Weekly Update 2026-02-01
Good thing you're dyin, Cutty.
Game Releases and Updates
Fortune Summoners retranslated – this old doujin game was one of the few whose Western debut was handled by localization team Carpe Fulgur [check out Mangvs’s article on Carpe Fulgur] and thus one of the first doujin games to successfully break through. I remember being blown away by its novelty in gameplay, with its complex combo-input melee and AI controlled party members, and charmed by its cutesy aesthetic and earnest translation.
But it is a quite old game now, and has run poorly on modern systems for a while, so I should have been quite happy when, in 2020, the game was rereleased with updates designed to bring it up to date. Unfortunately, that version of the game, despite being released on Steam, never got localized for whatever reason [probably to do with Carpe Fulgur having published the original Steam release]. Until now, that is – the latest update announced that the new version has an English translation again… but still no word about bringing the DLC that was only included in the physical copies to Steam.
Yasuke Simulator 2026 update – the best game where you can be a black samurai from 2025 is making a play for 2026 as well with this overhaul that includes enough optimization to apparently run on Steam Deck, better controls and AI, and most importantly, the ability to drift your AE86, making the game even more historically accurate.
Super Woden Rally Edge – I just really liked the phrasing of this notification.
Ball X Pit Regal Update – new characters, new balls, same shit. Well, and also an endless mode, which again kind of feels like it goes against the strengths of the game, but what do I know? I’m not the sort who’s been grinding away at it for months. I might reinstall just to give the AI controlled character a shot at endless and see how many bitcoins he can mine for me while my computer consumes the finite resources of our planet.
ARC Raiders solo vs squads update – there were other changes in this week’s patch, but the only one worth talking about is the newly available option for high level players to opt-in to joining sessions mostly occupied by full squads, in exchange for a boost to received XP. That’s an interesting idea, and feeds into the exact kind of uncertainty that keeps the game engaging, but I think you need more than an XP boost considering it’s already locked to such a high level [more than halfway to max] and the skills you unlock with levels frankly being somewhat underwhelming anyway. Otherwise I think this is mostly just going to be a way for geared up psycho PVPers to get bigger thrills setting death traps for squads.
Terraria Bigger and Boulder – 2D Minecraft has been emulated so many times, to such consistently disappointing effect, that you’d expect it to have gotten more frequent updates. This long-awaited patch adds a ton of content… or maybe it does, the developers are annoyingly coy about details, and I don’t think everything’s been thoroughly mined and collated yet. But the most important change is pretty hard to miss – an overhaul of the crafting menu that can open as a grid, divided into categorical tabs, can access the contents of any nearby chest, and is even searchable. Now, the question is: will I play back through it, knowing it’ll waste another few dozen hours of my life and cause me unimaginable psychic pain?
*long sigh* At least they added a craftable light source accessory.
Devil Spire Falls – I just wanted to share this line from the most recent patch notes.
The State of Games Played
I have cruised through the B group, blown past the A group, and completed the final World Rally in the new Super Woden, earning myself a ton of credits and also a few funky cars if I ever feel like going for all stars. I might consider giving the arcade mode a few runs before sitting down for a write-up, but I didn’t do that for Super Woden GP II, so I might not bother here either.
I was playing a bit of ARC Raiders solo, doing free loadout runs of Stella Montis, when a raider waved me down, tossed me a Wolfpack blueprint, and left. That’s nice. Must’ve been a fan.
As the franchise that won the poll I posted a few weeks ago, I’ve reinstalled Thief Gold and spent some time feeling out different options to decide how I want to run it for this playthrough. I’ve settled on using RoguePatcher to install NewDark for a relatively vanilla experience that works properly on a modern display and also shows the cutscenes. I’m aware, dimly, that NewDark is not ‘totally accurate’ to the original release engine, but it’s also true that Thief Gold is even more significantly altered from the game I first played anyway, and while I apparently could manually revert the game and not have to play the ‘bonus’ levels, I don’t think that’s particularly representative of what most people playing ‘Thief’ are going to do.
