Gaming has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. We all took a different route into gaming and depending on your age, you may have skipped quite a few of the consoles which have graced my life. The first I remember was the SEGA Master System, followed by the MegaDrive and then Sony’s PlayStation. I’ve never been a huge Nintendo fan so pretty much skipped everything until the Wii and the DS, I didn’t even own the original Xbox, although made that right with the purchase of the Xbox 360, followed by the Xbox One.

Of course, I own every PlayStation ever released and the Switch too, so when it comes to gaming, I have plenty of choice.

So why is it then that sometimes that passion seems to fade? With all the games in my library I have a huge backlog to get through, yet sometimes I just can’t be bothered. Thankfully this month is not one of those times and recently I find my passion reignited again. There’s been peaks and troughs throughout the year. I’ve completed the amazing God of War, Detroit Become Human and Spider-Man, amongst many others. But in between, I’ve found myself losing a little interest. Maybe it’s because I have a family and other things going on in life, I’m sure it’s perfectly normal.

So it’s when a title comes along that really gets me excited about gaming again, I just feel rejuvenated and the honour this month goes to Tetris Effect. What brilliant surprise this game was to me. In all honesty, when it was announced at E3 I pretty much ignored it. Then I saw the news recently saying the demo was out in VR and I thought to myself, “what the hell,” more out of curiosity than anything else, then boom, gaming had me excited all over again and more specifically, VR suddenly feels like it went from a fad to having a large part in the future of gaming.

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Tetris Effect somehow managed to pull at all my emotions at once. As one of the first games I saw someone playing, Tetris is ingrained in my gaming history. I remember seeing a friend play it on Gameboy on a train once, sure it looked basic but I still remember having to play it and the many of versions since, but now with Tetris Effect it feels complete. It’s like all those other versions were building to this. PlayStation VR has the ultimate version of Tetris and it feels like this is how it was meant to be played all along. There’s something special about putting on the headset, plugging your headphones in your ear and getting lost in this world. I can’t describe the feelings of emotion and joy I felt playing this game. It’s incredible.

This is why I love gaming though, one minute you are looking forward to a certain game (Darksiders III for me) and then you’ll come across a hidden gem which wasn’t even on your radar. I’ve many examples of this over the years and its something which seems to happen more and more often now thanks to the growing power of digital.

So what are your hidden gems? Let us know.