I am not one for New Year’s resolutions. Most of my reflective / change time is during the summer when things tend to slow down. Holiday season is often a mix of surviving / recovering / enjoying, not so much to make large scale changes. But that’s me.

Now, 2025 objectively sucked. I am fortunate enough to not be old enough that I don’t really have easy comparatives of bad years, though 2020 is a bar I would prefer to never reach again. 2026 is off to a rough start – at least on the world stage. It’d be cool to go a few days without some stupidly aggravating world event. Can we be cool for a bit?

Family stuff is straightforward for now. Enjoy the moments. Appreciate the moments. It certainly feels fleeting. Hockey is both a safe space and an outlet that the family can enjoy. That’s nice to have.

Health is improving but not great. Found some courage to try a modified exercise program that now let’s me wake up without backpain for the first time in.. hell, I don’t know when. I used to spend most days with a 4/10 of lower back pain, so this improvement is very welcome. Holiday eating habits were rough, so glad to get back to the standard routine.

Games coming up… well this is a weird one I guess. GTA6 may actually launch. Control 2 as well. Aside from that, not much on the radar I am paying attention to. If you look at the 2025 games in review post, there were only 3 big-name games there. I find I am gravitating much more towards the indie/middle pack games. Star Rupture (a sort of Satisfactory clone, in EA) is worth a poke. The commoditization of game dev, and frankly evolution of AI means that almost anyone can translate an idea into a decent game. The moral pitchforks of ‘no AI’ are the same we had in 1993 with Jurassic Park (animatronics vs CGI). It can’t be used everywhere (well, perhaps James Cameron has thoughts here) but it would be kind of moronic to not experiment some. The clear danger here, and it is a significant one, is that ‘people’ in general are idiots and self-serving. Social Media is the best example I can think of to showcase the stupidity of humandkind propelled by the quest-for-more-money of oligarchs. It’s not about doing more with less. It’s about doing more with the same.

I am sure that we’ll get some solid deliveries this year, likely a larger focus on portability where the Steam Deck and similar devices can truly start to shine through. It seems that is a more likely path forward given the RAM shortages around today. We’re still a few years from integrated graphics being fully viable. Close though!

I will point out I’ve done a recent replay of a few Final Fantasy games. More on that in a future post. For now, let’s just hope we have a decent 2025. Or at least a decent January 2025!