What you could play this weekend
If you had infinite time and money, obviously
It's one of those weeks where several long-anticipated videogames all release at the same time, and yet still that's just the tip of the iceberg of the interesting games that released this week. Me? I'll probably just be playing that great game that's about to be removed from sale.
You? Tell us what you are playing in the comments.
Map Map: A Game About Maps
I love maps, and videogame maps, and I have a lot of fondness for the stripped-back sexy-as-it-sounds orienteering sim Virtual-O. Map Map is similarly about orienting yourself in a world using landmaps, but here you do so to make the map itself, with a much more playful presentation.
Paralives
I confess, when Paralives was first shown over five years ago, I figured it was a game that would either never come out or would be bad when it did. A wildly ambitious indie Sims? Sure, it already had a cool character creator, but the rest of the game would surely fall down just as every other Maxis challenger does. Oh me of little faith, I
Total Playtime: The Hot Ones
Zero Parades and zero chill
Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.
This week Alice and I gathered in hot rooms to have hot takes on the main news stories of the week, chiefly the end of Destiny (and perhaps the employment of many of its developers) and the start of the Disco Elysium sequels. We also attempted to understand the Warhammer Skulls Showcase without Nate to guide us, which didn't get very far but we are quite taken with playing as Skaven.
We have also upgraded the podcast hosting so you should be able to subscribe to the feed in this page. Please let us know if it doesn't work.
We've also been playing some games, reading some books, and watching daft videos on the internet, all of which we have curated for our discerning audience. You can get still more of this rare insight by backing the show on Patreon (or subscribing to Jank) which gets you two extra episodes a month, and means you join the hallowed ranks of those who make this podcast happen. If
One of the best arcade racers is about to disappear
Coast 2 Toast
I haven't read Brendan Keogh's book The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist, but I believe I can make a water tight counter-argument in my new book proposal, If The Videogame Industry Doesn't Exist, How Come I Hate It So Much?.
From June 1st, Horizon Chase Turbo, its predecessor and all DLC will be delisted from all storefronts, preventing people from buying one of the best arcade racers of the past decade.
We're used to racing games being delisted because they often contain licensed cars and those licenses expire. The Horizon games do not contain any licensed cars, however.
We're also sadly used to racing games becoming unplayable, because they were 'always online' in some nebulous way and their servers are switched off. Horizon Chase Turbo's only online component was leaderboards, however, which were already disabled back in 2023. What's happening now wouldn't fall afoul of the Stop Killing Games movement, because owners will still be able to play the game.
"Couch multiplayer is back." Aaaaand it's gone again.
In short, Horizon Chase Turbo remaining available to purchase via digital storefronts wouldn't cost its developers anything.
The announcement that the games would be delisted didn't contain any explanation of why the
Dog vs Cat
Let endless battle endure
Welcome to season one of Character Select. How many seasons will there be? Some mysteries deserve never to be revealed.
Ah, now we're suckin' diesel. It is a conflict that has raged for as long as humanity has had a gristly bit of mammoth salami they did not want to eat. Who will get the scraps: man's best friend, or best frenemy? One is known for boundless enthusiasm, strength, loyalty, and also for going "bee-woop-dee-boop" while battering gasmasked dorks. The other is known for putting small dead rodents in your slippers, and rescuing an entire city of robots from an endless night. This will be a tragic fight, because in another world, at another time, Dog and Cat would have been inseparable pals. But not here and not now. This is Dog from Half-Life 2 versus the Cat from Stray. It's now or it is never now. Select your character!
The case for Dog from Half-Life 2
He can lift a car and he can throw a car. That's got to count for a lot. He once jumped on top of an alien tripod and tore the top of its skull off, as if he was dismantling a cheap chew
Mon Bazou is sort of about cars but mostly about being Canadian
Poutine in the hours in the garage
Car fandom has existed for as long as cars have, but mine is a specific affliction that I feel has only recently collectively transitioned from “secret shame” to “fandom” thanks to, of course, the internet. Not for me the impossible expense of classic Ferraris or modern F1 cars; my people flock to OG Ford Capris and idiosyncratic Citroens that were either never sold in the UK or rusted away to nothing within ten years of purchase. There are, I must regretfully tell you, more than dozens of us.
A key symptom of this disease is the ambition, rarely paired with the requisite skill, to fish some dust-covered ruin out of a shed and restore it to running order, something I’ve seen games nod to yet never successfully capture. I was thus instantly compelled by the Mon Bazou key art, which shows a 1990s BMW (E36 316 coupe, my car brain says) with a mismatched door and a wheel missing; getting it running and ready for low-stakes street-racing is the headline objective in what turns out to be a crude but easygoing simulation of smalltown Canadian life in 2005.
Tinkering with games is as good as playing them
Computer is my hobby
Our first home computer was an Amstrad CPC 464. My Dad bought it and used it for, among other things, building a database of all the films he had recorded on VHS tapes. He's a Western buff and he'd spend weekends pecking in details of which tape had which film, and since multiple tapes had multiple films, how far you had to fast forward to find the one you wanted. I didn't understand this at the time, as I was only a few years old. My brothers and I used the Amstrad for playing games - or for trying, anyway, and then for learning patience when the cassette tape failed to load for the third time. Why would you want to spend your time with the computer updating a database when you could be playing games?
Now I know better. Now I know that videogames are just one avenue through which you can tinker with the computer.
In retrospect, my tinkering started early, when I realised that drawing Worms levels in DeluxePaint on the Amiga and then importing the bitmaps in-game was more fun than playing Worms itself. When we got a PC in the mid-90s, playing games and tinkering
The Lie-In
Links to games writing from the past week
Good morning, videogames. A heatwave has struck the UK this weekend, a country where all the buildings are designed to retain heat. Unfortunately I must remain indoors, because my skin is designed the same way. Let's take a sweaty, sunburnt look at some writing about videogames from across the week.
Over at Remap Radio, Dia Lacina took on the unenviable task of reviewing ZA/UM's new game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies.
We learn in the opening minutes of Zero Parades that CASCADE is the only agent to return from a job gone bad, and now she's warehoused in a filing cabinet-gulag for failed spies called "The Freezer." This is where you stew in self-accusatory depression, spending your days drowning under paperwork while you hold trauma's finger and point it right at yourself. This is spy hell.
The scandal-soaked rat kings over at the Jank spiritual predecessor didn't manage a full review of Zero Parades (unlike us), but Edwin Evans-Thirlwell did deign to bring his takes-one-to-know-one expertise to explaining why ZA/UM's latest is "both bootleg Disco Elysium and a spirited interrogation of fake culture in all its guises".
For many players, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies will never be
Jank Mail: A dread Embrace
This week in PC gaming
This week on Jank, Graham used The Lie-In to get in one more round of Mixtape discourse, which is now over and need never be spoken of again. The first Disco Elysium sequel came out and Nic reviewed it. Titanium Court came out already but Alice has reviewed it now, so it’s official. Both reviews are qualified endorsements, which are secretly the best kind of endorsement.
On Total Playtime, we came up with the worst merch ideas we could think of and made the mistake of inviting suggestions on the topic, so now I have people emailing me about Disco Elysium Funko Pops. This week’s Character Select pitted Stardew Valley against The Flood, which paired nicely with our definitive judgement of the best grenade in videogames.
Outside these ruthlessly uncommercial walls, a new financial year has dawned so the publishers are all announcing what happened in the last one. Take-Two did great because people love NBA and spending money in GTA Online, Ubisoft did badly because that’s just what it does these days and Embracer did badly because of everything it’s ever done since its inception. It’s going to solve this by spinning
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