At last, March is upon us, and with it some newer big games. But how many of us Gaming Respawners are playing these new, big games? Not a lot, apparently, except a couple of people. In fact, I know a couple of us have played Resident Evil Requiem, but strangely, no mention of that game here. Instead, many of us are still experiencing “blasts from the past” and playing older titles going as far back as the PS2 era. Nothing wrong with that, it was a kickass era in gaming. Join us to see what we’ve all been playing lately in Gaming Respawn Plays (March 2026).
Peter Keen
God of War: Sons of Sparta and God of War: Ragnarok
Got to say, I’m still in a bit of a funk, game-wise. God of War: Sons of Sparta should have been the game that dropped out of nowhere to take over my soul until I’d not only completed the game but got the platinum too.
The trouble is, that game is so bland, so safe, so uninspiring, so ‘meh’, I’ve not only stopped, I already deleted the game. How they can make a game so substandard for the God of War universe is beyond me, but somehow, they did it. It staggers me that Santa Monica Studio signed off on the final product too.
There is nothing inherently wrong with placing a young Kratos in a 2D Metroidvania-style game with pixel art, but the game is so devoid of fun or an interesting story that it’s just not worth the effort. I mean, it’s not until about ten hours in that you get something as simple as a double jump ability, for crying out loud.
Sigh….
So, to cheer myself up, I started playing an OG Kratos game again. I realised that the God of War: Ragnarok game I’d platinumed only had one playthrough, so I started playing that again. When playing a game for the second time, I always enjoy it a little more as I understand the story better and pick up on things I missed the first time.
November of this year will mark this game’s FOURTH anniversary! It’s bittersweet playing this again as I find it hard to think that here I am playing such a gorgeous, well-crafted and now old game again, simply because nothing else currently really tickles my fancy.
I’ve still got games like Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy XVI, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Hogwarts Legacy, amongst others, sitting on my shelf in my backlog of shame, either untouched or unfinished, and I just haven’t got the heart to put them on. I’ve also recently bought Black Myth: Wukong and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden to now add to this stack.
I think the reason I’m drawn back to Ragnarok, though, is because I’ve spent three years trying to find the next big franchise to take my mind off God of War, and in that time, only Stellar Blade, Astro Bot, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, and Battlefield 6 have managed to keep my interest for any length of time.
So, after feeling a little empty and annoyed, and to help me find my mojo again, I’ve had to press the reset button and play God of War: Ragnarok again to remind myself just how flipping good not just this series is but also games in general as a whole.
I am trying to get back into Ghost of Yotei now that it’s had an update, but I’m nervous to play it because of the console-stopping moments it’s given me.
Because of that, I’ve spent a lot of time opening up my PS5 to clean it as best I can without taking much out. To be fair, even though I’d not cleaned my console for about 6 months, there was hardly any dust in there. The worry now is, especially with playing Ghost of Yotei, is my console shutting down while playing because the liquid metal used to disperse the heat from the CPU to the heat sink is now oxidized.
If that is happening, the heat isn’t being dispersed as well as it should, even though the console is clean? I have a day one PS5, quite literally, and I do thrash my PS5 every day, one way or another, with games or media, so it may be this. I hope not, and I don’t think it really is as it’s only Ghost of Yotei and Battlefield 6 that I have this problem with. Both games have reported issues shutting down or freezing consoles. I’ve got 750 hours on Gran Turismo 7, 250 hours on Space Marine II, and it’s never happened while playing those games. So, playing a game like God of War: Ragnarok is also testing the console as I never had an issue in the 85 hours it took me to play that game, so I hope I don’t have this issue the second time through either.
The OTHER big thing that is messing with my gaming disappointment is that March 2026 is the month that I was hoping to (but now won’t) play the only game I am truly stoked to play this year: 007 First Light. The initial release date was going to be the 27th March, but it’s now been pushed back to May.
A lot of my current trend of “treading water” with gaming, I think, is also trying to buy some time with something other than Battlefield 6 multiplayer until the Bond game arrives.
So, it’s been a bit of a “meh” month overall, but I’m enjoying the quality of Ragnarok in the meantime.
Will Worrall
Fallout 76
I’ve missed out on a few of these monthly features lately, though not for want of having games to talk about. This month, I’ve spent a shocking amount of my time playing Fallout 76. While it’s definitely had a few hurdles (okay, more than a few), I’ve really been enjoying my time with the game.
It gives the “solo wanderer” thing a whole new vibe when you’re in a world filled with other actual human players. The lonely wandering between outposts only feels more lonely for the times that you stumble across some other human player wandering through the woods. You can also wander butt-first into another player’s camp without realising it, especially when they’re designed well enough to blend into the area in which they were placed.
Mostly, I’ve been completing missions and scavenging resources to set myself up. It’s a vastly different experience to what it was on launch. Back then, the only NPCs around were robots, and the entire world felt empty. These days, with the numerous human NPCs and the player-ran areas, the world feels more alive than most modern Fallout games, and the ever-changing face of the world each time you log in helps to keep things pretty fresh.
