What I Played in April 2025

Posted on 2025.05.31

It’s time for another month-in-review! As the semester tightened up, I found myself with less time to play games. But that’s okay, it’ll be over soon anyways. I still managed to play a decent bit, so allow me to talk about it! Here are the games I played in April 2025, in no particular order.

Splatoon 3

Just like last month, I’ve continued to play this game with friends. There was a Splatfest too, and this was my 2nd time ever playing this event with other people. It was fun! It was refreshing to goof off in one of these events and not take it too seriously, it definitely helped me feel less stressed about any mishaps. Anyway, I’m so happy that playing with friends has helped me rediscover the joy of this game. I’m still gonna be taking a backseat with this game, I don’t think I’ll be playing it that much on my own, but I will definitely be playing somewhat regularly again, just this time it’s with other people :>.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Not much to say, Mario Kart is Mario Kart. Love this game. I wonder if I can beat all Time Trials staff ghosts before the new game. Speaking of, we got a lot of new info and footage of Mario Kart World, so there’s a lot of karting hype going around! I can’t wait to play that once it releases, it looks sooo good.

Tetris 99

Yeah.

Tetris Effect: Connected

Are you surprised?

Balatro

You also shouldn’t be surprised about this one but I do have more to say. I focused a bit more on unlocks this time, I now have all jokers unlocked (tho there’s still around seven I haven’t discovered per se), and I also unlocked a couple of vouchers.

Clone Hero

Started playing this game again! Only on guitar since I don’t have access to my drums at the moment. I downloaded even more Paramore songs, so I pretty much have every album in full now! Also, I’ve been messing around with the color profile editor and cooked up a Marie Splatoon-themed color scheme! The notes form a gradient of lime greens culminating with yellow in the multiplier and star power bar. I also made a highway background based off of Marie’s dress, which goes super well with the lime colors. It looks really cool! At least I can say that about guitar gameplay, I still need to see if it looks good on drums but I can’t test it rn.

Super Mario 3D World

I kept my promise of returning to this game to 100% it… almost… So in my main save file, I ended up making a lot of progress: I now have beaten all levels minus Champion’s Road with all five characters. I literally only have Champion’s Road five times in my way, then the game is done for good! However, after trying it for an hour, I don’t know if I really have the motivation to push through it. I knew it was gonna be hard but not like this. Idk if I have it in me, but let’s see. Maybe another day.

Rhythm Tengoku

I finished getting all 48 Perfects! I also went ahead and got an S rank on every drum lesson. Those were surprisingly tough, the control scheme didn’t help at all lol. But anyway, I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Don’t get me wrong, the game still has quite a few rough edges, but despite these quirks it still has some of that Rhythm Heaven charm. Lots of good ideas, banger music (Remix 5 my beloved), and I’ll always appreciate it for setting the foundation of the series. Regardless, I don’t see myself coming back to this one too much, and I still wouldn’t recommend it as a first entry (I recommend Fever or DS for that!). But it’s not all that bad, glad I revisited it and gave it a proper playthrough!

Rhythm Heaven DS

After beating Tengoku I went to play the next game in the series. Once again, I started on a fresh save file and worked my way through the game. And 5 days later, I got all 50 Perfects! This occasion is special because that achievement means that I now have ALL Perfects across the whole series!! So proud of this achievement. Back to DS, getting these was not easy, unlike Tengoku. Out of all of them, Rhythm Rally 2 was the biggest challenge, genuinely taking over 30 tries. But it couldn’t have been a more fitting conclusion: that minigame is one of my favorites and definitely one of if not the hardest, so it being my last ever Perfect was awesome. Anyway, I really enjoyed this playthrough, even more than my first one years ago. Even after beating it, I came back to it occasionally to replay my favorites. Frog Hop (my new favorite), Lockstep, Remix 8 & 9… lots of gold (heh) here. I’ve always liked this game but I definitely appreciate it a whole lot more now!