Things I Enjoyed In This Otherwise Bad Year of 2025
2025! Wow! What a stinker!!
As is customary in doing some sort of year in review in our current era, you gotta hand it to how bad a year it was, and boy howdy. Wow. If last year was dismaying this year was, hmm. I dunno. Not good! Really bad, actually!
Nah but really, this year has been abysmal and disheartening in countless ways. I guess you gotta be optimistic for...something. Finding camaraderie? Basic human kindness? Something? Anything?
I dunno...I dunno! At least it's over, as far as abstract definitions of time and calendars and such go.
So what was some good stuff that helped distract from all that?
Ah cool I'm glad you asked.
Look every year I try to do some sort of traditional, old school gaming magazine style top ten, written in an old school gaming magazine-style breakdown, and it sucks. I hate doing it. It's boring and played-out and I don't want to do that anymore. I just want to write about stuff that was cool, and nice, that I liked, as casually as I can muster. I think that's OK.
Anyway I'm gonna give it a whirl, if you'll humor me a bit.
Öoo is the smartest game I've ever played.
Y'hear that, John Blow, ya weird jar pisser? This little game has your schtick beat!!
Öoo is an incredibly cute little puzzle platformer where you control a little caterpillar that gets swallowed by a big bird from the outset, and have to navigate its labyrinthine innards to escape. Your little guy quickly gets an additional body segment (Öo, if you will), and later a second one (thus becoming Öoo, y'see?) and...that's it. That's the extent of the power-ups you require.
Oh, and those body segments are also bombs, that you can set and detonate. That's pretty important.
Initially these bombs are used to blow up blocks that block your path, or to launch your little caterpillar to a higher platform (or horizontally, to cross chasms), but it quickly gets far more complicated.
And! That's where the genius of the game's design kicks in. There is no text or flashing arrows or overly-chatty son pointing out the solution or hand-holding of any sort in Öoo. The game very carefully builds on each successive puzzle, requiring and having faith in the player to experiment with what worked in earlier puzzles and tweak their approach.
So many times playing this game I've muttered to myself "They can't possibly expect me to..." followed by "Well I'll be damned." Nowhere does this hit as hard as when you drop into each new area - you're often presented with a split path, with one apparently impossible, and another more approachable. That second path is often long and arduous, and generally ends in...nothing, but a shortcut back to that initial fork in the road.
But rather than being disappointed by the lack of trinkets or doodads on that long diversion, you instead return to that fork with the knowledge of how to immediately overcome that seemingly impossible alternate path. And that's great! Knowledge and experience! The true reward!
Öoo is such an incredibly smart game, and it's so good at carefully guiding the player through it while also making them feel like a genius for figuring out its challenges.
It's great and I can't recommend it enough.
2025, The Year of Linux on the Desktop, or: Why I Quit Windows
God that sounds dramatic. It's not complicated. I quit Windows because it sucks.
Some background: I built my PC in...2019, I think? And it's sorta more or less the same computer now as it was then, except...not. Ship of Theseus situation. Same motherboard, same OS drive (until now!), but over time I upgraded the CPU and GPU and RAM and SSDs and case and PSU and blah blah you get it.
When I built this thing originally, I paid (mistake one!) for a Windows 10 license to install on my m.2 SATA drive (mistake two!). A real, official license, the OS on a thumb drive. Very official. Perfect. No problems.
Except there were! And many more to come!
If modern Windows is all you've ever known, maybe you're just...used to it? Can't see it? But Windows 10 (and 11, to a slightly lesser but still present extent) are garish. Not entirely in a visual sense (maybe a little), but in a "you have the audacity to charge people money for this shit?!" kinda way.
Ads, everywhere. Candy Crush and MSN and all sorts of junk foisted at you. The casual "Hey baby, it's time to update. Just sit back and relax and let me do all the work. It'll be done soon ;)" natural language horseshit on updates where a simple progress meter would suffice. The constant, nonstop pestering to log into OneDrive and backup your files to OneDrive and you've uninstalled OneDrive would you like to reinstall OneDrive (and sign up for Office360, don't forget that!).
It's bad! It's obnoxious! And it eventually got so corrupted it blue screened my PC constantly.
