#5 | Video Games - November Check In - 4 Minute Game Blog

It's November 3rd and I'm sitting at my desk thinking about how I haven't written a blog post since July. In my defense, I have no defense. I could argue that all the musical theater I've seen & audio books I've listened to and TTRPGs I've been playing have kept me from writing this blog, but that would be a lie & I don't believe in lying unnecessarily. Especially to you, dear reader. The truth is the same as it always is... I've spent as much time as I possibly could playing video games. Since my last check-in, I've finished 10 more games bringing the grand total to 24 for 2026. So let's talk about those.

JULY

Picking up right where I left off from the July Check-In, I committed myself to Kingdoms Of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. I learned about this 3rd person, action RPG from a youtube channel I've been watching for years. One of the hosts of said channel raved about KoA. They played it on the channel to celebrate a subscriber milestone & there are even Steam reviews that credit her with their knowledge & adoration of it. I am happy to say that this somewhat hidden gem of a game does scratch the "lots of fun to do" itch that I get sometimes. It has an interesting world, fun RPG character building & absolutely brutal combat animations. It's a quintessential 7 out of 10 banger & I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

Soul-like likers have all had the experience of reaching a boss that refuses to give an inch. We've all faced some jerk boss or worse, an overcompensating mini boss that decided this was their moment to stand in your way & demand a perfect performance from you. For me, that boss was the Mad Clown Puppet from 2023's Lies Of P. I completely dropped this game 3 years ago when I first met this big idiot. For some reason, I had no response to his graceful, pirouetting attacks. It seems the river of gamer tears I cried from not being able to advance beyond this clown must have reach the doors of NEOWIZ because in 2025 they released the Overture DLC which included adjustable difficulty. So, determined not to be bested by a deranged circus reject, I jumped back in with a fresh save file & renewed determination. It was only after I finished the rest of the game that I learned that this striped idiot was skippable. Oh well, he's dead forever now.

AUGUST

At some point in the distant past, I tried my hand a being a Twitch streamer. One of the games I presented to my audience was 2021's Scarlet Nexus. An anime, action RPG about apocalypses, time travel, clones & teens with super powers, aka most anime media. I did finish Scarlet Nexus back in 2021 but there are two playable characters with their own storylines that diverge & intersect all over the place so I decided on a whim to take the other path. I remembered really enjoying the combat & my 2nd time around confirmed that. You use telekinetic powers to break through enemies defenses & you have a party of companions who enhance your character & add debuffs to enemies at the press of a button. For me, coating an enemy in oil or water then commanding a party member to hit them with fire or electricity never lost its charm. Also, borrowing the power to slow time, teleport or go invisible to gain an advantage kept me going when the story & cutscenes let me adrift in distracted thoughts. However, when I got to use my telekinesis to ram a bulldozer into some freakish monstrosity or surf on a piece scaffolding to one shot groups of enemies, I was so back!

The iron grip that the action RPG genre had on me was finally broken when I realized that it had been nearly a year since Hades II hit 1.0 on 09/25/25. I put about 50 hours into this game during the early access period & another 25-ish immediately after 1.0 but I fell off at some point & let it sit until August of this year. Then I came back with a vengeance & a fresh save. I'm not sure where the compulsion to restart unfinished games from the beginning comes from but it never lets me down. I blazed through Melinoe's journey, adding around another 24 hours to my play time. After bashing Cronos, thrashing Typhon & rolling credits, I had spent about 101 hours pounding the pantheon & I would do it again. Supergiant somehow figured out how to make me feel unstoppable & at the same time remind me that any enemy can actually stop me if I'm not careful.

September

I don't typically buy big Triple-A games on day one because they usually need some patches to fix lingering issues. Onimusha: Way Of The Sword was no exception. I waited a whole 4 days before diving in. In all honesty, I loved the demo for this game & I don't why I waited at all because I couldn't put this one down once I started. Similar to my feelings about Scarlet Nexus, the combat was the star of the show. WotS gave me so many tools to dispatch an admittedly small variety of enemies but each encounter was tense & every boss was standout, even if I did have to kill a few of them more than once. I appreciate this game keeping its scope small & focusing on the things it did well. I left Onimusha feeling a combination of satisfaction & a desire for more. A tricky balance to strike for sure but Capcom seems to be on a generational run right now so I'm not surprised that they pulled this off.

