Weekly Update #43: How is this Game so Good?

October 19-25, 2025

Is this the gaming I’ve missed while I’ve been away? I should play video games more often! In all seriousness, Expedition 33 continues to be a phenomenal game and I’m glad I was able to make the time to play it. It does make me worried that other games will pale in comparison, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Anyway, on to acquisitions!

Game Acquisitions

I had a couple different purchases last week. The first was Fanatical’s cheapest bundle offering with five games for $3. A couple of the games look pretty good, a couple look OK, and there might be a stinker. However, for $3, I’m willing to take the gamble. I also purchased the Castlevania Advance Collection in my quest to play every Castlevania game. The rest of the games were freebies.

# of Games: 10

Total Money Spent: $11.94

Price/Game: $1.19

Game Recaps

I’m putting so much time into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 it’s not even funny. I haven’t gamed this much in months and it feels great. I love this game so much, I’m enjoying every session so far. For context, I defeated Renoir and the Paintress and am currently roaming around in Act III checking out anywhere I haven’t been to yet. It’s been fun trying out some of the optional bosses and red danger areas I didn’t think I was supposed to go to yet. I want to see as much as possible before heading back to Lumière to face the real Renoir. Check out my playthrough! Like last week, I’ll link to one video as well as the playlist where you can find the whole let’s play. Also a reminder that my Tales of Phantasia videos are still trickling out despite finishing the game already. Same deal with those, I’ll link to one video and the playlist. The finale is still coming November 5th! 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched last week:

·       Splinter Cell: Deathwatch Season 1 Episodes 5-8 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Gen V Season 2 Episodes 1-4 (still watching, show ongoing?)

·       Riddick

Splinter Cell: Deathwatch has been, well...watched. It was OK, nothing special. It definitely didn’t fill the Splinter Cell-shaped hole in my life that a new game would. Gen V is just as over the top and gory as ever to the point where it makes it hard to watch sometimes. Also, the political landscape following so closely to the real world makes it hard to watch in other ways. I had the same complaint with the latest season of The Boys. If they couldn’t find a way to pivot, it’s probably for the best it’s ending after its next season. Even so, I still enjoyed my time with it. The Riddick movie was a nice return to the simplicity of Pitch Black. Besides the intro and outro, the whole movie took place on one planet with Riddick just trying to survive. It did seem like they tried to set up a more wacky sequel going back to the weird space death cult from the last movie so we’ll see if that ever goes anywhere.

Conclusion/Upcoming

I’m deep into Expedition 33 and I think I can safely say this is the best game I’ve played in years. Assuming it stays at the quality it’s been at so far, it’s getting a 10/10 from me. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that is both more cinematic and has a fun and engaging combat system as this one does. It absolutely lives up to the hype and will be my GOTY. I still haven’t finished it though so I don’t want to be premature with a review. Just felt like gushing I suppose.

My plan for next week is to finish up Gen V and start my next show which will hopefully finally being those old anime I talked about a couple weeks back. Now that the Riddick series is done, I’m moving on to 28 Years Later. I’m not really a horror movie guy but I’ve seen the other entries so I might as well keep going with this one. On the gaming front, I’m probably not going to get any co-op gaming in as my friend picked up some extra shifts. I will, however, absolutely be continuing my Expedition 33 playthrough. I don’t want it to end 😭 Anyway, that’s all for now. My next post will be the October monthly. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,664 (+10)