Weekly Update 2026-07-05
Land of the free, home of the gun range
I’m pretty shot today, so I’ll make this relatively short.
Game Releases and Updates
Assetto Corsa Rally Greece and multiplayer – two new laser-scanned tracks set in Greece, full of gravel and ruts, mechanical updates meant to improve simulation of driving on gravel, and the rollout of the first multiplayer modes mark the 0.5 update. The new multiplayer includes joinable official lobbies where they’ll run weekly events, which could be a fun way to chase a leaderboard, but I’m not going to get too excited for any form of online racing where I can’t physically bully someone off a cliff.
Hellish Quart Jakub – another new character for this ambitiously clunky fencing game, this time with the gimmick of a backup weapon. Jakub begins every round bowing like a noble and drawing a saber for an honorable duel, but can drop it and draw a short rapier to try for a desperate lunge past his opponent’s guard. It’s not really the most balanced or competitive thing in the game, and it’s hardly sporting, but it is pretty fun and genuinely a cool thing to implement.
Infinite Empire EA release – one of my Next Fest picks from last month, entering an EA period that has already seen some pretty substantial overhauls since the demo. The damage modeling now looks more satisfying, with your shots really digging through the enemy’s hull as you burrow towards their reactors, making the fact that you can draw your own ship design even cooler.
The Message From Deep Space release – another Next Fest pick, this puzzle game is out and pretty hefty. I’m about eight hours in, so details in the next section.
PrimedGun v1.0.8 – The PrimedGun VR mod for Metroid Prime has gotten a spate of updates since release, including some tweaks to the initially very frustrating scan mode limitations, which… to be honest, have caused new problems in a few spots, but make the scan visor more generally usable. Maybe more importantly, they also added the ability to save and load savestates right from the in-VR menu, because even with the purported stability improvements I still get a hard crash occasionally. AND they fixed the map controls.
Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades 1.0 release – This time was coming since the sequel announcement, but it’s still a bit surreal to see this VR gun range simulator get declared ‘finished’ after years of the developer gleefully shoveling in more and more content every time he has a funny idea – guns, gear, game modes, and gags galore. Well, ‘finished…’ I bet he won’t be able to stop himself from putting in some stupid crap to play with for Christmas even if focus shifts entirely to sequel development.
In the meantime, really, what better day could they have chosen for the big finale? Happy birthday, ‘murka.
The State of Games Played
Played more Metroid Prime in VR, including visiting the research lab and wrecked ship, and in spite of some technical problems, it’s been amazing. Getting to just walk around and look at the rooms with head tracking is something special, maybe even moreso than in Resident Evil 4 VR, since all of Metroid Prime was designed for first-person view. It’s also fun to kind of crane your neck to look at a puzzle as you operate it, or hide behind a corner as shots slam into the wall beside you. I even managed a little skip normally reserved for speedruns just by leaning out a window and manually aiming my gun at something I shouldn’t be able to.
I got a little further in the Convergence mod for Elden Ring, mostly sticking to my starting class, which is not really setting my heart on fire yet… there are a few weapons I’m looking forward to using, but most of those are, like, in the DLC, which is more accessible in the mod but still a bit out of my scope right now, and the only spell that’s appropriately laughably overpowered for my class this early is Darkness, which seems to just toggle off the AI of most enemies below miniboss classification. Reminds me of the puffshroom spam from Tears of the Kingdom.
I’ve beaten Deep Space Exploitation… twice, and am now wrapping up my third full playthrough. It’s a short game, but with a surprising amount of variance in how it plays out despite the jobs being premade and the game intentionally restricting your options. And it helps that it’s still a lot of fun.
Cleared a cute early mission in The Last Salvage Squad where the giant robots’ dog ran away and they sent out their awkward big sister [a real combat model] to rescue it and then carry it home while beating the shit out of every alien drone in the city with her free hand.
And I spent most of my relatively limited free time this week doing homework in The Message from Deep Space. I am, happily, now past the point where I was proving to non-human intelligence that I passed high school algebra, and am currently… proving that I passed high-school chemistry. I’m sure before they decided to invest humanity with the secrets of the universe I’ll have to pass an exam on relativity and type up a book report on The Scarlet Letter translated into the alien language.
Joking aside, there’s a reason I’ve been so happy to wind down each evening by staring at a pair of flickering virtual CRTs filled with gibberish, and that’s because despite the game’s core gameplay boiling down to translating math and physics class handouts, it manages to keep such a dull-sounding premise exciting, engaging, and constantly evolving. Computer scientist Bautista steals the show by iteratively updating the systems you work on, adding new features just in time for the next message to make use of his graph display overhaul or to add several pages worth of reference material to dig through when you realize it’s been 20 years since you last had to use a formula to find the volume of a cone.
Or being stunned speechless [moreso than usual] when it’s revealed he had full color displays at his disposal the whole time. I thought it was just an aesthetic choice too!
Writing
As promised, my write up of Side Scape was as [relatively] brief and pleasant as the game it covered. Always nice to take it easy.
Then I decided to spend a day cranking out a cranky rant. Don’t worry, this won’t become a weekly thing. Unless something else gets under my skin again this week.
I’ve begun work on my write-up of Deep Space Exploitation, but I’m not going to really sit down and finish it until my third playthrough is done, which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes at this point. I hope I get to go out with a bang.
Other
A bit of sad news this week, as the developers of Aztec-era city builder Tlatoani have announced that plans for future development have been scrapped, due to poor sales after launch a few months ago, as well as budget cuts and ‘accounting revisions’ on the part of publisher Paradox. And this comes quite shortly after they outlined aspirations for what would be very welcome expansions, like new minor deities, more economic and agricultural diversity, empire-scale interactions, potential inclusion of mythological creatures, and even a Nahuatl localization… all out the window with this decision.
I guess Paradox didn’t think city builder fans would pay 5 dollars every couple weeks for DLC that adds different colored feathers to your warrior’s shields, or a new set of hats. Maybe they can revise their accounting again and find enough change under the couch cushions to fund another roguelike deckbuilder they can whip up 100 dollars worth of DLC for.
I forgot about it for a long while, but Hellish Quart always looked really interesting to me as someone who loved Bushido Blade back in the days. Do you think its current state is already enjoyable systems-wise, clunky animations aside?
The Message From Deep Space looks really interesting! Also, wish to inform you that I've just bought Void War largely because of your praise for it (and also because Darktide has lately re-awakened by 40k brain worms).