2025 Year-In-Review: TV I Watched

I feel like I have relatively little to talk about from my TV watching this year, because so much of it was ongoing series or sequels that I’ve been watching for years already. So rather than group by genres, I’ll group by category.

I opened this year continuing the Star Trek kick from last year, with five more seasons: one of Discovery, two of Picard, one of Lower Decks, and a rewatch of season 4 of Next Generation.

I finished out a bunch of series I’d been watching for a while, all of which managed to land the plane reasonably well: Superman & Lois, The Dragon Prince, What We Do in the Shadows, and The Sandman. On the whole, Superman & Lois and The Sandman both got a little compacted from what would have been ideal; and Dragon Prince and What We Do in the Shadows were both a little long in the tooth by the time they wrapped up; but they all told their complete stories and ended well.

I watched another season each of various ongoing shows that I’m likely to watch additional seasons of if/when they make them: The Sex Lives of College Girls, What If, Harley Quinn, Wednesday, Peacemaker, and Poker Face. Pretty much all of them can be summed up as “more of the same, if you liked it before you’ll still like it.”

The two new standouts: Dying for Sex was a limited series based on a podcast which is a kinky black comedy/tragedy about a woman dying of cancer but determined to find sexual fulfillment before she goes; and Michelle Williams sells it. The first season of Murderbot was a downright delight and very true to the spirit, if not always the letter, of the books. I heartily recommend that.

Going into 2026 I’ve got the final season of Stranger Things, which I need to watch before it gets totally spoiled. I’ve got a couple more seasons of various Star Treks backed up, and then…not much I’m really excited about? I may need to go spelunking in the archives of the various streaming services I pay for and figure out what I’m actually interested in (or, as necessary, cancel them!)
(ARR watched virtually no TV this year, interestingly.)

2025 Year-In-Review: Video Games I Played

This year I logged 42 games played, 29 of which were new and 13 of which were replays. I logged 534 hours of gameplay, even more than last year, which probably goes a ways towards explaining why I read less and watched less TV this year. (I also didn’t do anything new for Talking Time, though I added a bunch of update reviews of emulator handhelds.)

Everafter Falls, at 55 hours, was my most-played game; and the combined six games in the Cozy Farming Sim genre also won for most logged hours. Roots of Pacha, Fields of Mistria, and Littlewood also met or beat the 30-hour mark. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was the only other game to crack 30 hours, but I had 9 games total break the 20-hour mark.

I did have a pretty decent balance genre-wise, though, with classic rpgs, metroidvanias, 2D zeldalikes, action rpgs, gimmick rpgs, a few puzzle adventure games, some puzzle/casual games, a 4X game, and a dating sim. Of the new games, 25 were on Steam, 1 was on GOG Galaxy, and 3 were on the Switch. Of the replays, there were 6 SNES, 3 GBA, 1 GBC, 1 Android, and 2 Steam games.

In terms of handhelds, the logged playthroughs rotated through the Powkiddy V10, R36S, and Trimui Smart Pro; and by the end of the year I was trying to focus more on the Odin Pro and the Ampown MagicX. I also used the GB300 and Miyoo A30 for casual “ten minutes at a time” puzzle games and the like, mostly on the subway or before bed. My Android tablet, as usual, was mostly used for Gems of War but also a full replay of Gemcrafter: Puzzle Journey.

I’m changing the way I manage my backlog, because I’ve started to lose the distinction between games I “officially” added versus ones that I’m not expecting to fully play. There are 210 games listed on my backlog as of this writing, though only 43 of them are ones I expect to give the full time towards unless I really like them. As it stands, on paper I removed 9 games from my backlog but really I basically broke even on the year.

ARR played a lot of Geometry Dash on his tablet this year; also more Bloons TD6. He played lots of Detrarune on Steam (and also some Celeste and Element TD 2) and did a bunch of Pokemon and Zelda replays on the Switch. He noodled around with GameCube Zelda games on my Retroid Pocket 5 but didn’t go crazy with them. (He and I are collectively applying the 5-game rule to the Switch 2; we may more may not get one in 2026 depending on what comes out.)

Tentative plans for 2026 include: Finally clearing the last few GameCube games on my backlog using the Odin Pro; and replaying some DS games on the Ampown MagicX. I may try to do a grander backlog cull of console games or I may try and cull bundles of Steam games, depending on my mood.