May 2026 Roundup

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Cover photo from Mixtape.

Whew. Well this one’s coming in a little hot and a little late because the end of May has been… eventful. We lost our sweet elderly cat Savannah (who I wrote a short eulogy for) last week; between that and general craziness at work, our brand-new niece making her worldly debut early, and various other smaller preoccupations it’s been hard to focus lately. Apologies in advance if this one feels a bit more disjointed than usual, I’m basically running on fumes at the moment.

Not only has it been tough to focus on writing, it’s been tough to focus on playing any one game, period. I’ve always tried to limit myself to only playing one or two games at a time, because if I don’t I’m cursed to never finish any of them. “Blame it on the A.D.D.,” as that one song goes. I finished the four games in this article in May, but also started playing Mina the Hollower, Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, 007 First Light (which I’m playing with my partner), Luna Abyss, Titanium Court, and a distressingly small amount of Esoteric Ebb. Hopefully I’ll get it together enough to finish at least a few of those titles once life feels more normal again.

I’m also currently working on the second half of my Top 20 of the Decade list (part 1 can be found here), which I hope to have out sometime in June. Depending on how long some of these essays get, I may further split that top 10 in half. Some of these games affected me deeply in various ways and I can’t wait to heap praise on them and tell you why I found them so meaningful. I guess that’s enough stalling — here’s what I dove into during the month of May.

Just a binder full of CD-Rs and a dream

Mixtape

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

If you pay any attention to games media, the conversation around Mixtape has been, well, kind of annoying. IGN rated this game a 10/10 alongside a plethora of other outlets also giving it glowing reviews, which was always inevitably going to attract basic contrarians and cheap ragebait content. Putting all of that aside, I figured this is the kind of game I could definitely enjoy, so I decided to go into it with an open mind and see how it landed for me.

Mixtape is a story about three friends on the cusp of the next big chapter of their lives. The gang includes main character Stacey Rockford, a headphone-clad music geek and creator of the titular mixtape that you listen to throughout the game, her childhood best friend Van Slater, a budding musician and good-natured stoner type, and the newest addition to the group, Cassandra Morino, rebellious daughter of a local cop who has imminent plans to leave for college. This ends up being the source of some friction within the trio; all three were supposed to roadtrip to Los Angeles together to get Cass settled for college but Stacey (who just prefers to go by just “Rockford”) decided to bail in favor of flying to New York in an effort to connect with a famous music supervisor. Rockford has designs on going into the same career and she’s mapped out exactly how this will go in her head: she’ll essentially stalk this individual and get her to listen to her own personal mixtape, and she’s convinced that she’ll be so impressed by it that she’ll agree to take Rockford under her wing as a protégé.

A lot of the complaints I’ve seen around this game center around Rockford being kind of insufferable; she has the utmost confidence in her ability to pick the perfect soundtrack for the events of her own life and by extension any piece of media that she works on. She’ll frequently break the fourth wall to speak directly to the player about the song they are about to hear and what led her, ever the the song sommelier, to pick this for her mix. She painstakingly crafts her mixtapes with the expectation that she knows exactly how events will unfold (or alternatively deludes herself into thinking she can bend them to her will). I think we’ve all known someone like Stacey Rockford, the snob who sees themselves as above-it-all, the ultimate arbiter of quality, and yeah… I do understand why some people find it a bit grating.

But the way I see it, that’s an intended part of the whole point of this narrative. Let’s face it, teenagers just kind of suck. You sucked when you were that age, I sure did, we all did. We had grand designs for our lives and thought we could chart out the exact path we’d be walking, that is until life punched most of us straight in the mouth and humbled us, telling us that no, we didn’t know what we were doing and in fact knew almost nothing about how the world actually works. Being a teenager is a state of being messy and wrong about a lot of things, but of course there’s also a definite upside of being this age. Every experience and emotion felt is supercharged, meaning that while minor setbacks can feel crushing, every moment of joy can be transcendent in a way that I think we lose as we transition to adulthood. The game features many daydream-like sequences that reflect the intensity of the emotions Rockford is feeling, such as one where the gang is flying head over heels through an idyllic field on a windy day and whooping with joy as they tumble about, or when her anger boils over and she envisions blowing up mailboxes and parked cars when she flips them the bird. This is a reflection of her rage that her plan for her final day with her friends (and therefore her perfectly-curated mixtape) has gone off the rails. Mixtape is full of these fantastical sequences which of course do not reflect the literal reality of what happened, but convey the feelings associated with those moments perfectly.

Aesthetically, Mixtape is a pure shot of 90s nostalgia. The characters (animated on twos creating a pseudo stop-motion effect) explore painstakingly-crafted environments which might look very familiar if you grew up during that time. I definitely see the symbols of my own childhood in the wood-paneled bedrooms, the primitive home computers, the fashion worn by the local teens, and in so many other little details. The soundtrack, unsurprisingly, is excellent through and through. It features a handful of crowd-pleasers from this era such as Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division, and The Cure, but also contains a lot of (often older) deeper cuts that the game’s scenes are tailored around. I’m not sure I’ve ever said this about a video game but I do think that the licensed tracks are a core part of its identity, lend a certain authenticity to it, and it would be diminished as a piece of art without them.

Once it has taken a few beats to establish its characters and the relationships between them, Mixtape becomes a charming and unforgettable exploration of the messy experience of being a teenage delinquent and what one leaves behind when you start to take the first steps toward life outside of the small world you’ve always known. I couldn’t help but smile during some of the late game sequences which were often poignant, funny, and touching. I’m not sure I’d call it a perfect game (and it won’t land for everyone) but it’s a brief-yet-rich slice-of-life adventure that I definitely recommend.

