Weekly Update 2026-04-05
This site has awful symmetry
Game Releases and Updates
Gunlocked 2 1.0 – Euro-shmup Survivors has crossed the threshold, its full release including many more pilots, new bosses, and most importantly, a big rebalance to make level-ups more impactful and interrupt the game less frequently. At least, that’s the idea. To be honest, after a couple runs, it doesn’t seem that different from how I remember. I did like the option to continue a successful run into infinitely increasing scaling until you succeed in a final blaze of glory.
GRIME 2 release – aww man, cmon. Do I really have to play this one? I suppose I will eventually, but GRIME was neither my favorite or least favorite ‘vania, so I’m fine waiting a while.
Legends of the Round Table release – If you’re excited to get a chance at rewriting Arthurian legends via extremely dense deckbuilder tactics, well, check out my longer preview from last week. Sadly I’ve got enough on my plate right now as it is.
Blood Facsimile Early Access – One of the things on my plate. I tried this game’s demo out during Next Fest and decided this week I was curious enough about its development to jump in already. I haven’t seen anything really new yet aside from the more thematic intro, but I’m looking forward to poking around in it a bit more.
Shinobi: Art of Vengeance hardcore mode and DLC – One of my issues with the new Shinobi game is that it was a bit too forgiving, and this week’s update seems laser focused on addressing that, by reducing your survivability, changing enemy placements, and adding new boss attacks. It’s not quite enough for me to want to do a whole replay right away, but I’m sure I’ll appreciate it if I ever do. The update coincides with the release of a somewhat self-indulgent paid DLC where you do some [apparently mediocre] stages and then fight crossover cameos from other SEGA franchises, like Majima from Yakuza and Dr. Eggman. Weird, in a kind of endearing way but not what I want to spend ten dollars on in this economy.
Tlatoani: Aztec Cities 1.0 – If you hadn’t seen this yet, I highly recommend Scanline’s early preview of it from last year. Essentially, this is an Impressions-like city builder, a lot like the Czech developed Nebuchadnezzar, but focused on Aztec-era Mesoamerica rather than Mesopotamia. Among its key features are a focus on orienting and placing religious structures in aesthetically symmetrical alignments, balancing your commitment to various feuding deities, and keeping your city walls patrolled to inhibit raids from rival cities and ruralites. It’s one of the more exciting developments for those enamored with historical city planning, and I want to play it so bad I can almost rationalize not finishing Nebuchadnezzar first… but I’m still going to make an attempt on that soon.
Into the Radius 2 1.0 beta – as sequel to VR Stalker-like ItR approaches its full release date later this month, the devs have allowed beta access to the ‘complete’ game, and I’ve popped in just to take a look at the expanded story and introduction.
Okay, I’ve gotten talked at enough. I think I’ll just wait for the official out date so I don’t have to hold this guys hand any more than necessary.
I Am Jesus Christ release – He is risen.
Granser Act 1 release – it will be hard for Pugware to follow up the strange and surprising Skautfold series in a way that will satisfy me, but I’m still plenty happy to jump aboard the Granser train for a JRPG with classic bones. I’m still early on but the combat is basically a better balanced version of the turn-based battles from Knight’s End, the voice acting is… much better than I expected, and the amount of detail and worldbuilding is shocking. I love the guards crying out ‘I have a family’ as you kill them.
The State of Games Played
After being slightly embarrassed by a comment implying I’d forgotten about Thief 1, I spent most of my free time this week just knocking the second half of that game out. It’s been a blast revisiting one of the best games ever made, at least, for most of the levels, and it didn’t take me near as long as I expected – I’d forgotten how straightforward a lot of the later set-piece heavy missions were, and I had no interest in dicking around or pursuing the Expert objectives this time around. And now that that’s done, I can move on to an arguably even better game.
Then, in my pursuit of clearing inventory and getting through games that I’ve been nibbling at for far too long, I loaded up The Myth of a Godslayer and took on another solid dungeon.
Off and on, I took a few more stabs at Lost Flame, mostly dying unceremoniously to wild shit like all my gear spontaneously turning into hostile tentacles. I still haven’t gotten as far as my first run with a legendary weapon that ended up in Evil Ghost Hell because I saw it on the menu and decided to warp there immediately. I guess that one’s mostly on me.
Writing
Well, was my Death Stranding essay everything you’d hoped for? It certainly did it for me.
I’ve started the Thief: Gold write-up, but it’s probably going to be a few days before I finish it, as it’s both a very good game and a very important one.
Then I should be able to whip together a Gunlocked 2 post – there doesn’t seem to be that much more to find out about it that I haven’t already gathered from its early access.
Other
This was a pretty big week for releases, and the rest of this month should have a few more surprises - I think we’ll finally be getting release date announcements for some games on my radar this week.
I’m keen for Grime 2, I recently started playing Grime and have been a bit obsessed with it. I love the dark and weird art style. Still struggling with some of the boss fights and keep going back to it. I like that it smacks you down, but you can see what you did wrong and if you just time it right next time…
Death Stranding occupies this weird spot in my brain. I feel like I’ve read many articles, reviews, and comments about it, but the only image of it I have in my head is basically “Dark Souls except it sucks”. I have no idea where I got that from though. Even your article on it is a little mysterious to someone who doesn’t know anything about the game.
I picked up Oblivion Remastered yesterday. $50, Jesus. I’m a big Elder Scrolls fan (Morrowind is the tops, and while I agree with every single criticism of Skyrim I still loved it), and I’ve always meant to go back and finish Oblivion (I quit when I finally grasped how the scaling worked). I booted it up, and off the bat: (1) the vastly improved graphics (they’re fantastic) so far are just highlighting the lameness of the underlying combat system, and (2) paying $50 for an updated version of a 20-year old game and then have massive slowdown due to the improved graphics should be a metaphor for something or other. A meme.