Games of (the first half of) the year
Cosy and comforting familiarity win the day
Hey friends,
Whew boy has it been a bit of A Week for the games industry. Xbox has once again laid off a bunch of people in search of endless profits (forgetting that to receive profits, you must have products to sell), and PlayStation announced that it will kill off game discs (more on that next week).
But as we passed the halfway mark of the year on the 2nd of July, it means it’s time for Tim and I to look back on the last 6 months and declare our favourites.
So, without further ado, here are our picks of the best games of the first half of the year.
Alice’s picks
What an absolutely packed year. It has been filled with both excellent games and truly depressing news about the games industry, with more than 8,000 games industry workers being laid off in 2026 alone, almost doubling the number of layoffs from this time last year.
With everything going on at the moment, it’s no surprise that I’ve been gravitating towards more cozy games this year.
Forza Horizon 6
I don’t think it’s any surprise that my number one pick of 2026 for Forza Horizon 6, but I did agonise over choosing this one a little, given the absolute dumpster fire Xbox is at the moment. From Microsoft’s ongoing support of Israel’s genocide in Palestine, to Xbox acquiring dozens of brilliant studios only to shut many of them down and lay everyone off (despite revenue being up last year, hitting $23.5bn USD), it’s clear that Xbox is not currently a net good in the world.
However, Playground Games is a brilliant studio which hasn’t been shut down yet, and has made an excellent game in spite of its parent company, and I love Forza Horizon so much. I’m sure it will be at the top of the resume of every person who worked on it, when Xbox inevitably finds another opportunity for “cost savings” (the cost being the livelihoods of talented people, not cutting C-suite salaries or bonuses, of course).
Forza Horizon 6 is a game that is all things to all people who like to drive fast cars. It’s a cosy building game, it’s a collecting game, it’s a serious racing game, it’s a silly driving a car off a cliff game, it’s all that and more. It’s a good way to explore Japan, and the soundtrack is excellent. It’s a game I will live in for 2-3 years until Forza Horizon 7 comes to whisk me off somewhere new. I can’t wait to play it on PS5 Pro with better graphics while maintaining a high frame rate, because that’s the only thing it’s missing.
Rhythm Paradise Groove
Parenthood and limited time to play means that I am in my era of loving a game that’s just a few dozen mini-games in a trench coat. I can jump in, spend a bit of time trying to master the loop and improve my score, and then run off if my daughter wakes up early from her nap. Rhythm Paradise Groove is a simple yet unforgiving game that dares you to be good, but knows you probably won’t be for a while. It’s not great docked on a TV, because of the inevitable latency issues, but it’s a beast in handheld mode.
Tamodachi Life: Living The Dream
On the one hand, I am irritated by the lack of control I have over the characters, and how much it leans into being meme-y and TikTokkable and “so random”. On the other hand, Tamodachi Life: Living The Dream is hilarious and I love the different approach the game takes to life sims. While The Sims goes down the path of theism and casts you as an interventionist god, Tamodachi Life goes down the path of deism, where you create the world and can then be largely hands off from the affairs of your creations. Whether they hunger or need to bathe is not your problem.
One day I want to read a theologian’s take on life sims.
It’s another good snacking game, which you can lose days in, or jump in for ten minutes on a commute. It’s also perfect for people who love the idea of life sims, but easily get choice paralysis.
Pokemon Pokopia
This past year has really been the golden age of Pokemon for me. I missed the craze when I was in primary school, I’ve still never seen any of the anime, and I haven’t sunk any real time into the cardboard TCG. Of course, I’ve played almost all the games since Pokemon Blue on Game Boy, and I’ve enjoyed most of them, just none of them truly captured me and got me to understand the hype. But, thanks to Pokemon TCG Pocket, I have found myself connecting to Pokemon in a new, deeper way, and having Pokemon Pokopia come out this year was perfectly timed for that.
What I love about the game is that for once it’s not focussed on having small children take cute, exotic creatures and force them to fight each other. Instead, you play as a Ditto pretending to be a human, and you bring this beautiful world back to life and work with other Pokemon to achieve your aims. The comparisons to Animal Crossing is apt, in that it inspired similar feelings of care and calm, but it also feels less open-ended and has more direction.
Modern Art
OK, yes, technically Modern Art was originally released in 1992, but I only played it for the first time in 2026 and I really liked it, so it counts. Modern Art is one of those board games that ticks every box: it facilitates having fun with your friends, it has an interesting premise, the gameplay is engaging, the art is interesting, and it gets you to think, engage with and discuss a societal issue (in this case, how we value art and who gets to decide what art matters). In the game you have to bid on and buy art, which can appreciate in value if that artist ends up being popular. You can end up mostly buying pictures you don’t even like, just because they might be worth more. In our game, the winner ended up being the person who sold the most, rather than the people who had bought and held onto art that was supposed to make us profit.
