Weekly Update 2025-12-21
*puts on my robe and Santa hat*
Game Releases and Updates
ARC Raiders Cold Snap – coming the same week the departure window [the game’s prestige system] opens, a new rotating map modifier, giving the levels a dusting of snow, adjusted lighting, ridiculously boosted drop rates, and a somewhat generous ‘freezing’ mechanic. On top of all that, the game added a new project, tasking you with collecting berries [which only grow in the cold maps] and various festive odds and ends to decorate mankind’s sad refuge for the holidays. Very cute.
It’s all a bit much considering I just signed a pact to have my character vaporized and reconstituted tomorrow. Will this condition persist after winter? Will there be more such events in the future? Will I even want to play once I lose all my blueprints and workbench upgrades? All I can say is this: it’s a hell of a lot more impressive, and more fun, than the Battlefield 6 version of this event.
Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy release – ATOM RPG, the Russian [very Russian] Fallout 1 homage, was a strangely compelling outlier. I liked it a lot, in spite of its many flaws and limitations. But for the same developers to pivot to an isometric fantasy Real-time-with-pause RPG is a faintly disappointing turn of events. I played the demo for Swordhaven last year and found it unimpressive, and though there’s been plenty of time for it to come around, do I suspect it has? Not really, but I’m hopeful. Uncommitted, but hopeful.
Cyberdrifter release – this VR game is very obviously made in the style of Tron, and also has been in Early Access since, like, 2017. It’s apparently only coming out after being hacked down to a set of individual arcade modes. It looks pretty good, but isn’t enormously compelling, even before you get to the big notification that it’s completely incompatible with Virtual Desktop. The reason I mention it is that it immediately raised a question in my mind - why HAVEN’T they made a Tron VR game? Why did they make some shit isometric action game? Disney, throw some fucking checks my way. I’ll wrangle some people together and give you a 30 dollar Tron tie-in over the weekend. Is everyone fucking stupid but me?
Splintered Trial of Chaos – Here I thought they’d wrapped up with this one, but apparently they decided to roll out one last, completely jumbled randomizer mode for the best standalone randomizer game yet. Makes sense! Since my sister gave me an insanely good weapon from the start, I’ll go through it anyway, even though it doesn’t sound that much different than a standard run.
Wizordum Bloodmage – speaking of unexpected updates… I never found the second character option in Wizordum to be a particularly valuable part of the game, but mostly because they didn’t play that differently from the default. This one, on the other hand, seems much more interesting, and from what little I already played, insanely fast and powerful. No health from pickups, and only the ability to steal health from enemies by various means, then burn that health on a Power Within-esque buff… why don’t I go through Wizordum one more time?
Synthetik 2 Engineer – another new character, and one that I’m honestly a little less excited by. Doesn’t Synthetik 2 already have some kind of summoner class? Well, I tried it out and it was pretty fun but I think I’ve kainda nailed down [haha] what I don’t like about S2 in general – It’s just too overstimulating. There’s too much going on, too many explosions, too many lights, colors, flashing numbers, too many mods and procs and things teleporting in. I don’t even know that the problem is that it’s so much harder [although I think it is harder] but that it’s too hard to follow as a player. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Cleared Hot Comanche and Test Flight – this small update to the first chapter mostly adds a single new chopper, and a test map where you can play around with your kit, spawning all kinds of enemy and structure types, and even fooling around with a little base defense minigame, mowing down waves of enemies for a small cash reward. Sadly, the new helicopter is, I believe, the most expensive yet, AND a strict downgrade from the Cobra I was maining before. Hey, Desert, can I get a refund?
Devil Spire Falls Pyramid update – back when I finally bought Hellsweeper VR, I noted that the last straw that led to me breaking down and buying it was an update that was too silly, too cool, too interesting for me to ignore. Then when Devil Spire Falls failed to entice me with its Next Fest demo, I watched it until deciding I’d wait, hold off on mentioning it, until it had its ‘finger guns’ moment.
That moment might be here – the pyramids update promises a new type of massive dungeon, the kind of labyrinth you can get truly and miserably lost in, and that, folks, is exactly the sort of thing I want from a game that gets compared to the likes of Daggerfall. Along with all the other additions, updates, and overhauls in the months since release, this really could be the thing that gets me to finally bite the bullet and give DSF its due… or it would, if I had any fucking money left.
Tlatoani Chapter 2 – this Aztec themed city builder has been sitting in my library for a few months as I waited to see how its development would progress, and now, at last, I have my answer. A new set of historical campaign missions, new wonders, and water-based trade are all nice additions, but I still think the art style looks a bit sterile. And I should still get around to finishing Nebuchadnezzar first.
The State of Games Played
Blasted my way through the end of Idosra: The Electric Renaissance, thanks in large part to the developer going out of their way to push out a beta patch to fix a boss I’d gotten them to break with my complaints about an EARLIER boss, and then immediately started a new file to refresh myself on the early game. It’s pretty rare I start a replay of a game right after completing it, and a real mark of how much it’s ingratiated itself to me… the only other game I can think of this year that’s managed that is Clair Obscur… hint, hint.
I also got a bit further in the early parts of Angeline Era, and am still having a good time, although I’m tempted to lower the difficulty from Hard already – the complete lack of health pickups makes longer levels just a slog, and I’m not seeing much beyond that to raise the stakes more than what Normal felt like in the demo.
Handed off the rest of my excess loot to friends this morning in Arc Raiders. I am not even going to attempt to earn more than one extra skill point this expedition. I’m honestly just doing it because I don’t think it’ll take me that long to get back to where I’m at and I want the extra stash slots. The snow maps are a fun twist, but less exciting than a night or lightning storm event. I’m probably still going to wait until next year and even another major update before writing up Arc Raiders – I like to give games like this a chance to shoot themselves in the foot before I commit to a write-up. And Arc Raiders has plenty of opportunities to kneecap itself or merely fail to retain momentum.
Writing
I don’t usually put pieces out on the weekend, but I took so long wrapping up Idosra that I had to drop its write-up before it got too close to the end of the year. A truly special game, and one I hope gets at least a few more eyes on it out of my own effort.
I plan to drop the counterpoint to my wildly successful vitriolic Thanksgiving article on Christmas morning – a little present for everyone who joined me out of respect for my venom. Don’t get your hopes up too much – it’s going to be the sort of gift an uncle gives you because he thinks you have a hobby you don’t, and I expect you to grimly thank me and pretend you’re happy about it. If you don’t, hey, he’s had it rough, who knows if Uncle Jim will even come next year...
Other
I said in my Silksong write-up that I thought the game was already more bloated and overlong than Hollow Knight was after it got all of its DLC. Well, Team Cherry has just announced that Silksong is getting a free expansion, Sea of Sorrow. I don’t really have any inclination to 100% Silksong, I really don’t want to replay it, at least for a year or two, and I am probably going to be sick as shit of talking about Silksong by New Year’s. So am I going to play Sea of Sorrow? Not unless someone buys me Devil Spire Falls and demands I do it as compensation.
I’m making a shelf as a Christmas gift. Woodworking is one of those things I don’t think I’ve ever seen any game do well… even the VR experience Land of Towers really just has you nailing ramshackle things together, which, don’t get me wrong, is a real and compelling act to emulate, but isn’t really the same as carpentry.