The 2025 Video Game Queue: 6 Months In

(No one asked for this)

At the beginning of the year, I created my 2025 gaming queue. A list of target games I wanted to play in 2025. This list isn’t a prescription. It’s just a way to focus my free time. Without some kind of list, or guide, I’d just aimlessly play whatever I feel like without playing what I want to.

Well, we’re halfway through the year and I’ve been taking stock of what progress I’ve made and how the list itself has changed.

Games Played

The games I chose to play are games that I’m positive I’d enjoy from start to finish. All killer, no filler. That being said, I intend to finish these games this year.

I’ve already made some good progress and have played 40% of my queue. It would be nice to be at 50%, but I’m comfortable with where I’m at. So far I’ve played:

• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

• Advance Wars

• Mario Golf: Advance Tour

• Persona 3: Reload

These games were great. I have very good thoughts on each of these and I can recommend all of them to just about everyone.

Additional Games

This queue is not set in stone and I’ve actually played through quite a few games that were not in my queue. That includes:

• Rez

  • I wrote a lot about this game here. In short, it’s an amazing experience that transcends what video games can be. It’s shocking that this game is so old, yet feels so poignant.

• Super Mario Land

  • This was the first game I played through on my Retroid Pocket 5, and it took me an afternoon (with the help of Savestates lol). It’s crazy challenging, but it reminded me of roguelikes - in the sense of dying and trying again.

• Sonic Adventure 2 Battle

  • Once I got my RP5, I really wanted to play the old Gamecube games I grew up with. This game was huge to me as a kid and it was kind of a dream to finally see it through. While I did have issues with some of the snapping and character movement, it’s just so holistic of everything I loved about Sonic as a kid.

• Drill Dozer (I swore this was in the queue)

  • A GBA platformer developed by GameFreak that isn’t Pokemon. It’s great! The only thing that gave me a hard time was some of the color-specific QTEs, but I made them easier by changing the LEDs on the RP5 to reflect the directions the colors were associated with.
    It’s perfectly challenging for what it is.

• Star Fox 64

  • Games used to be really hard, huh? This didn’t work well for me on the RP5. I love the Top Gun vibes of the crew, but using an analog stick as the C-buttons was a bit much for me.

• The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers

  • Games used to be really really hard, huh? I was really enjoying this game, but the challenge got so high I had to put it down. It went beyond a fun challenge and into unfair jank.

• A Couple Racing Games

  • I don’t really count these but I played some PSP racing games. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

I played through all these games except the last 3.

A Second List??? (Memorial Day to Labor Day Challenge)

On a Discord server, I’m in, someone made a Memorial Day to Labor Day Backlog challenge. Essentially, you make a list of 10 games and you have to finish 4 of them by Labor Day.

Here’s my list:

Katamari was an easy fit, and I’m already playing Ribbit King. I’m not totally sure which 4 I’ll be playing through but I think it’ll look something like this:

• Ribbit King

• Katamari Damacy: Reroll

• Attack of the Friday Monsters!

• Roller Drome/ICO/Metroid Fusion

Those first three spots are basically in stone, but we’ll see how this cookie crumbles.

Roadmapping The Rest of the Year

I don’t really care if I finish all these games by the end of 2025. What matters is that I’m focusing on the games I actually want to play. One way of doing this is making a road map to help me connect the games with a specific time of year or vibe.

So, here’s the plan:

Handheld Games: Katamari

I always have a handheld game going.

Currently, that’s Ribbit King, but once that’s wrapped up I’ll be open to playing more summer fun games. Katamari seems like a really great summer game, and it’s only about 4 hours.

Then when that’s done, I’ll be free to work the list of shorter games for the Memorial Day to Labor Day challenge.

Control & Alan Wake II

These games are in the same series of games, so playing them one after the other would be really enjoyable. They’re also spookier games so I plan on starting them in October. If I’m still playing Persona 3: Reload, I’ll just take a break from that game until I finish these two.

Together, they’re about 30 hours. I do think it’s doable, but ending mid-November is still right on point.

Dragon Quest V

My handheld renaissance continues with DQ5. I think for this one I’ll be dusting off the modded 3DS and playing the DS version of the game.

Death Stranding or Metaphor: Refantazio

Depending on how long Persona 3: Reload takes I’ll be starting up another long(er) game in November/December. Depending on how burnt out I am on JRPGs I’ll either be playing Death Stranding or Metaphor: Refantazio.

These both seem like a great fit for this time of year. Death stranding takes place in a dark and wet mountainous region and Metaphor came out around that time of year.

Whichever game I go with there is no shot I’ll be able to finish it by the end of the year. It’ll be my new morning time game, and it’s going to rock to play it at 5:45 on a dark winter morning.

That’s all Folks

I know these kinds of posts are really not that interesting, but I think of them more as a mind dump for the way I think about structuring hobbies.

If I’m able to finish the rest of this queue by the end of the year, there’s a good chance I’ve neglected some important responsibilities. With that said, I think I can finish 7 total games from the queue, but we’ll have to see