It was easy to grasp the rules quickly, and the game only took 45mins. It really is a game that ticks every box.
Tim’s picks
It’s been such a stacked first half of the year for great video games. And yet, narrowing it down to a top five has not been difficult at all this time. Unusually for me, I’ve found it hard to stick to the quirky narrative intricacies or indie mechanical exploration of the Esoteric Ebbs, Sol Cestos and Titanium Courts, instead preferring the comforting familiarity of more traditional game experiences. I’m getting my fill of surprise and uncertainty elsewhere, I guess.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millenium Tales
Before I played this game, I thought the title was just another gormless Square Enix word salad. Which it is. But now having explored the game and loved every second, I can see it’s also an attempt to borrow the syntax of Nintendo’s beloved adventure series. Except Square has chosen to use the name of the courageous main character first and foremost, rather than the wise and imperilled princess.
If this game had released for the Super Nintendo in 1995, instead of Chrono Trigger, it would be hailed as a masterful Zelda-like and one of Square’s finest achievements on the system. Yet while much of the game evokes that era (the simple sword-swipe combat, the bombs, bows and boomerangs, the potions), the writing and characters, the gacha-style equippable upgrade system and the freeform overall structure feel very modern. With the gorgeous HD-2D art style also bridging the gap between retro and contemporary, this is a beautiful blend of comfort and innovation.
Resident Evil Requiem
Split dichotomously between two protagonists and two styles of play, it would be easy to say that Requiem brings the best of old and new Resident Evil together by evoking both 2017’s Biohazard and 2005’s RE4. But the truth is more complicated than that. Requiem also burdens itself by roping in narrative millstones from across the series’ tortured history, and indulges in ridiculous action set-pieces that would be perfectly at home in bottom-of-the-barrel entries like RE6. And yet, despite some tonal whiplash, it ends up working wonderfully.
Grace’s main gameplay section inside an absolutely demented chronic care facility is some of my favourite survival horror of all time, mixing challenge and terror with some risk-reward decision-making and a touch of experimentation. The ramp up from gloomy wood-panelled stalker escape scenario to shiny science experiment zombie mess — with blood-soaked mechanical detours and creepy screaming ladies in between — also perfectly encapsulates Capcom’s long-running survival horror series in just one area. And while the rest of the experience is less focused and more meandering, it’s a remarkable encore for Leon Kennedy, and proof that the series can do action without becoming totally idiotic.
Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf
Though it’s both a thoroughly traditional cinematic puzzle-platformer and a very straightforward sequel, the combination of hand-drawn visuals, wonderful score and that adorable cat creature Mui couldn’t keep me away from this one. Wishfully’s 2023 original was an emotional journey of wordless storytelling, picturesque settings and a touch of existential dread. And this followup follows the same formula, but with some expanded mechanics and even more of a deep-dive into the lore.
From exploring an undersea area in a leaky capsule to possessing small creatures to sacrifice themselves for your puzzle-solving gain, every section of the game brings new things to do while subtly expanding your understanding of this strange world. And while collecting antidote ingredients to save your sibling doesn’t feel quite as epic as a robot alien invasion in terms of inciting incidents, the emotional and narrative payoffs end up being just as satisfying.
007 First Light
I’m a big fan of James Bond, but as someone who has felt little connection to the most recent films and also could never quite get into the Hitman series, I wasn’t too sold on the idea of IO’s origin story espionage game at first. But it turned out to be an astonishingly fresh and satisfying take on the franchise, adding elements of style, cinema and linear action to the developer’s trademark open-ended sneaking designs.
While too many takes on Bond have seen a cruel, maladapted, problematic old man complaining about progress, here the character’s weaknesses are tied to his growth and inexperience, as he battles a corrupt techno-establishment that thinks it knows best. Ultimately I felt like the series’ signature gadgets were a bit underused, and the sprawling spycraft setpieces of the first few areas overshadowed the linear action of the latter half. But it did remain a thrilling ride throughout, and is easily the best Bond media for decades.
Mina the Hollower
Superficially, Yacht Club’s long-awaited followup to Shovel Knight is a mash-up of Zelda and Castlevania, with a light horror theme and a Game Boy Colour aesthetic. Yes, the cheesy gothic settings are a delight, Jake Kaufman’s genre-spanning score rules, and the animal characters (led by mad scientist monster-hunter Mina) are funny and interesting. But the studio kept the game’s true nature a complete secret, and it’s a shockingly deep experience to fall into once you get started.
What feels at first like a fairly linear action game with soulslike influences turns out to be fully open, gated only by your understanding of the world’s potential and your own abilities. There are layers of risk and reward, from the way you need to stay on the offensive in order to heal, to the way you need to horde currency (which is easily lost if you die) if you want to quickly level yourself up. Every new screen feels like an education in new possibilities, some of which I didn’t grasp until I’d returned to an area for a third time. There’s just so much crammed in here, and thankfully it also feels great to play, and satisfying to overcome.