[blog] Virtual Odyssey: Chronicles of a Lifelong Gamer

It’s been a month since the last update of this blog, and there have been quite a few new developments and events!

I don't want to go on for too long, so I’ll get straight to the last title I planned to start after Expedition 33: Doom The Dark Ages!

This latest iteration of the world’s most famous FPS struggled to impress me in the various previews that have come out over time, and I was really eager to see if those impressions would carry over once I got hands-on with the mouse. The answer is… halfway.

Let me start with a premise: for me, Doom Eternal is the peak of the series’ gameplay. Extremely fast, aerial, structured in a way that forces the player to use all the weapons rather than focusing on just a few and forgetting the rest.

TDA is, essentially, the opposite of all that. The gameplay feels sluggish, grounded, and the use of all the weapons is encouraged solely by the desire to complete the mastery challenge for each one, once they are fully upgraded.

It’s still Doom, with rock-solid and very fun gameplay, but the overall experience didn’t fully convince me. Also, it’s undeniable that the difficulty level has been dialed down: TDA’s Nightmare is Eternal’s Ultra Violence, without a doubt.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t fully convinced by the mech and dragon riding sections either (very rough and thrown in just for a brief variation from the first-person action). I also found the presence of the story to be excessive, with far too many cutscenes that serve no real purpose for a plot that exists solely as a pretext to shred demon hordes with shotguns and shields.

Being able to play it for free thanks to Game Pass definitely softened my opinion of the experience, because at full price I would have found it rather unpalatable.



Following Doom, of course, comes the arrival of Nintendo’s new console, the Switch 2!

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and Nintendo fully embraced this with the first numbered console that follows the previous one, similar to PlayStation’s approach.

Mario Kart World is a title with incredibly high potential to build on over the years (hopefully with support on par with the previous installment), which remains the most successful and content-rich to date.

I also took the chance to quickly try out Pokémon Scarlet and Tears of the Kingdom: the first patched for free, and the second in its Switch 2 version. I truly envy those who can play this title with its enhanced and rock-solid graphics (after 160 hours, I’d say I’m good!).

Besides the online subscription, I also purchased the expansion pack so I wouldn’t miss the chance to dive back into my teenage years thanks to the GameCube Virtual Console! I’m replaying The Wind Waker and F-Zero GX and loving every minute spent lying in bed playing with the console in handheld mode, which to me is a huge step forward compared to the first model (I never got the OLED version).

I’ll wrap up this hefty update with The Alters, the latest work from 11bit studios, which I had high expectations for and which so far is really delivering. The idea of mixing survival and management always interests me (I’m also really looking forward to the next State of Decay), here in a sci-fi setting and with the clone mechanic, which I’m currently finding very engaging.


I have less and less time to play everything I’d like to!

It's been over a month since I last updated this page, but once again, certain events have diverted my attention to other activities beyond simply tackling my backlog.

I had left off at completing Doom The Dark Ages and starting The Alters, while also beginning to delve into the titles available for the Switch 2.

What Happened?

To make a long story short, Death Stranding 2 was released (along with some other personal matters, but this isn't the place for that!). Kojima Productions' latest effort has already taken up almost 80 hours of my time (and I'm only halfway through the game!), so I've decided to put everything else on hold to dedicate myself to the arduous task of rebuilding and reuniting Australia.

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Gaming Updates

I'm a bit frustrated with The Wind Waker because a bug caused me to lose a good hour and a half of a rather tedious play session. That led me to pause it in the final stages of the game, and I'll wait to finish the PlayStation 5 title before I go back to it.

Regarding the Nintendo Switch, I've also picked up a few titles I've been meaning to play, such as Echoes of Wisdom, Bayonetta 3, and Pikmin 3 Deluxe. So, once I get the platinum in Sam's latest odyssey, I'll be spending the rest of the summer exclusively with my Nintendo console.

