What I Played in May 2025

Posted on 2025.06.30

It’s time for another month-in-review! Can you believe that? The Switch 2 is only a month away! However this was also the final month of the semester so things were getting quite tough. Despite being quite busy for the first half of the month, the college stuff was done by the second half, so I got some pretty decent play time overall. Anyway, without further ado, here are the games I played in May 2025, in no particular order.

Splatoon 3

I’ve been continuing my journey of only playing Splatoon 3 in a group with friends, rather than playing solo. It’s something that has helped me get reinvested in this game. It’s still not perfect, it’s still very flawed. The maps still suck bad and the matchmaking is even worse. But, at least with friends, I can continue to enjoy the game all the time instead of just during special events (what I had told myself I’d only play until the next game). For the record, I never stopped loving Splatoon as a whole, pretty sure that will never go away, it’s just the specific game Splatoon 3 that I stopped playing and enjoying until recently. I think this is my only path forward until the next entry in the series comes out.

Other than that, nothing crazy really happened, except for one funny moment at the end of the season: I had not played X Battle in like a year and a half, but for giggles I decided to play the very last Clam Blitz rotation of the season. I played my five placement matches… and immediately landed in the top 3000, securing my S+ rank for the next season LMAOOO.

Mario Kart 64

This game is… there… I’m not the biggest fan of it. I tried going for all golds on 150cc and I was doing decently I think but there’s only so much you can do when the CPUs cheat all the time and you haven’t mastered the weird drifting. Also the lack of guardrails in that one Choco Mountain part is the game design choice ever.

F-Zero X

This game is so cool, but man I wish I was good at it. I played the three available cups on the easiest difficulty (I tried intermediate mode but I did poorly). I really like the mechanics of this game, especially the ability to destroy other machines. But ultimately, this game is just too much for me lol. It’s fast and it’s difficult. The controls on the N64 NSO app don’t help much either, the shoulder buttons are awkward and the analog stick feels too sensitive. Side note, seeing a Nintendo 64 game run at 60fps is… weird… I don’t think I’ve ever seen an official game from this console run at this framerate, I’m not used to it.

Minecraft

I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I got the itch to play this game (I’m guessing it was A Minecraft Movie talk. I didn’t watch this film btw). I didn’t really feel like stepping into my forever world (which I hadn’t touched in over a year; I’ll probs come back after a major patch happens) so I decided to start a new world just to scratch that itch. Explored a bit, settled on a place, went caving, raided a village, ventured the Nether and got a fortress, and found a stronghold (but didn’t go in). Kinda forgot to return to this world after a while to finish it off, but I was quite satisfied.

Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics

I briefly revisited this game to play Yacht Dice with some friends. The mix of a little bit of strategy with mostly pure luck really pleases the gambler in all of us (jk, please don’t gamble kids).

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Played this game a bit more. This game’s end is fast approaching… better enjoy its last moments.

Tetris Effect: Connected

Also played this game a bit more. It’s fascinating how a game about placing seven different types of blocks in a box has not gotten stale in 40 years.

Tetris 99

Also also played this game a bit more. Still fun.

Balatro

Also also also played this game a bit more. Not much to say.

Word Play (Demo)

While still on the topic, I played GMTK’s take on the genre. The one thing this demo made clear is that I suck at word games LMAO. My entire vocabulary just seems to vanish every time I play any word game, even Wordle or Scrabble, and I end up trying to invent or brute force words. Despite that, I can sense the potential in this title. This demo only has a limited amount of everything (modifiers, special tiles, etc) and I already find it pretty interesting, so I’m definitely curious as to how crazy the full version will get. Maybe I’ll get it, who knows.

Clone Hero

🎶 'Cause God, it just feels so, it just feels so good 🎶

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

With Switch 2 on the horizon, I found myself with the perfect opportunity to continue my Tears of the Kingdom save file. I told myself I would not play it until the Switch 2 version came out. However, the itch to play either BotW or TotK grew stronger and stronger, so I deviced a plan: I would play BotW here on Switch 1 from a fresh file doing a “go straight to Hyrule Castle after the Great Plateau” run, then do the same thing again for the Switch 2 edition of BotW once that came out (so I could compare the two), and after that I return to TotK to continue my 100% journey on my existing file.

I started a new run on Master Mode, and to up the challenge of a game I’ve already played for nearly 800 hours, I decided to do a no armor run on top of it. It went pretty well! My knowledge of the game’s mechanics served me well, and while I died a couple of times, I didn’t encounter any major roadblocks early on. Once I finished the Great Plateau, before going to Hyrule Castle I decided to take a little detour. If you know Master Mode, you’ll know there’s a White-maned Lynel on the east side of the area. And if you know this game very well, you’ll know that doing melee damage while riding a Lynel does not degrade your weapon’s durability. See where this is going? Out of sheer boredom, I decided it would be funny to try and kill the Lynel with nothing but a 14 damage sword, a 28 damage bow with ~40 arrows, an attack-up elixir I made with a beetle I found, and a pot lid. With just three hearts and no armor. And a lot of patience. It took over 30 attempts spanning a few hours, but I eventually slayed the beast. Was it worth it? The time and the anguish? Eh, probably. I did it for me, and I found it fun :).

Anyway, back on track: next up, raiding Hyrule Castle. I died more often than I’d admit, but I managed to loot the place pretty well and filled up my limited inventory with some pretty good gear. Unfortunately, this is where this story meets a roadblock. I went to the final boss area knowing damn well what was ahead of me (even though I’d never actually done the “rush to castle” thing myself), but I was still not prepared. I went in fully expecting to die repeatedly and to spend hours on the boss rush, but I could only do so much. I spent a few days throwing attempts at the wall, but found little success. I only managed to get past Thunderblight twice and I quickly died to Calamity when it was its turn. I sadly had to abandon this strategy, as the release of the Switch 2 was approaching quick and I wanted to stick to the plan. I’ll tell you more about it in the next article, but to give you a headstart, I left the castle and cheated (stocked up on a bunch of hearty durians). Is it cheating if the game allows it? I’ll let you be the judge, heehee…