If you're wondering when I'm going to get to a game that actually came out in 2026, then I finally have one for you. A short 6 days after finishing Onimusha, I also rolled credits on an action platformer called Motorslice from indie dev, Regular Studio. In Motorslice, you play as the green-haired, orange jump suited Slicer P. She is sent into a network of megastructures with a chainsaw sword & a flying, spherical droid to locate & kill hostile, living construction vehicles. This game is filled to the brim with challenging platforming sections & intriguing puzzle bosses that have to be climbed on & chainsaw-ed to death. Yellow paint haters be warned, you will not like this game but you should get over it just this one time & experience Motorslice for yourself.

Despite having 270 games in my Steam library, most of which I either haven't finished or haven't started, I still find it hard to choose a game to play sometimes. Looking at my list of games is like staring into a fully stocked fridge & deciding there's nothing to eat. In these moments of choice paralysis, I usually reach for something I can microwave or throw in the air fryer for a quick bite of something familiar instead of trying something new. So in late September, still starving for games after having devoured two games already, I reheated some of that good ole Batman: Arkham Asylum. The good news is, Rocksteady's classic caped crusading adventure still hits the spot. There was one part of this meal that I had to push to the edge of my plate though. That being the post credit scene that set up what would eventually become Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. Yuck!

I followed up Arkham Asylum with Batman: Arkham Origins. I also finished this game before September could get away from me. There is something about a young, angsty Batman that really makes me happy. He yells at Alfred, he temporarily kills Bane, he beats the ~~shit~~ out of The Joker for the very first time. I adore this even more flawed version of the character. It also sets up a fun situation where Gotham's criminals have only heard rumors & whispers of a bat man making the moments when you drop in & hand them their asses all the more satisfying.

OCTOBER

Would you believe me if I told you that I've purchased The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt no fewer than 3 times on 3 platforms & never got beyond the combat tutorial in Kaer Morhen... Well it's true. Or it was true until the remaster released so late in September that I couldn't possibly finish it before the end of that month. Every now & then a game comes along that I can't put down & this was one. I usually play other stuff between sessions of longer games so I don't burnout but I just couldn't stop witching. I was so wrapped in side missions & characters that I broke my anti-save scumming vow early & often. Am I ashamed? No! I found Ciri, got the good ending, did it with Keira, helped Triss save the magic users, recruited everyone for the final battle & did it with Yennifer on the back of a unicorn. I witched as hard as I could & I feel no shame!

I did manage to play & finish another game that actually came out this year. On October 22nd, I rolled credits on a fantastic indie puzzle game called Piece By Piece by Neon Polygons. Not to be confused with Piece By Piece, an indie puzzle game by Gamkat that released during the same week in March. The Neon Polygons Piece By Piece gives you a character that needs to get from the starting point to the exit. You get them there by connecting, rotating, flipping, copying & otherwise manipulating puzzle pieces to create paths. As with most puzzlers, I struggled a bit & had to look up solutions to some levels but I thoroughly enjoyed relaxing with this game across my 10 hours of play time.

Well, dear reader, here we are at the end of another broken promise of a blog. I named this thing "4 Minute Game Blog" because I thought I could shrink my thoughts into bite sized bits to accommodate our inch long attention spans but it turns out I'm a ~~fucking~~ fraud. The only silver lining here is that you might be into frauds if you read this whole thing. If I'm right & you did enjoy this, you should follow me on Bluesky where my writing is actually short because of social media character limits. I post daily about cool looking, upcoming indie games. Except, at the moment I'm on my annual break (more evidence of being a fraud) but I'll be back in January.

In all seriousness, I appreciate you for taking the time to read this & I'll see you next time.

#5 | Video Games - November Check In

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