I eventually relented, and finally decided to take Microsoft up on its free offer to upgrade to Windows 11 (one that the settings menu threw at me for months)...only to find the free offer rescinded. There was an option to create a Windows 11 media drive, to install it from the BIOS, but to access it would mean bypassing my license so I couldn't upgrade for free. And my PC was so unstable at this point that I could barely even flash the OS to a drive.
(My solution for the free Windows 11 license was...well, I had to pay some shady seller on Groupon $10 for a key, and that worked)
So, hey, all better, right? Nope! Windows 11 still crashed often, still decided all on its lonesome to randomly update itself when I was in the middle of something. It looked fancier, sure, but it still sucked all the same.
"Hey now, maybe that M.2 SATA drive - which was the wrong type of drive to buy, by the way - was corrupt? Maybe it wasn't Windows fault after all?" you might say. And sure, maybe.
But when I got a proper m.2 NVME drive I had to make a choice. Would I reinstall Windows 11? Or would I brave the wild west of Linux?
It wasn't a contest. I opted for CachyOS, and lemme tell ya, I ain't goin' back.
Is there a learning curve? Yes, absolutely. Did I mess up my install, and have to reinstall the OS from scratch? Yes, three times, in fact.
But once I got past that? It's been great! Stable! Fast! Almost all of my dumb video games run just fine, and the few art applications I kinda need I could sorta get running in a kinda hacky rigged kinda way. Ideal? Maybe not, but it's fine. I'll take an ounce of jank over the mess I dealt with on Windows.
And look, I get it, some people have special use cases for Windows. Specialized software, work requirements, Fortnite addiction, I get it. But between Windows going increasingly to shit (bloated, bad performance, stuffed to the gills with services it wants to pester you with) and Microsoft being an all-around horrendous company...look, if your PC or laptop is now supposedly-defunct with Windows 10 support ending, and you just use it to browse around online...why not give Linux a whirl?
Speaking for myself? For the first time since I built this thing, I finally feel like I actually own my computer, and that's pretty nice.
So yeah. Smell ya later, Billy Gates1.
Assassin's Creed Shadows has the nicest weather I've ever seen in a game.
I'm not gonna bore folks with the minutiae of what you do in Assassin's Creed Shadows. It's an Assassin's Creed game, of the recent action RPG vintage, so it's still all about running about a huge open world, exploring every inch of the map, and stabbing guys in the neck.
Just, y'know, Japan flavored, this time.
But! This being the first true "modern" game in the series, Ubisoft has outdone themselves in crafting the world (a thing they have done very well for a long time now, so this is saying something). On top of feeling more "alive" than past entries, the environment truly feels dynamic because of the season and weather system they've implemented.
When the game first sets you loose on the world, I skipped the open road and ran directly into a bamboo thicket. The sound of thunder, the bamboo violently swaying in the wind, leaves blowing about...it was the sort of thing I hadn't experienced since encountering a thunderstorm in the countryside in Red Dead Redemption back in 20102.
This was pretty quickly surpassed when the game finally transitioned to winter, and I ran Naoe through a town in what seemed like a blizzard late at night. Snowfall so thick you could barely see in front of you, only the obscured glow of torches and lamps on the road to point the way.
There's a lot of pretty great stuff in Assassin's Creed Shadows, but the weather...folks, it's somethin' else.
2025 - The Year I Went Back To Buying Music
It's kinda wild, if you think about it. Spotify started off pretty cheap, offering a ton of music that you could listen to on your computer (and later, phone) on demand. No stations like on Pandora! Just pick what you wanna listen to, when you wanna listen to it. Wow!
Then, once everyone was cozy with it, having retired their CDs to thrift shops or deleted their MP3s, legitimate or otherwise, they...jack up the price, subsidize a bunch of meathead podcasters, and cram a bunch of garbage AI music in your face. Plus, the audio quality? Garbage.
But not all at once of course! The process that made word of the year in 2023 took time to set in, but it got there, sure enough.
And in hindsight? It's absurd. Renting music for almost $20 a month, in perpetuity, when I know damn well I listen to the same stuff all the time. If only there was some way to...own that music, and listen to it on...something...
And there is! Oh, sure, it's not as easy to buy CDs in 2025 as it was in 2005 (RIP Cheapo Discs, I miss you), but you still can! And if the disc is out of print, you can probably buy it on Qobuz, or maybe even find it on Bandcamp.
And Bandcamp! What a cool site, what a cool service. Plenty of great music discovery to be made there. You can buy all of Men I Trust's albums on there. You should buy all of Men I Trust's albums on there. I know I did!
