Another day, another series for this blog! This series I’m calling “Squashy’s Summary”, and it’s a place where I’m going to talk about any games I’ve been playing, any games I’ve picked up, any gaming news or drama that’s really caught my attention, and basically anything I feel like yapping about!
Going into 2026, I once again put together a list of games that I simply needed to finish. These are games I’ve had on my backlog for years. or games that have been recommended to me. The games I went with this year are:
- Final Fantasy XIII (carry over from 2025)
- Silent Hill Downpour (carry over from 2025)
- Yakuza 6: Song of Life
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Sly Racoon
- Returnal
- Pikmin 2
- Xenoblade Chronicles
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Call of Duty: Vanguard
- Jak and Daxter
- Ratchet and Clank (PS2)
- Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc
Games such as Hollow Knight Silksong, Yakuza 6 and Pikmin 2 follow on from the earlier games in the series that I managed to complete last year, whilst games such as Returnal, Final Fantasy XIII and Danganronpa are games I’ve been putting off for a long time and want to finally get over the line this year.
With all that being said, I spent the first few days of January completely ignoring that list and playing Megabonk instead. As you do. Megabonk is a perfect mix between Risk of Rain 2 and Vampire Survivors, and for the first couple of weeks in January, I was hooked. So much so that I ended up getting all 118 achievements on my Steam profile and putting around 30 hours into it. The Steam Deck was absolutely perfect for this game, and since beating it, my Steam Deck has stayed in its case and hasn’t been used again. Maybe I need to do a few more runs. I ended up deciding on a rating of 8.5/10 for Megabonk, a great game that is let down a little by the edgy humour, but for the price of £8.50, it’s well worth a go.
One of the few 100%’s I have on my Steam profile. Steam Achievements just don’t hit the same as Xbox Achievements or PSN Trophies unfortunately.
After getting over my Megabonk era, I then finally turned my attention to a game on the list above, and this time it was Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc on the PlayStation 4. Back in 2021, I actually played through all of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony on a livestream to my friends on Discord, and for a while they’d been asking if when I was going to play Danganronpa 1+2. This year was finally the year. I hooked up the capture card, installed the game and finally hit “Go Live” on our Discord call. It took a while, over a week of solid 2-3 hour nightly streams, but we got there. Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc is the first game marked as complete on the list, one down, twelve to go. I didn’t like the first game as much as I liked V3, but I have high hopes for the second game that I hope to get to before 2031. Overall, I settled on a rating of 8.3/10 for Danganronpa 1, doesn’t quite hit the highs of the third game, but still a very enjoyable experience.
As you can see by the timestamp, I was up late streaming this one. Gold trophy was a lovely little bonus though.
Next up this year was a complete change of pace, as after 15 years, I finally decided to tackle Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the first time. Galaxy 1 is my favourite game of all time, but I never played all the way through the sequel for some reason. With the new collection of Galaxy 1 + Galaxy 2 releasing on Nintendo Switch at the end of last year, I figured it was the perfect time to erase the stain on my gaming history and finally complete Galaxy 2. I got through the game in around 10 hours over the course of around 10 days, about an hour a day. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a phenomenal game, and I wish I hadn’t waited 15 years to play through it. It doesn’t quite hit the highs of Galaxy 1, but it is still a wonderful experience for anyone that loves 3D Mario, or Mario in general. I played on the Nintendo Switch 2, marking its first outing for me this year, and the upscale looked incredible. I debated internally for a while, but I landed on a rating of 9.2/10 for this one. Incredible game, I had some minor nitpicks but I’d throughly recommend playing through both games if you have a Switch.
Spoiler alert, Mario does in fact save Peach at the end. But you already knew that, and if you didn’t? You had 15 years to play it.
Before I go on to talk about the last big game I’ve tackled this month, and believe me this one is a long one, I thought I’d talk about some of the games I’ve picked up this month physically. As many of you know, I’m an avid collector as well as a game player so collecting physical games is an important part of this blog too! January was actually a big month for me in terms of modern releases, I’m going to list the games I picked up here:
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (PlayStation 5)
- Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (PlayStation 5)
- Super Mario Galaxy + Galaxy 2 (Nintendo Switch)
- Hannah Montana: The Movie (Xbox 360)
- Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive (Nintendo Switch)
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Nintendo Switch)
- Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch)
A lot of Nintendo Switch games for me this month, as I’m trying to build a very solid Switch collection, and in the case of Xenoblade, it was on my list of games to beat this year so I do need to own a copy.
Okay, we’re finally here. The big game I decided to tackle this January was Final Fantasy XIII. A game I’d been putting off for a while, I actually put it off last year but this year I decided to tackle it once and for all. It’s a very long game, and one outside of my comfort zone, but I was intrigued by the concept. It has taken up most of my gaming time in January, with some of the boss fights in the later stages of the game being incredibly challenging. I am playing on Xbox Series X with a physical copy of the 360 version, and it takes getting used to but it does run well enough. It took around 37 hours, but I finally got to the end. The difficulty did spike towards Chapter 10, and I did struggle quite a bit with this as I’m still new to JRPGs. I did like the cast a lot though, which was a huge plus. I mained the game with a team of Lightning, Vanille and Hope. Overall, I settled on a rating of 8.0/10, and I may even look to play Final Fantasy XIII-2 at some point.
Not only did I complete the game, I five starred the final boss as well. I did quite well I’d say.
That brings me to the end of January! Four games completed, and a lot of games picked up! Stay tuned for another post next month detailing what games I’ve been playing, and any pick ups!
Love,
Squash