The Games We Played: A Journey Through Our Favorite Pastimes

4th January

Hello and Happy New Year! Did you enjoy a wonderful break? I certainly hope so.

Here’s our regular feature where we discuss a few of the games we’ve been enjoying, particularly during this holiday season. This time, we indulged in loot in Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2. We were pleasantly quite surprised—if not thrilled—by Indiana Jones, and delved into the delightful layers of brilliance that make up Animal Well.

Catch up on previous editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred, PS5

I found myself bouncing back and forth between Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 throughout the festive break—my ARPG cravings were well satisfied, you might say. What surprised me more than anything else was how accommodating these games can be. Path of Exile 2 is rather stingy. It doesn’t exactly roll out the red carpet. You traverse through zones, attempting to defeat bosses repeatedly, and when you do succeed, their rewards are meager—the tight-fisted tricksters. Path of Exile 2 certainly doesn’t shower you with treasures like Diablo 4 does.

This was never more evident than during Diablo 4’s holiday “Execute Ride to Hell” event, which introduced Fancy Goblins seemingly all over the place—those darting Santa-lookalikes carrying endless bags of loot. The spawns were especially plentiful in the new Vessel of Hatred expansion zone, Nahantu, which turns out I hadn’t explored yet since I hadn’t tried the expansion before. Cue the perfect storm for me: catching up on a year’s worth of loot changes and expansion content while also being drenched in streams of treasure.

Eventually, I did grind through, but not before I dashed through the fresh character levels with the new Spirit Warrior class, gathering literal bags crammed with some of the best loot in the game. I even found time to re-equip a few different characters. It’s a bounty of treasures that could not be further from the Scrooge-like atmosphere of Path of Exile 2, and I relished Diablo for it—I gorged on it.

Now, however, I’m back to Path of Exile 2, almost to cleanse the indulgence of Diablo. I feel it’s appropriate for January.

-Bertie

Animal Well, PC (Steam Deck)

I swallowed the Animal Well experience along with my Christmas dinner this holiday season, and wow, what an absolute gem of a game. I know it’s been said countless times before, but Developer Billy Basso has crafted something truly exceptional with this debut, and fans of Metroidvania-style games owe it to themselves to play this if they haven’t already. It offers an innovative take on the genre, not only in how it redefines traversal and discovery (trading double jumps for frisbees and bubble wands, and dashes for yo-yos and spinning tops) but also because it’s just so incredibly stylish. It has that quality many of my favorite games possess, placing you in a world and merely suggesting the entrance, allowing you to explore it with nearly no direction at all. It’s so thrilling and the kind of game that occupies every waking thought while you’re engaged with it.

A case in point: I loved uncovering all the different ‘layers’ of Animal Well the more I played. The first layer is the six-hour unusual journey one might experience just to reach the bottom of the well, completing the initial thrust of its narrative quest and defeating its ‘final’ boss. The second layer, however, is where Animal Well truly comes alive—a 64-egg hunt that genuinely allows you to leave the well entirely, leading to what I consider its true ending. That’s what I managed to do over the holidays, extending my playtime close to twenty hours. However, there’s also a third layer that riffs on all sorts of Tunic/Fez/ARG-style hidden secrets involving concealed bunnies, bar codes, and community puzzles that—hands up—are likely beyond me (or rather, beyond the amount of cognitive space I allocate for that kind of thing while also holding a job).

But wow, that egg hunt layer was definitely worthwhile, not least because the tools and items you need to collect them can be quite the adventure in themselves.