Late last year my mom found me a Sony CD/cassette/AM/FM stereo, and I got a few CDs I knew I'd been mooching in some way off of forever, between Spotify and Apple Music.
This was nice, and cool! But it wasn't convenient. I wanted something small, something portable...did they, in 2025, still make MP3 players?
Turns out, they sure do. The prices on them vary wildly (Sony makes some digital audio players that cost a few hundred bucks, and a number of brands you've probably never heard of occupy a space under that), but the only one I need, the only one you need, is the Fiio Snowsky Echo Mini.
It's tiny, it's shaped like a cassette player, the sound it puts out is amazing (it supports MP3 and FLAC, so this was my first chance to rip my old albums in FLAC). It's also...extremely cumbersome in a way I appreciate. The menus on it are kinda unintuitive, the screen will shut itself off after a few seconds. It's best used by picking an album, hitting play, stuffing in your pocket and listening to the entire thing.
The irony now, having this thing, is that I'm actually listening to more music than when I had access to the endless font of tunes that makes up digital streaming services. And that's great! God knows my brain is riddled with holes in its capacity for paying attention, so maybe going back to ye olde ways...that may just heal me yet.
Anyway, cancel your Spotify subscription. You don't need to know your "Wrapped" or whatever. Just cancel it and buy some tunes.
Okay but what was some good music you listened to in 2025 then?
Glad ya asked.
"Damn Grandpa are you still listening to The Muffs?" You better believe it, I bought the dang CDs, at least the ones you can still buy.
Control is maybe the most cohesively stylish game I have ever played.
I'm doing Control a disservice with that header. But...it's true. In its visuals, in its storytelling, in its acting, in its presentation and writing and music and vision and scope, Control is one of the most confident games I've ever played.
I don't know what else to say about it that hasn't already been said at this point. Maybe I'll toss this out - this is the only game I've ever played where I've done my best to not only track down every little document and memo in the game, but actually read them, too (they're really funny). The only one!
With Control Resonant due next year, I really gotta get the Remedy gamin' in gear, and work my way through...whew let's see...Alan Wake, Alan Wake: American Nightmare, Control AWE DLC, and Alan Wake 2.
If I gotta play Quantum Break in there, too, then I will!
2025 was a year for goofin' with cheapo retro cameras (and one good expensive one)
Right at the start of the year I found out about the "Camp Snap" camera. A relatively cheap (~$60) plastic camera that hearkened back to disposable cameras of yore, the Camp Snap sells itself on having no screen of any sort to view your shots. Much like an old disposable, you look through the (terribly offset) viewfinder, snap a picture, and later connect it via USB-C to your computer and phone and review your shots there. Maybe some worked out, maybe some didn't, but...it's fun.
Now, we're not talking high quality with this camera. The pictures are about 8 megapixels, the camera sharpens 'em up a bit, and they come out noisy no matter what. But what you can do is load up custom filters on it, which can look pretty damn nice. No, it's not shooting on RAW and editing in Photoshop or anything, but I've been able to take a lot of shots, crop 'em and frame 'em, and they look alright.
This was also the year I set out and about with my old Canon S95 (discovered out in the shed, where I would never have put it, but still in great condition). The pictures it takes are great! I get why smart phones have supplanted point-and-shoots, but like the Echo Mini for music, it's nice to have something that's just dedicated to a single task.
Midway through the year my dad helped me get an Olympus EM10 Mark IV, which is fantastic. Am I good with it? Eh. I'm still developing an eye for photography, and my candid shots of people are a bit stiff and lack dynamism (probably because they're not candid, I'm not sneaky enough). Does nice bokeh, though.
Last month, after having to work Thanksgiving Day, I used the extra pay to grab the Camp Snap Pro, their latest $100 offering that offers 16 MP shots, a Xenon flash (over the regular's LED), and a dial to select between four different filters. Is it better than the basic Camp Snap? I guess. The pictures are higher quality, and the flash is a lot better.
But in a way, I still prefer the cheaper one. It's smaller, and you're locked into whatever filter you left on it (mine is almost always in B&W). I find myself fiddling with the dial a bit too much on the Pro. That dial also feels, uh, not great. Doesn't give me a ton of confidence for its longevity.
