Weekly Update 2026-04-26
Caesar walks, bullshit talks
Game Releases and Updates
Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege release – I played the demo for this very 8-bit Castlevania-y platformer a while back, and enjoyed it a lot. I think I’ll hold off on it for a little while still, though, because I still have plenty to play.
Into the Radius 2 release – this full release included a shocking number of changes from the beta drop a few weeks ago. For one, the voices of the two NPCs that talk at you a bunch have been completely re-recorded to be less peppy, and the script trimmed down significantly, which is a surprisingly graceful reception of feedback and also a very quick turnaround on such a thing. The game also now lets you skip the tutorial, which is great, because I did it once in the beta and never want to do it again.
Granser Act 1 continual updates – you may have noticed I haven’t been finishing Granser, the recently released JRPG from Skautfold developer Pugware. Okay, I’m kidding, nobody noticed that or cares. But the reason I haven’t, besides being otherwise occupied, is because the game is getting almost nonstop updates, adding more and more new content, like, entire towns, and not just at the end of the extant Act either. I’m not sure if I should go ahead and play through the rest of it now and then revisit it later, I’m not sure if I’ll even really know when it’s ‘finished’ and through this unstated Early Access period. The most recent patch notes teased an additional boss fight added to the chapter I’m about to start, though, so I think I’ll at least hold on until that’s put in.
The State of Games Played
Still chugging away at Thief 2 when I get an hour or two. I do really love the additional challenges and greater efforts at crafting specific secrets to find, but some of the broad stroke map design… well, I’ll have more to say about all that later.
I should have finished the Dark Souls mod I started last week… but I got sidetracked with the mod’s Dragon covenant, which consists of an Easter egg hunt for almost invisible vagrants tucked into the sorts of dead ends and weird corners that would show up in a YouTube for ‘most liminal’ or ‘best smoke spots’ in Dark Souls. All so I can walk around with a big dumb lizard head. I only have about four bosses left now, and I’ve maxed the covenant, so I should be done this week.
I doubled my playtime in Replaced, and let me tell you, the second 20 minutes are an order of magnitude more engaging than the first 20 minutes. But that first 20 minutes was so fucking boring that that’s still not saying much.
I forgot that I had bought Caesar’s Revenge, a 2.5D FPS where you play as the vengeful spirit of Julius Caesar hunting down each and every one of his assassins. It’s one of those things you have to be in a certain mood for, and I found myself in that mood for a bit, and blasted through the first few stages. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to finishing it – rumor is the last act takes a turn for the miserable, but even if I do it really shouldn’t take long – the par time on some of these levels is like, a minute.
When I went to try out the full release of Into the Radius 2, I put on my headset and turned on Virtual Desktop and then remembered that I’d have to download a massive patch since I was still on the beta. While waiting for that to happen, I looked around for something to burn a couple minutes with and saw Thumper.
Thumper is not the right game to simply waste a couple minutes with. I wound up playing Thumper in VR instead of ItR2. I beat the first two levels pretty handily, even went back and S-ranked the first stage just to get a higher score than anyone on my friends list, and put my headset up thinking I could probably knock this game out in a couple sessions. Then I started it up the next day and got wrung out by stage 3. I was shaking at the end like someone stumbling off a roller coaster. It might take me a minute to beat Thumper, especially if I continue to do it in VR, which is my intent. I’ll have to figure out the audio, though, the recording doesn’t seem to have the same volume and bass as what I’m bombarded with in the headset.
I also tooled around a bit in Tin Can while I had my headset on, and managed a pretty solid half-hour long survival before getting bored and frustrated with recycling the very small amount of O2 I’d left myself with and tried venting myself into space only to get stuck against an invisible wall.
After I finished Nocturnal I immediately downloaded the Nocturnal 2 demo and played a good chunk of it, enough to feel pretty confident that the sequel will be a lot more my speed. The enhanced combat includes launches and air juggling, basic movement is augmented with an early double jump and wall climbing, and most importantly, your fire buff is no longer on a timer. It’s more of a puzzle element/toggleable status now, which is great for a more open layout.
Writing
Gunlocked 2 and Nocturnal – not among my favorite games so far this year, and that’s fine. I’d love it if everything were on the level of Zexion or Haunted Lands, but it’s important to make time for things that aren’t quite there, keep track of devs that could get there someday, and maintain perspective on what makes some games stand out.
But speaking of games that are right up there, I didn’t have time to finish my write-up of The Myth of a Godslayer last week, so that’ll be my focus this week.
Other
Got myself a new grill for the start of grilling season. It’s better than getting a new car. I’ve done steaks twice already. Nothing can stop me now.