Rewinder: What We're Playing This Week (May 24, 2025)

Welcome to the first edition of Rewinder's 'What We're Playing,' where we discuss what each of us have been up to.

When our jobs largely revolve around covering games, sometimes it's nice to discuss games in a more casual manner. We're aiming to make this a weekly column each weekend where we not only discuss what we've been diving into outside of work, but also invite you, our readers, to join in the discussion.

Here's what we've been up to this week.

Henry Stockdale

It's been a busy week following the launch of Rewinder, so that combined with my UploadVR work means I've not had a tremendous amount of time to play anything I can publicly discuss yet. However, I'm 12 hours into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 right now and I'm completely invested in this world.

Those parries can be a tricky thing to time, especially when you encounter a new type of enemy, but the story has been superb so far. It's visually stunning and combat being notably different for all party members keeps life interesting, so I'm not in a rush. It's been nice to just take my time with this adventure.

Jason Coles

I got a little bit further into Cyberpunk 2077, which I'm really enjoying, but it's very early days still. I'm looking forward to seeing how it changes and how the combat keeps switching things up.

Lex Luddy

So, I've spent the last week cramming my way through Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, but you'll have to wait a few days to see my full thoughts on that over on Shacknews. However, in the little bit of downtime I have had, I've spent about a dozen hours between work and playing things for work setting up a Retroid Pocket 5, and hey, this thing is rad!

If you are unfamiliar, the Retroid Pocket 5 is one of many ever more powerful Android-based handhelds coming out of China, and these things have quite the enthusiast scene behind them now. From custom firmware and versions of established emulators to a near cottage industry of YouTube set-up guides, it's really damn easy to get one of these things running a shocking gamut of games. After about a week of tinkering and curating a collection of games I might actually play (and not just load up for five minutes and go, "Huh... that sure is 25 To Life") I finally have this thing where I want it. Which is to say I am playing the cult classic SRPG Jeanne D'Arc for the first time and it rules.

It's incredibly lesbian coded, and the villains are the English. You can see why my gay-Irish-ass loves it. I'd already bought the PS5 port a few months ago, but having it back in its portable format has me thinking I might actually see this thing through.

Scott McCrae

I've been really in to Ace Combat Zero, so I'll probably be finishing that off this weekend. I'll also be playing [REDACTED] (not the game redacted, something I can't talk about) that you can hear about sometime next week. And there's always Picross in my life.

Anything you're playing this weekend that you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments below.