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Other Games on My Radar

Meanwhile, interesting titles continue to pop up on Game Pass, and there are a couple of indies that have piqued my curiosity (Back to the Dawn and Wheel World, just to name the ones available this month). And, I still need to finish The Alters.

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A Subscription Dilemma?

Perhaps I should cancel my subscription to avoid constantly having new titles I want to try, especially since I already have so many (considering my usual limited free time).

Update from the past month: I finished Death Stranding 2 and got the platinum in about 140 hours (a handful of hours less than it took me to platinum the first game back in 2019).

Wanting to break things up with a lighter, shorter experience, I played Wheel World on Game Pass: a fun little game, but one that definitely could’ve pushed further on the narrative side: the potential was all there.

Since I had put it on hold because of Kojima’s game, I also went back to The Alters, though it was tough to pick up at first. I had stopped just before the end of the second act, and in the first couple of days I even considered dropping it altogether because the game had thrown me into a pretty tricky situation, and after a two-month break it wasn’t easy to jump back in. But since I didn’t want to abandon it on the spot, and even less so restart from scratch, I pushed through, and I’m glad I did: I managed to finish Jan’s journey. A brilliant game, and another personal hit from developers who have never let me down so far.

Now, while waiting for Silksong, I’ve started Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. I’ve always appreciated DON’T NOD’s storytelling and atmospheres, and this one’s no different. The late 17th-century American setting is intriguing, and the story, with its investigations reaching into the realm of the dead, is genuinely captivating.

Love the screenshots that you share on your blog.

Love the screenshots that you share on your blog.

Thanks a lot! I’ve always loved photography, and in video games I always try to take a moment to capture some “natural” shots, meaning without putting too much work into framing or special effects, but instead leaving the image as close as possible to what the player actually experiences in that moment.

The downside is that it sometimes breaks the flow of the action, so I have to find a balance between staying in the gameplay and wanting to snap a photo (whether through the controller button or the game’s own photo mode).

These days I’m taking the chance to add some posts about the past weeks and trying to use this structure to keep track of my gaming backlog: what I’m playing, what I’ve finished, and what I’m adding to the backlog or to my to-buy list!

Week 36: September 1 - 7

This week, after years of waiting, there’s only one name to shout: Silksong. Team Cherry’s title, as the internet has already made clear, literally managed to crash almost every store where the game was available (surely the lack of pre-orders and preload had quite an impact), not to mention the staggering figure of over half a million active players on Steam alone.

In the meantime, while waiting for Silksong, I also kept going with the brilliant Banishers, which I need to stick with so it doesn’t risk getting pushed to the side.

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Games Completed

None

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Currently Playing

• Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
• Hollow Knight: Silksong

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Backlog Growing

• None

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Added to To-Buy List

• Cronos: The New Dawn (survival horror with hardcore difficulty? I’m in!)
• Hell is Us (an investigative action game with no maps, markers, or explicit directions: super curious about this one)
• Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots (I really enjoy arcade golf games; I’ll wait a bit to see early impressions from players, maybe even catch a good discount)
• Militioner (the concept - a giant cop watching your every move - is weird and intriguing. The game looks like it’s offering more than just a wild gimmick)
• Dome-King Cabbage (a visual novel set in a monster-collecting RPG world? I love this kind of crazy stuff. The visual style grabbed me at first glance)

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Conclusion

This September week of 2025 is packed with interesting releases, and the upcoming weeks won’t be any different! (I’m very curious to see how the new Silent Hill f will turn out). The number of games that inspire me, that I want to try, and that I’m sure I’ll eventually buy just keeps growing, while, as usual, time remains the harshest enemy.

To make things even trickier, I’ve had the urge for some old-school Western RPGs for a while now, particularly Pillars of Eternity, which I’ve had sitting in my library thanks to Amazon Games giving it away for free together with its expansions. On top of that, I’ve also got several Switch titles I already bought, which are now firmly sitting in the backlog.