Dom Richards
Ratchet & Clank HD Collection
Modern gaming and I are having a bit of a disagreement as of late. This has given me the opportunity to both go back and play some older titles I didn’t get around to playing previously and also to revisit some old favourites; the latter of which is what I have been spending most of March doing with one of my all-time favourite franchises: Ratchet & Clank.
When modern gaming and I decided on this little break, I visited a couple of my local CEXs and hooked my PS3 back up to the TV. I found the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection in CEX and loaded it straight up. I hadn’t played the first game (or the two PS2 sequels) in years, possibly (and this is definitely showing my age) decades. It’s been a lot of fun going back to the original games to see how much of that original formula has remained in the modern games.
Daniel Garcia-Montes
Crimson Desert and Ninja Gaiden 4: The Two Masters DLC
I started playing Red Dead Redemption II for the first time in January of 2025. And I didn’t finish it until just last month (February). It has never taken me that long to finish a game before. Never. Although, a big reason it took me that long was because I paused my playthrough of RDR2 several times throughout the year to play through and review new releases I was more excited about, namely The First Berserker: Khazan, Doom: The Dark Ages, and Ninja Gaiden 4 (and I replayed NG 1-3 in preparation for NG4). I enjoyed RDR2, but damn, was it a slog, especially in the first three chapters where the story basically seems to go nowhere. The game just never caught my undivided attention or “drew” me to my PS5 every night like other open-world games have. In fact, I’d go several days without playing the game at all, and when I did go back, I often thought, “What the hell was the last thing I did in this game?”.
Now that I finally finished RDR2, I could give my undivided attention to one of the games of 2026 that I was most looking forward to: Crimson Desert (though I first played The Two Masters DLC for Ninja Gaiden 4). I was part of the camp of gamers who viewed Crimson Desert as a game that looked too good to be true since they started showing trailers for it years back, but it still had me very intrigued. Taking place in a fantasy setting, main character Kliff was shown fighting all sorts of enemies with swords and sorcery, suplexing and throwing enemies off cliffs, swinging around like Spider-Man, jumping off floating landmasses in the sky and plummeting back down to the main open-world below, gliding through the air, riding dragons, fishing, petting dogs and cats, so on and so forth.
I’ve played Crimson Desert for several hours now. Is it too good to be true? Or is it actually one of the best games of all time? Honestly, it’s too soon for me to tell. My playthrough didn’t exactly hit the ground running. The control scheme takes some getting used to. Some puzzles and missions are quite obtuse and vague. BUT…I’m really enjoying the combat, and the missions are becoming more interesting as I go on. And I’ve still got plenty of skills and abilities to unlock, new weapons and armor to try out, mounts to ride, and much more ahead of me. And I’m very much looking forward to continue diving into this game and discovering all the new stuff it still has to offer.
Ian Cooper
Max Payne Trilogy
This month, I’ve been hammering the retro games. If you were born in the 80s but raised in the 90s, then you’ll know what I mean by retro.
Max Payne may be a name that doesn’t roll on people’s lips nowadays, but he was very well known back in the day. I’ve recently been away on holiday for a cute little staycation, and I made it my personal mission to play through all 3 games in the series.
The Max Payne trilogy was what I would consider to be a cinematic masterpiece. The first game, although outdated by today’s standards, was a gritty journey of revenge after Max’s wife and child are brutally murdered after he returns home to find his home had been invaded by junkies. What follows is a sombre but action-packed adventure. What made Max Payne unique? The introduction to “bullet time”. Better known for its use in the Matrix films, bullet time slowed the action down and allowed Max to dispatch foes with ease and in spectacular fashion. It was the slow-mo dive button that truly made it spectacular though. One press and Max goes into a dive whilst the action slows simultaneously. The aiming remains free, though, meaning enemies will be dead by the time they realize what’s going on.
This action continued into Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. The improved graphics and tighter action were hard to miss as you, once again, control Max as he seeks his love interest, Mona Sax, whom he thought was dead after the first game’s events. What follows this time is a tale of betrayal and a huge body count. Max questions his own sanity and loyalty. These games were not for kids. They were brutal crime stories led by one man’s misfortune.
Things changed up a bit in Max Payne 3. This was due to the improved technology to play with. The arrival of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 meant that Max could look more alive than ever, given much more personality, and the action can be much crunchier. But what this new technology gave grace to the most was Max Payne 3‘s presentation. Remedy created something special. Max was now a drunk, preferring the bottom of a glass over any form of social life, but he was no longer a cop, instead choosing to work as private security to a high-rolling family in Brazil. But of course, bad luck befalls Max as he soon finds himself embroiled in-between warring factions that changes his life. We also have a fair few nostalgic moments that refer back to his former life, and he shaves his head!
The Max Payne trilogy needs to be played. It’s a gritty, brutal tale of a single man’s trials and tribulations that won’t leave you after the credits roll.