Anyway, I made my choice, and I’ve been happy with it so far – I’m through the early game already, basking in the radiance of Stephen Russell’s performance as Garrett, and most importantly, recovering my skill at the central focus of all stealth action games: making a big pile of dead and unconscious bodies in the darkest corner I can find.
Nioh 3’s new demo has come to PC, and save information will apparently carry over to the full game, so… fine, I’ll play it again.
I didn’t actually do much with the original alpha on PS5 besides brute force my way through the boss, so I’m not totally sure how much has been added to this, but I am very happy to see that they at least didn’t totally remove any of the weapon types, though the strict restrictions of most weapons to either samurai or ninja forms is a little weird.
Nioh 3 feels about as overwhelming coming from 2 as 2 did coming from 1. There’s so many additional systems that the game throws at you, the combos are even more complicated, including a lot more that require you to do directional inputs or which can be worked into other combos, the demo has like 80 different tutorial popup windows describing things that you can’t possibly absorb… and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. Some of that might be relief that I can actually play with tonfas and switchglaive again, some of it might just be me happy to play more Nioh, I don’t know.
I do know that the biggest problem with the series, the showers of colorful, mostly worthless ~loot~ exploding out of every enemy, chest, and corpse, has not been improved… if anything, it’s even more tedious, bloated, and annoying. I’m also not totally sold on the open-world, which seems to mostly take the secrets and extra content from the missions and smear it out over a huge, less dense map. The actual missions, consisting of ‘Crucibles,’ seems to still adhere to the design styles of earlier Nioh main missions, but there’s no telling how well they’ll hold up or how many there will be yet.
It’s also not clear whether I’ll cough up the… Jesus Christ, SEVENTY dollars to play it at release? I don’t pull 70 dollars a YEAR doing this. This better be the best fucking game Team Ninja’s ever dropped if they want me to pay 110 dollars for the Digital Deluxe Edition with 14 weapons that look like they came out of a BudK catalogue and will get outleveled in five minutes.
Writing
I wrote about Zexion, and to do that, I had to take time away from playing Zexion, so I hope you’re all happy.
As I have now finished Super Woden, expect a write-up for it sometime in the next week. I have a few other games I might make a stab at wrapping up too, but don’t get your hopes up too much for a multi-post week.
Other
Exo Rally Championship has had a news update teasing some features not seen in the demo, and even more importantly… NOT teasing a release date! Come on! I’m still holding out hope that this comes out this year, but I promise not to mention it again until the release date is public, unless I, like, get in a physical altercation with the devs while trying to force the release date out of them and am court ordered to make an apology statement.
And, just in time for the start of February, I’ve finally finished my end-of-year analysis, discussion, and debate on every game I played in 2025. Below is the complete, and indisputably accurate ranking of everything that I finished and posted a write-up for last year. I will say that I consider 2025 to be one of the most top-heavy years in recent memory, in that I really didn’t play all the way through too many games I didn’t like. If you have any arguments, complaints, or questions about my methods, take it up with my lawyers, I don’t want to hear it.
2025’s Best Games I Played and Wrote a Post About
Idosra: The Electric Renaissance
NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound
Void Stranger
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Tokyo Xtreme Racer
Mystery of the Malign
Abiotic Factor
Hero’s Spirit
Metroid Planets
Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Splintered
Beyond Citadel
Siralim Ultimate
House of Necrosis
SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance
Janosik 2
Echo Point Nova: Under the Clouds
Link and Zelda: Panoply of Calatia for ZQuest
Riven: The Sequel to Myst [1997]
Intergalactic Fishing
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
ΔV: Rings of Saturn
Caput Mortum
Project Warlock 2
The Deep for ZQuest
The End of Dyeus
Dueling Dragons for ZQuest
Hellsweeper VR
Rebel Transmute
BALL x PIT
Desecrators
Hands of Necromancy
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator
The Room 4: Old Sins
The Siege and the Sandfox
Shadow of the Depth
Yasuke Simulator
The Children of Clay
I am a huge Thief fan, such incredibly cool games. The atmosphere, the writing, the voice acting, the weird mixture of excellent in-game art and janky live action silhouettes, it's such a vibe. Did you ever play The Black Parade?