Week 37: September 8 – 14

I decided to put Silksong on hold to pick Banishers back up. On one hand, I felt bad leaving it on pause; on the other, the game’s difficulty (and the frustration that comes with it) doesn’t really fit with the personal commitments I have right now, so I’d rather play something more relaxing than a more demanding game.


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Games Completed

None

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Currently Playing

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden – Continued Red and Antea’s adventure. The atmosphere really shines here, as does diving into the various cases that let us explore the lives of the settlers.

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Backlog Growing

None

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Future Purchases

None

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Conclusion

As I already mentioned, right now I need something a bit more laid-back. DON’T NOD’s game is exactly what I need at this moment: it takes the roots of the latest two God of War games but tones them down in terms of complexity and gameplay, focusing instead on story building and the relationship between the two protagonists (whose constant interplay I really enjoy).

At first, I was leaning toward following the “good” path that leads to a certain conclusion, but over the hours I slowly changed my mind. It almost feels like the game is deliberately asking you later on whether you’re truly sure about the decision you made practically right after the opening prologue…

Week 38: September 15 – 21

While I kept going with Banishers (which turned out to be a lot longer than I initially expected), I was reminded of the release of Skate!



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Currently Playing

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden – Still pushing through the adventure, I shouldn’t be too far from the end.
skate. – A semi-sim f2p I’m curious to see evolve. I’m definitely not approaching it like a full-priced game, but simply for what it is: a free-to-play.

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Future Purchases

Pacific Drive – This one’s been on my wishlist for a while now, and I’ve noticed it’s often on sale at pretty tempting prices on PC lately.



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Conclusion

I’ve now passed the 30-hour mark in Banishers and I’m starting to feel its weight (while also trying to keep my OCD tendencies in check that push me to clear the map of all those markers, which isn’t even that hard since the compass makes it very easy to reach them). I think I’ll finish it while still dedicating some time to side quests, as I’m really enjoying them.

As for Skate, like I said, I don’t have big expectations, and I’m not even complaining about the first post-launch days, which are clearly filled with errors and small (and big) bugs that affect the experience. If anything, I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised so far by the depth of the gameplay and the sheer amount of options to fine-tune controls and camera settings to your own preference. It might turn out to be a great “background” game for casual sessions and online trick battles with other players.

Lastly, when it comes to Pacific Drive, maybe it’s finally time to move it from my wishlist into my backlog. Still, I’ve got a long queue of other games waiting, and I’d really like to spend more time on the Switch 2: maybe finally starting Pikmin 3 Deluxe or Bayonetta 3…

Week dedicated to a new entry among the active titles, just to take a break from Banishers, which I’m suffering through because of its repetitiveness.

In progress

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden – I’m tired, the end is not as close as I thought at the beginning
skate. – Still fun when taken in small doses. It keeps enough good ideas to stay installed on my hard drive for a long time
Pikmin 3 Deluxe – I wanted to pick something from my backlog to play on Switch in a different genre than usual

Future purchases

and Roger – the premise seems very interesting, plus it’s about a one-hour experience to enjoy as if it were little more than an interactive movie.

Conclusion

After passing the forty-hour mark on Banishers I got a bit tired and needed to alternate it with something more relaxing. Sure, skate. is fun and has great potential, but since it’s free-to-play I prefer to take it slowly, knowing that in the future it can only get more stable and potentially richer in content.

I was looking at my PC backlog when I decided to recover some titles from my Switch library that I still hadn’t started, and I went with Pikmin 3 Deluxe, also because it’s a different type of game from what I usually play.

It’s not my first encounter with this series, I played the second one on GameCube (and I don’t even want to remember exactly how many years ago), and the game immediately hooked me with its so unusual gameplay. Pikmin 4 is definitely still on my radar as a title to catch up on, and I should ask my girlfriend if she wants to try playing together since the whole adventure can also be tackled in co-op.

As for the title I added to the future purchases list, I was really intrigued by the premise, along with the fact that it’s quite a short experience, perfect to enjoy in a single evening!