When I was on Xiaohongshu earlier this year it was wild to see how many young folks over there just eat up old CCD point and shoot cameras. There's something really warm and nostalgic about the way even a lousy old digital camera captures an image. When you read up on all the post processing phone cameras do under the hood, it kinda makes sense why folks are looking back to older cameras.
Plus, I think there's something to that screenless Camp Snap ethos. Just take some shots. Maybe take a few extra if you're not confident. If it doesn't work out, oh well. If it does, cool. "Live in the moment," or whatever.
So, I dunno, go dig your old camera outta the junk drawer and give it a shot. Also, uh, maybe make sure the battery isn't pillowing out. Maybe do that for all your old electronics...just a good practice...
The Anbernic RG35XXSP is the console of choice for the "Everything Is Too Goddamn Expensive" era
Look, things are...not good, economically...at all. Unless you're some sorta crypto freak or get teen blood infusions and make billions of dollars off the backs of other folks.
As gaming goes, the Switch 2 is $500...for now. The Playstation 5 and the Xbox have both gone up in price. Hell, the Switch 1 is more expensive now than when it first came out. And while the value proposition of a PC is still probably best, you better brace yourself if you haven't gotten or built one already - just go look up how much RAM or SSDs cost. It's nuts! It's really bad!!
The good news, then, is that there's a solid...30 years or so of gaming to be had, if you know where to look (and download giant ROM sets), and you can play it all on the humble Anbernic RG35XXSP.
Available for...about $70 domestically, or a lot cheaper if you're brave and wanna order one from overseas, the 35XXSP is yet another emulator handheld that runs on Linux and emulates a fairly wide swath of "retro" games (from the older 70s and 80s consoles and arcade games up to at least some Dreamcast games, and most things in-between). It apes the form factor of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance SP, and feels pretty dang good in the hand. It's nice, it's compact, you can snap it closed and toss it in a bag (if you're a monster, I try to take care of mine).
I have spent so, so much time playing Picross on mine. Pea soup Game Boy filter and everything. Just doing some grid puzzles before bed, trying to Doctor Kawashima my brain age down before time and the stresses of the modern era render it into total mush.
I guess what I'm saying is...if current gaming is too expensive, just grab one of these and a big microSD card (those are getting expensive, too...) and download a million games to one of these things. Ride out this storm...surely that AI bubble is gonna pop any day now...
For A Little While in 2025 I Got Semi-Serious About Art
One of the hardest things for me to do is actually value my own work. I know in my gut that it's rude to dismiss praise from other people, but there's also this insidious thing about not having confidence in your own stuff that just eats away at you. "It's not actually good, they're just being nice," I say to myself.
For a while this year I tried to push past that. Going through pictures I took of sketches I did on scrap paper over the years, I imported them into my iPad and took time going over them in Procreate, coloring them, sharing them and (in a lofty, hopeful move) tried to lay them out to have them printed as stickers.
That...didn't pan out. I wound up having something of a health episode that made getting them printed unfeasible, and the entire project went onto the back burner. And now I'm back to being kinda down in the dumps on my stuff, stuck in a creative rut.
But for a minute there? Having people laugh at my stuff, y'know, in a good way? That was nice. It's nice to feel like the stuff I make matters and has worth. I'd like to try that again. Maybe next year I will.
I don't care about all this writing nonsense, show me that big grid of games you beat this year. Do it now!
Geez OK fine here.
Does that mean you didn't finish some?
Yes I'm sorry.
Is that everything?
No, probably not.
OK.
OK.
So what about 2026?
Look, for a post about stuff I supposedly liked this year, this whole thing just kinda has a negative stink on it. And I think that's just...the current condition. What we're all dealing with, to some extent or another, right now. It's real, real easy, maybe even safer, to be cynical and pessimistic about things right now. But...that sucks. That's an awful way to live, even if reality almost demands it.
I want to be somewhat hopeful, that things can be better. So I'm going to try to get my things in order. Divest of some stuff, get my health in order, try to make more art, try to read more (books, manga and garbage on the internet don't count). Visit friends when I can, or at least check in more often. Go outside (weather permitting...it's hot down here). Breathe. Y'know. Live.
I dunno, that sounds corny, but it's maybe the most sincere thing in this whole write-up. I want to believe that next year will be better, not just for myself, but everyone. I gotta hope it'll be.
Thanks for reading this mess, and take care of yourselves.
See ya.