Well, April came and went quite quickly, didn’t it? Remember when I said at the end of the last blog that this one would be stacked? I was half right. I ended up picking up a LOT of stuff this month, but in terms of actual games I’ve played? I haven’t completed ANY. I’ve played quite a few games, but it’s been more of a relaxing month.
Since I don’t really have any games to “review” currently, I’m going to start with something a little bit different. At the beginning of April, I finally bit the bullet and got myself a PlayStation 5 Pro. The recent price increase persuaded me to pull the trigger, as the store I got mine from hadn’t changed theirs just yet. I ended up paying around £590 for the PS5 Pro and a disc drive, which I thought was just about right. The main reason I was looking at this was obviously, Grand Theft Auto VI is coming out in November, and I want to play it the best way I can. So far, I haven’t really put the console through its paces, the main thing I’ve been using it for is PGA Tour 2K25, The Masters put me in a golfing mood. Helldivers 2 and ARC Raiders also run extremely well, which is a nice touch. However, there is a game dropping on April 30, which will hopefully put my PS5 Pro to the test, Saros is looking incredible and I finally got round to pre-ordering it. It will be a little too late to feature in this blog, but I will be discussing Saros in depth next month!
This month may have been incredibly lacking in terms of games completed, but my pick-ups have been WILD. The PS5 Pro was the “main thing” of the month, but I also managed to grab a lot of cool games. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream released this month, and whilst it isn’t really a game you can “finish”, it is a game that has taken a lot of my attention when I do have gaming time. I also finally found a copy of Pikmin 3 Deluxe on the Switch. This was the last game I needed to finish my Pikmin collection on the Switch, and it was a bloody hard one to nab! I had it on my radar for a couple months and could never find it in the wild, but I finally beat the curse and look forward to getting through that one soon.
I also managed to attend a local gaming market with some friends, and managed to get some really neat finds. This particular market tends to have a lot of Japanese import games, and I like to use this as a good time to grab some imports. This time, I managed to pick up Kings Field II, Persona and Parasite Eve on PlayStation 1, Persona 3 on PlayStation 2, Tokimeki Memorial 4 on PlayStation Portable, and finally, Danganronpa 1-2 Reload on PlayStation Vita. I am a huge Danganronpa fan so I needed to have that as soon as I saw it. The Persona games are something I have a mild interest in collecting for, purely due to the fact I have a couple of them on PlayStation 4 already. Kings Field intrigues me due to the FromSoftware connection, and Parasite Eve never released in the UK, so that was a cool one to find!
In a more general gaming sense, I also found a few EU games I was after. Firstly, I managed to finally source a copy of The Sly Trilogy on PlayStation 3. Sly Cooper is one of the games I wanted to get through this year, so to be able to play it with Trophy support and at a crisp 60fps is a huge bonus for me. I also got myself a copy of Spec Ops: The Line on Xbox 360, another game that I’ve had on my radar recently but just couldn’t find a physical copy of. I finally managed to get one at a good price, and look forward to eventually tackling a game I’ve heard great things about. The last two pickups were definitely intriguing ones, I managed to cross another Silent Hill game off my list, and that one is Silent Hill: Origins on the PlayStation Portable. I played Origins around a year or so ago through emulation and enjoyed it, so was happy to finally add it to the physical collection. The last game I found was a copy of Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess on Xbox 360. Not only it is interesting in the fact that it is a physical copy of an MMO expansion on a console, it is also factory sealed. Never been opened. I saw that and had to add it across to the collection just as a novelty. The last overall pick up I saw and had to get was an Xbox 360 controller, but more specifically, the Halo 3 Spartan controller. Not one you see around too often, and with me being a Halo collector, it just had to go on my shelf as soon as I saw it.
Also, as a very last-minute addition to this month’s post, on my travels I dropped into CeX. This was a fleeting visit, as I only had one game on my mind! I picked up Aliens: Colonial Marines on the PlayStation 3. Look, I know what you’re thinking, but I never finished it on the Xbox 360, and with the Xbox 360 Marketplace (yes, I still call it the Marketplace, I’m dying on that hill) being closed, there was also no way for me to pick up the Stasis Interrupted DLC which is apparently canon to the Alien universe. Thanks, Gearbox. I got my punishment for buying Colonial Marines pretty quickly however, as whilst I was in the store, I did shatter my screen protector. Karma.
With this month being incredibly light on the “completed games” front, that means the list of games I planned to finish this year has not moved an inch. It stays exactly where it was at the end of March, with these games left to get through before the end of 2026:
- Silent Hill Downpour
- Yakuza 6: Song of Life
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Sly Racoon
- Xenoblade Chronicles
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Call of Duty: Vanguard
- Jak and Daxter
Away from the whole gaming front, I actually made a purchase this month that is going to increase my productivity on this website! Anyone that knows me knows I’m constantly travelling, and it can be difficult to keep up with writing when I just have my iPhone on me. So, in an attempt to curb that little problem, I caved and bought my first MacBook, specifically the MacBook Neo in Blush! I’ve only had it a week or so but I bloody love this little thing, and this is the first post I’ve written on it. However, I did lie slightly, as I have also been using it to play a metric ton of Slay the Spire when I can.
With that, I think it is time to wrap up another blog post. I do plan to get through a lot more games in May, hopefully. With Saros dropping today (with any luck my preordered copy has already arrived), and May bringing us games such as 007 First Light, and Forza Horizon 6 (which I’m running up the walls to play), with any luck, I’ll actually have some GAMES to talk about next month. If you’re not already bored, which is a miracle if you’re not. All of that completely depends on if Slay the Spire continues to eat my every waking second of my day or not.
Thanks for reading this one, and thanks for continuing to click on this site and read my ramblings! Much love.
Squashy x