Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we talk about the games we’ve been playing. This week, I’ve been struggling with a video game again, Marie has been trying to make Mama happy, Victoria has been killing time at an airport, and Dom is excited about Nioh again.
If you want to read more about games, or remember what you wrote before, there’s a whole archive of our “What We’ve Been Playing” articles to check out.
Blue Prince, PS5
This might be my third or fourth try to get into Blue Prince. This is the puzzle game that won Eurogamer’s 2025 Game of the Year award, so I felt I had to give it another chance. After a few hours, am I now a Blue Prince fan, telling everyone how great this game is? Well, no. But I think I know the problem now. I can’t spend enough time on the game in one sitting, so I feel lost every time I play. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it someday, but that day isn’t today.
-Tom O
Cooking Mama 2, 3DS XL
My hands get sweaty, I get nervous, my stress goes up, and I feel scared when I show my creation. “Terrific, even better than Mama!” Those words still make me happy just like they did when I first played it, because Mama liked my food. But now that I’m older, I realize how mean Cooking Mama is when you mess up and how stressful it is to meet her high standards. When the flames appear in her eyes after tasting a dish I’ve ruined, I know I’m in trouble. I should point out that some tasks are harder than others and easy to mess up. For example, grilling enough food in the time limit to get bonus points is almost impossible. There’s not enough space to grill that much squid that fast, and keeping the flames at the right temperature needs constant attention.
I’m starting to understand why I like Overcooked so much. My training in high-stress virtual kitchens started with what seemed like a nice Mama in her home kitchen.
-Marie
Waiting and Words, mobile
I spent a lot of time in airports this week, waiting around, and since my usual airport game Star Wars Hunters has shut down, I went back to the reliable trio of Wordle, Strands and Connections to pass the time.
I have to say, I think I’ve got my Wordle strategy down now. I can usually guess the right word in under a minute (not bragging, I’m sure many others can do it too). What I do is I always start with OUIJA, a word with lots of vowels, and then for my second guess I pick a word with any correct letters from my first guess, but this time I make sure to include an E. I usually end up with something like BEANS or PLUME for guess two. From there, it’s pretty easy to get the right answer.
Connections, though, some of those are really hard to figure out! On the bright side, at least Connections kept my brain busy for a little longer while I waited for my flight. Wait, what do you mean it’s been delayed again?!
-Victoria
Nioh 3 demo, PS5 Pro
It’s here, it’s finally here. A big, full look at one of my most awaited games of 2026 is now available to download on PlayStation and PC, and it’s really good. It looks amazing, the different ways you can build your character are incredible, and switching between strong samurai builds and fast ninja builds makes the whole action-RPG experience really exciting. I think this could be the best one yet, beating Nioh 2 (which was almost a perfect game in my opinion) and helping this popular series become even more well-known. You should try it, you have nothing to lose.
-Dom
