a single change I don't consider an improvement: the difficulty slider which you used to be able to fine-tune has been replaced with five difficulty options. The reason this is bad is because the middle-of-the-road "normal" difficulty has me handily wiping foes while they ineffectually tickle me with foam pool noodles, whereas "hard"⁠⁠—the next notch up⁠⁠⁠⁠—generally requires me to burn half of my inventory to survive a single one-on-one combat encounter. I know you're only changing damage numbers on the backend, you can't let me balance things out a little bit to have some semblance of challenge without needing to reload a fight with a random bandit five times? Especially when I could do it before?

After about ten hours of regularly swapping the difficulty setting back and forth trying to figure out which one was less awful, I found a mod claiming to fix it. But I never actually got around to installing it because I got distracted by...


Zenless Zone Zero

a screenshot of Zenless Zone Zero. A woman with white ponytail, orange goggles, orange and black military garb, and square-ish metallic apparatus on her back rushes the camera with her sword in an action shot.

Ah shit, I'm caught on the treadmill, aren't I.

As of this writing, I'm currently playing Maliki: Poison of the Past, a cute turn-based RPG I'll hold off on talking about until next quarter. Plus, we're currently in the middle of the Steam Summer Sale, and there's never any telling what I'll pick up. Pleeeenty of games on that there wishlist which only ever seems to get bigger and not smaller, I'll say that.

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