Back again for our regular Sunday roundup of quick-fire reviews and impressions of everything under the spotlight at Retro Arcadia this week, old and new and a bit of both. Back to work this week as well, and still painting the outside of the house, although it’s just finishing touches now… If you exclude the three almost inaccessible windows that still need doing! Anyway, in more interesting news, I also went to see the newly reformed Bedford punk band, Burnt Toast, playing their first gig in the best part of thirty years last night! Not only are these guys very old friends of mine (from before then) who I still meet up with once or twice a year, but we supported them in my own band’s very first gig, in Putnoe Scout Hut on the edge of town, all the way back in 1994! Anyway, great to see them play again after all this time, and I was so pleased for them too because having been the whole reformation thing myself, I know exactly how great it feels! Anyway, back to gaming this week, I’ve got a lot to say on a title that wasn’t quite as long coming as all that but it certainly felt like it at times, so let’s head over to Xbox Game Pass, where I might have been a couple of days late myself getting to it, but have made up for lost time since…

For the past few years, I’ve done a game of the year predictions feature at the start of every January (last one here), where I have a look at what’s on the way that I like the look of. A few months later, we then have a quick look back at what made it so far when I get to my Halfway Hotlist countdown in June, and again in the main event in December. And Hollow Knight: Silksong has been predicted to take the top slot every single time! That said, looking back as far as 2021 just now, even then I wasn’t exactly convinced it would “finally” be released that year, and since then it’s become more of a gag than a prediction, although ironically, after all that hope and expectation and anticipation for so long, as just said, I was away on holiday and nowhere near anything I could play it on when it eventually did arrive! Anyway, now it’s here, I’m here, and it’s wonderful… Except for the 5% or so where I hate it with every part of my being!!! Which was also the case for the original Hollow Knight, which I (mostly!) adored, played to death at the time, have been back to several times since, and I’d now consider as one of my favourite games of all time. But while Silksong was never going to have quite the same impact, it’s everything I hoped for and a lot more, considering it was only a bit of DLC when it first tantalised me!

Like the first game, it’s a metroidvania, with you playing a lethal hunter (and former boss) called Hornet, who you’ll take on a forced pilgrimage through the broken insect kingdom of Pharloom, ascending through its mossy grottos, misty moors, fiery depths and twisted cities as you uncover the ancient mysteries of silk and song on the way to the shining citadel at the kingdom’s peak. The sense of exploration is once again phenomenal, with each region feeling equal parts vast and meticulously dense, and also seemingly overwhelming but quickly-familiar, as you set your own pace and your next direction, which will inevitably involve dying over and over, and that’s before you get to some absolutely brutal but (so far) ultimately rewarding boss fights! Like your general movement though, combat is fast, fluid, acrobatic and beautiful, there to be mastered and adapted and built upon through various quests, rewards and upgrades, but it’s still really, really hard, with the most mundane enemy a constant threat! That’s fine too, but no matter how much I tell myself it’s time for reflection and strategizing, a multi-minute trudge from your respawn bench back to a boss after getting battered for the twentieth time, so you can have one more go at working out how and why before you even think about fighting back, seems a bit unnecessary!

There’s also a particular platforming mechanic that’s never become natural to me and I don’t think ever will, which stings more because everything else has, but that’s it – no other complaints, it’s just great! The presentation is a new level of masterclass in melancholy, with delicately cartoon-like hand-crafted visuals juxtaposed by death and decay absolutely everywhere you look, but then there’s areas of staggering beauty despite that, with the most gorgeously striking colours and textures hinting at some kind of rebirth that you now seem to be a part of. And the relentlessly dramatic orchestral soundtrack is just stunning, dynamically veering from haunting to heroic, while the layers upon layers of wild sound effects are so immersive and additive to both atmosphere and the generally silent narrative, and they’re often pretty unsettling too! This is a truly magical game that I’ve obsessed over this week, and will continue to do so for a long time yet, although I am honestly concerned that my ageing skillset might hit its ceiling long before I’ve seen all forty-plus bosses apparently lurking here! After seven years (clearly well spent), I’m in no rush with this though, and there’s an awful lot of discovery and wonder to be had before I start worrying about that!

Here’s the thing though – despite all of that, and despite all those game of the year thoughts for so very long – which, by the way, I now know were completely justified – I did also finish off the last couple of hours Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater last weekend before I got too involved, and as the dust continues to settle on it, I might have enjoyed it even more! I did get into it here a couple of weeks back, so won’t again now, but if it weren’t for Hollow Knight, I’d have just started a new game the second the credits had finished rolling! It might have had a head-start, given quite how outstanding the PlayStation 2 version still is to play to this day, but it’s a remake done perfectly, with every last detail retained, a hell of a lick of paint applied, and those modern control options making all the difference. I genuinely haven’t stopped thinking about it since, and unlike Hollow Knight, has had way more impact on me that the original game did, to the point I’m keen to play that again too, if only to reevaluate where it currently sits in the overall series for me… As well as the PlayStation 3 remaster, which actually isn’t a bad shout because I only ever played the first couple of hours of that one after I picked up the HD Collection a while back…

In the meantime, that’s literally all I’ve got for you this week, but I guess I’m not the only one, so I’ll also apologise if you have no interest in stupid indie platformers whatsoever and are sick to death of hearing about them! Do check back next Wednesday either way though, when we’re going to be rediscovering an undisputed masterpiece in Another World on Commodore Amiga, which actually took me a very long time to work out for myself, but we’ll get into all that as well as the game, so hopefully see you then!

As always, I’ll never expect anything for what I do here but if you’d like to buy me a Ko-fi and help towards increasingly expensive hosting and storage costs then it will always be really appreciated! And be sure to follow me on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) or Threads for my latest retro-gaming nonsense, and also on Bluesky, which is under my real name but most of it ends up there too if you prefer!