What I Played in January 2025

Posted on 2025.02.28

It’s time for another month-in-review! Happy New Year, by the way, let’s hope it’s a good one. But anyway, new month, new games! Let’s dive right in. Here are the games I played in January 2025, in no particular order (except for the first one since it’s my highlight of the month).

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

This game is definitely my highlight of the month. To recap what I said last time, I got inspired to revisit the game but didn’t want to override my old town, so I modded my New 3DS and dumped my copy of this game so I could play on a brand new save file. I did not play this game much as a kid and basically didn’t remember anything, so I was excited to see what makes it so special to many people. And my, oh my, what a wonderful experience it has been! I played this game for a couple of hours every single day in January. There’s a WHOLE lot of stuff that I did, so let me see how I can summarize it…

In just the first 3 or 4 days, I managed to do WAY more than I ever did in the 20 or so hours I played as a kid. I talked with my villagers more, I diligently did all my daily tasks without missing any, and I did more activities that ended with me getting lots of bells. I discovered Tortimer Island in the first few days and discovered how broken it is for farming bells. I spent the first two weeks grinding and farming beetles and sharks, and I quickly raked in millions of bells. I stopped when I had enough to fully pay all my future loans and leave some extra cash for buying whatever I wanted. And speaking of loans, I paid for those every day on the dot! This has to be one of my greatest achievements in this town, as I had gathered enough bells every day to fully pay my home loans every single day, meaning I got a fully upgraded house as fast as I possibly could. Twenty upgrades, twenty loans, twenty days.

Making a lot of money has allowed me to play the game in a very chill way, since bells are no longer a barrier for anything. I can shop to my heart’s content (and by that I mean completely buying out all the stock. Gotta fill the catalog! I’ll keep what I like and resell the rest), I can build public works projects with no problem, and so on. And this lifted burden also means I get more time to focus on other activities, such as my daily tasks, interacting with villagers, catching creatures for the museum, doing some gardening and decorating, and more. Truly a life of luxury! It’s a very interesting way to play and I kinda like it.

Among many miscellaneous things that happened, I discovered the game has some Nintendo crossover items and villagers (beyond the fortune cookies), including some Splatoon-themed items! Best of all, there’s a pair of Squid Sisters cosplaying villagers that give out items themed around them! Learning of the existence of Marie-themed items in this game as a massive Marie fan absolutely BLEW MY MIND!!! I immediately got to work to slowly order everything from Cece and Viché, and I’d eventually move these villagers into my town :3 (though, that’s a story for next month).

I’ve been having a fantastic time with this game, and I will continue playing New Leaf for the foreseeable future. Who knows, maybe I’ll stick around long enough for me to complete some long term goals, like having a full museum collection. I’ve always liked the time I’ve spent with the series previously, but this revisit has definitely revitalized my interest in it. I definitely wanna revisit New Horizons at some point; I know that entry gets a bit of flak nowadays but I’d still like to play again with my new play style and knowledge of the series. I’d also love to someday play some of the older Animal Crossing titles, since I know they have a whole different vibe (being centered more about community and living among your animal peers instead of being given total control over your town). It sounds very interesting as someone who has only played New Leaf and New Horizons, and I’m curious about it. We’ll see!

Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour

Once the new college semester started, the first thing I did was hook up my GameCube to the TV again. And just like I hooked that up, I got hooked on Mario Golf again. This game is just so good and so addictive. I continued my mission to win all the Star Tournament trophies with all 16 star characters (so, 108 trophies total!), WITHOUT save-scumming. I wanna earn my trophies fair and square! And by that I mean that I want to suffer as much as possible because I like the challenge and not because I think it’s cheating (okay maybe a little bit..). So far I’ve won about 30 or so trophies, which is pretty nice! I’ve already played a lot but as I’ve played even more I keep getting even better. I can even do the Bowser Star Championship semi-consistently! Btw, quick rant, screw the Bowser Badlands course. What an absolute dogwater course with frustrating level design.

Super Video Golf

On the topic of golf, here’s another golf game! I was looking for another arcadey golf game for PC that I could play while I was away from my GameCube, and I found this. The exaggerated retro vibes looked cute and silly, enough to convince me to get the game. And after playing it, yup, it’s golf alright. This game definitely helped me scratch the golf itch, but unfortunately it did not scratch the Toadstool Tour itch (and that’s okay, no shame in falling short of the king (ok but seriously i don’t think i’ll ever play a golf game that tops it)). I found the course design a bit too plain, but maybe I was just playing the easy levels, we’ll see. I might play more of it when I’m bored.

Mario Golf (N64)

Continuing the golf train, I also gave the original Mario Golf a proper shot (a.k.a playing for more than 10 minutes). And… yeah this game kinda sucks. Controls are strange, the ugly graphics make it hard to tell different surface types apart, the warping slope lines make it extra unhelpful, I still don’t understand how taking a shot from a bunker works… It’s just a rough experience. I can definitely see the value of having a simpler and more focused game with not a lot of fluff, but it’s just not for me. I’ll stick with Toadstool Tour.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

The reveal of the Switch 2 teased a new Mario Kart, and the hype got a lot of people coming back to this game (myself included). This shouldn’t be surprising in the slightest but peak is still peak. A big reason for me to return to this game (other than the hype) was that I got the chance to play in a private lobby with people I met online! It was a whole lot of fun, I gotta do that more often. Moving on, I noticed I never finished getting 3-star gold trophies on all the cups (was missing the last three DLC waves), so I went around and quickly knocked those out (most cups took 1 try :D), and now I have 3 stars across the board. My next challenge will be beating all the time trials staff ghosts; I have beaten all the vanilla courses on 150cc but only a couple of DLC ones, and I haven’t touched 200cc at all. I wonder if I can get all of them by the time the next Mario Kart comes around… Anyway, I also played like 1 hour of online worldwide matchmaking and got absolutely demolished. I don’t think I’ll be hopping on for online matches again anytime soon LOL.

Balatro

I played a bit of this game, not much to say.

Tetris Effect: Connected

At this point, are you surprised I still play it every now and then?

Splatoon 3

FrostyFest happened! And uhhh… yeah. I guess I’ll mention that I once again flooded my Switch captures album with pics of Marie performing. Even though she looks the exact same as last FrostyFest and the pics don’t have much difference between them. It’s about the principle.

Bugsnax

After sitting in my Steam library collecting digital dust for over 900 days, I finally decided to install and play this game. Quite an interesting game! I really like all the different ways you can catch Bugsnax; even with a small number of tools, you constantly have to come up with new ways to capture these creatures, often making use of your tools in conjunction with your surroundings. (By the time I’m writing this, I’ve already finished the game, but I’ll leave those thoughts for the February post)

Btw, sorry for being so late to making these. The original idea was to make them within the first few days of the following month, not the last day of it LMAO. Let’s see if I improve my groove over the coming months.