More like Beatable. Because I finished it. How curious.

Unbeatable

Overall Score

∅

No Recommendation

I’ll level with you, reader. I’ve been having kind of an existential crisis lately when it comes to rhythm games. I think most friends of mine know that I LOVE music/rhythm games. After last month’s disappointing playthrough of Rhythm Doctor I was jonesing for a really good rhythm game, and picked up D-Cell’s Unbeatable in an attempt to satiate that craving. My feelings about it ended up being, well, complex. It’s a solid one at its core but it makes several big missteps in terms of its story presentation and is also rife with technical issues. That being said I still did find some really enjoyable moments in it, but the important caveat is that the best parts of the game are backloaded. Ironically, I think this ended up being the poster child for why I chose a dual rating system when I started this blog. If you’re curious about why I liked it despite its flaws but can’t quite bring myself to recommend it, you can read my full review here.

At last, Chess II.

Gambonanza

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Welp, we all saw this coming. After Balatro became one of the surprise breakout hits of 2024, it was only a matter of time before we started to see other games imitate and (hopefully) iterate on the formula it introduced. Where the core concept of Balatro was “what if poker, but a roguelike,” Gambonanza merges the structure of a roguelike with the timeless, elegant game of chess.

If you’ve played Balatro you pretty much know what to expect. You can hold up to five Gambits, which modify your gameplay much like Balatro’s joker cards do, and you will plan your strategy around them. Some Gambits allow pieces to take extra turns under certain conditions, others give you a chance for an effect on taking or losing a piece, so on and so forth. There are also special tile modifiers that you can affix to the spaces of the game board such as a trap tile to ensnare a piece and make it lose its turn, or a shield tile that gives the piece that moves onto it one turn of protection from being captured. You also have a stock that you can store spare pieces in, and from which you can deploy them mid-game. It definitely mixes up the base formula of chess quite a bit, to the point where it’s unique unto itself and you certainly don’t need to be a grandmaster to enjoy it.

I think one of the main issues that arise with this combination, however, is that the inherent complexity of a game like chess is magnitudes greater than Balatro’s poker hand-making gameplay, where you’re mostly juggling mental odds and molding your deck toward a certain purpose. The game board starts as a miniaturized 5x5 stage with a handful of enemy tokens but gradually expands as you progress, eventually reaching full-width and has you facing off against a full retinue of opposing pieces. Add the complexity of gambits, special tiles, and even enemy abilities in the special boss stages and the cognitive load adds up staggeringly fast. Gambonanza attempts to ease some of this by allowing you to mouse over and see the attack range of any piece and also makes your pieces shudder and sweat when they’re threatened, but I still frequently found myself cursing under my breath when I failed to account for one or more factors and blundered a good piece into a trap. I hit upon a few synergies that felt broken in a good way (much like its progenitor Balatro) but I think you need to be prepared to inevitably trade pieces sometimes and replenish your stock in the store phase between rounds. I will say that there’s a ton of potential for Gambonanza to generate moments in which you feel like a genius and bring a run back from the brink; during my first winning run I thought I was dead in the water sometime around the second boss. When it does happen, it feels incredible.

Some cognitive overload issues aside, Gambonanza is still very worth a try, particularly if you’re the type of person that frequents Chess.com. I can only do a few runs at a time before my brain starts to feel the effect of decision fatigue and needs a break, but it is quite compelling. You can almost look at every round like a miniature puzzle to be solved, and the variety between runs is very high. I guess the remaining question is, what game gets the Balatro treatment next? Backgammon? Checkers? Mancala?? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Pilgrimage Complete

Final Fantasy X

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Back in March I mentioned that I’d started a playthrough of the remaster of Final Fantasy X, one of my favorite Playstation 2 games and one of the RPGs in my personal pantheon of all-time greats. Hard to believe the game is now old enough to vote, drink, and rent a car having just turned 25 years old. I think it’s my duty to tell you that if you have fond memories of playing this game when it was new, you should probably go easy on your lower back and also consider scheduling a colonoscopy.

All japery aside, my goal was to see if this classic still holds up in the modern era. The remastered version released on modern consoles and PC takes a light-touch approach, upscaling the graphics and replacing some textures, but leaves the gameplay from 2001 fully intact. There are a handful of assist features that let you speed up the game or increase/eliminate random battles which is greatly appreciated, though I did wish for a bit more granularity in these options. Being able to double the EXP and Gil earned while cutting the encounter rate in half would make the experience just about perfect, in my opinion. It’s definitely still a product of its time but I’m pleased to report that surprisingly, the game doesn’t feel archaic. The sphere grid is still a fascinating method of character advancement and the battles themselves reward good tactics; many boss fights are more an exercise in problem-solving versus grinding out the raw levels to overcome them.

The battle system is definitely a draw but the main course consists of the characterization and story. Although the dialogue is certainly stilted at times (and I actually only recently learned the real reason behind this), the emotional beats of Yuna’s pilgrimage to defeat Sin still hit and the whole cast is just so damn quirky and lovable. When the plot really kicks into gear it’s among the best stories in the series, and the world-building for the vividly-colored but cursed land of Spira is unforgettable. This is one of the entries in the Final Fantasy series that is most fondly remembered and for good reason. If you haven’t played it, I can still recommend it as a crucial and enjoyable piece of JRPG history.

Gambonanza on Mike's Musings

May 2026 Roundup