Bill Mudron is a freelance illustrator who has worked for Nintendo Power (he drew the last Howard & Nester strip in the last issue of Nintendo Power), Electronic Gaming Monthly, Bad Robot, the BBC, Disney, etc, and who has a shop full of pop culture prints at https://mudron.bigcartel.com
Likeds
Donkey Kong Bananza
Maybe one of the most “do”-y games ever? I love that the first thing you literally see/do in Bananza is punch through a black screen to start the game. Also, this is the first step towards the “Donkey Kong smashes up a Fleischer Bros’ Popeye-style 1930s New York City” game that I’ve always wanted.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
The new Like A Dragon era of Yakuza is already getting a bit stale - thanks largely to the Hawaii environment recycled from the last turn-based game, combined with characters and real-time combat recycled from the Kiryu/Majima games - but this was still a fun time.
PowerWash Simulator 2
More of the same + free soap, but that Switch 2 save file bug that set me back several stages/days of playtime suuuucked. I’m very curious about the licensed DLC they’ll be able to whip up, given the wide/weird selection of Back to the Future, FF VII, Tomb Raider, and SpongeBob stuff that was eventually released for the first game.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
Turns out that’s a pretty good game - definitely worth playing hooky for in 1988!
Dragon Quest I HD-2D Remake
Couldn’t get past the Spiketail boss fight towards the end of the game - this was WAY harder than DQIII, as if Square messed up the balance between only having 1 playable party member vs. the new multi-enemy groups you’re fighting all the time.
Katamari Rolling Live
An Apple Arcade exclusive that came out in April, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that - after synching a PS5 controller to my Apple TV - it felt just like playing a PS5 version of a new Katamari game.
Forza Horizon 5 on PS5
Man, FH5 hitting the PS5 a month before the Switch 2 launched did Mario Kart World no favors. I was shocked to see how many new PS5 players were populating FH5’s massive always-online world.
Fortnite
2025 was a crazy year for Fortnite collabs, to the point that the last season-ending event of the year was the first time Fortnite finally went all Ready Player One by officially mashing a bunch of the year’s collab characters together in one giant Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. The year ended on a high note with the Simpsons mode/map, but Harry Potter coming to the game might be what finally breaks my Fortnite habit.
No Likey
Mario Kart World
The “World” part of the game is a fundamental misfire - the empty “free roaming” mode is an embarrassment from the company that gave us a million interlocking things to do in Breath of the Wild’s vast overworld, and how in the hell did this game not have even have Bananza-flavored outfits for DK and Pauline?
Welcome Tour
$10 for THIS? Nintendo has officially entered a new cheapskate era.
Wheelchair Switch 2 Game
I can’t even remember the name of this dusty fart of a game! I applaud any attempt to build a game around folks in wheelchairs, but all this game suggests is that people who need wheelchairs don’t deserve fun. Also, why does this look like a PS3 launch game? Did folks without eyes do the art direction for this? The Iwata Asks for this mess would’ve been fascinating.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Very pretty looking and sounding, but didn’t click with me. Relies too much on parrying, and while each character essentially being a unique combat minigame is a *great* idea, it was just a little too much for my overheated, podcast game-addicted brain to juggle in 2025. Kinda reminds me of Lost Odyssey in terms of a beloved RPG that I just couldn’t get into, but, hey, Clair Obscure deserved to win all those Keighley awards just by virtue of the whole dev team dressing up like cheese-eating surrender monkeys for that ceremony.
Blue Prince
Cute idea for a game, but unfortunately, RNG can REALLY backfire and result in someone like me spinning their wheels for hours on end.
Once Upon A Katamari
Too much talking, too much of *everything* but rolling your Katamari. This is the game that finally turned me against The King of All Cosmos and made me wish we had a Katamari collection that cuts all the bullshit - bullshit that’s never been as fun since creator Keita Takahashi walked away from the series, at least. Just take the Super Mario Galaxy 2 path and let us choose stages from a simple menu, AND without the King bloviating at you for minutes at a time.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
It’s impossible to feel like you’re making progress when every story-critical target you kill sprouts into a ring of a dozen other targets you also have to kill, with each of those targets then sprouting circles of even MORE bad dudes you’re obligated to ventilate. It’s like you’re fighting a many-headed plot-hydra rather than playing a video game - and even that entropic story-sprawl aside, what’s the point of upgrading the forge in your home base if you’re constantly being blasted by a firehouse of new gear every few minutes?
I had my issues with Ghost of Yotei, but Yotei proves that it’s not the size of your story as much as how you tell it (well, at least in comparison to Shadows).
Indiana Jones and the Golden Girls DLC
I was having a good time until holding giant puzzle pieces in front of my face during a time-sensitive Pipe Dreams puzzle kept me from seeing what I was doing and made it not worth the effort of finishing the DLC.
No Mina the Hollower
Wah!
RIP Xbox
Welp, I guess a quarter-century was a good run, even if Microsoft only seemed to have its heart in the game for, like, 12 of those years.