Brendan Caldwell - Jank (Page 2)

19 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

I want more backstabs in Slay The Spire 2's co-op mode

This is why people don't play games with me

When you come across a treasure chest in Slay The Spire 2, it pops open with the goody-bestowing effervescence of a piñata, a relic appears, and life is good. But what if two relics appeared? What if, as you extended your pointy-fingered hand to grab 'em, a second slinky arm came jutting into view to poke you and contest your choice. It is your brother's arm, and he has selected the same shiny trinket you would like. The hands shake violently and a showdown begins. In the deepest, dankest dungeons of this surreal realm, there is only one way to settle this.

You do rock, paper, scissors.

I've already praised the additive joys of Slay The Spire 2 - its fancy boss fights, tricksy minibosses, and the new doom-fuelled reaper character all please me greatly. Like me, you will be forgiven for shrugging off the sequel as a kind of roid embiggened remake, as if mere iteration is not a satisfactory approach for the godfather of all the card-based commupance we've endured for the last decade. It is good. And it has one more Strike up its sleeve: co-op card-slinging. A multiplayer crawl through even beefier enemies which

17 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

I didn't think Slay The Spire needed a sequel. That was dumb

I am Doom-pilled

When Slay The Spire 2 was announced, I honestly didn't feel the need for it. The first game - deckbuilder of all deckbuilders - spawned a torrential smorgasbord of inspirants that has for years inflamed Steam's guts. If you really wanted Slay The Spire But More, you only had to put your hand into those guts and pull out any one of the dozens of disciples and see if they put a sufficiently intriguing twist on the formula. Monster Train. Griftlands. Roguebook. Fights In Tight Spaces. StarVaders. It remains a feast out there for rummagers of roguelike card wreckers. I didn't think there was much a Slay The Spire sequel could do to rekindle my feverish obsession that any of these games couldn't.

I stare now into the beady eyes of a gigantic crab with full knowledge of my inadequacies. What a fool I am.

I will admit much of the giddiness comes from being intimately familiar with the rhythm of play already. I know the playstyle of the Silent (the returning skull-faced poisoner from the first game) better than I know the crannies of my own bathroom. I understand the push and pull of cardy combat well enough to

14 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell

Jank Mail: Do you requiem what I told you yesterday?

This week in PC gaming

Good afternoon. Jonty, the usual author of Jank Mail, is away on a business trip. He is at the Game Developers Conference in the Weimar Republic of America, interviewing games industry people and typing up their words with bloodshot, jet-lagged eyes for his other, proper job. Disgusting.

That means I'm in charge of the weekly newsletter. I promise not to talk about hacking sims and skateboarding and Tekken. Here's what we've been up to at Jank, and what's been going on in the broader world of video and/or games.

First, here at Jank Dot Cool I finally completed Resident Evil Requiem and wrote a review. The short version is that it's dumb fun, stacked with characterful zombies, and full of fan service. My brother describes it as the Resident Evil equivalent of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and I cannot dispute this theory. I guess we should have expected as much with "Requiem" in the title.

Grace from Resident Evil Requiem cradles Emily in the glow of a fire with a pained expression. — I've started to use the word "requiem" like a verb, to bewilder friends and family. "Have you requiemed your doctors appointment?" "Sorry, I think you're misrequiembering."

We also discovered the font it uses for the game's dramatic (comically inconsistent) mega-text splashes. We didn't

12 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Reviews

Resident Evil Requiem review

Meets the minimum requiements

Requiem wants to be all things to all Resident Evildoers. It is one half Victorian freak show and one half shotgun-toting facekicker. It wants to scare you and to psych you up, empower and disempower you with alternating waves of scares and action. It is both third-person Leon sim and first-person Grace 'em up. Yes, you can change the view of either character in the settings but I kept things default, if only to test the game's thesis - that being stuck in a girl's head is scary whereas watching a big man's muscles move is powerful.

Like many a rotting zombie, it starts to fall apart in the bottom half. I had a good time, even if it sometimes felt like playing a videogame through glasses rose-tinted with indecision. This is a Resident Evil that seeks to please everybody, and you could argue it has done so. But there is a feeling like it has achieved this by hiding in the safe room of nostalgia and bursting out every few minutes with the biggest gun in its inventory - a dude who everyone already loves.

A zombie policeman smiles as he is pierced through the eye socket with a poker. — Eye don't want to use the obvious pun but eye can't help it

09 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

Resident Evil Requiem’s big text splashes explained

NAMES AND LOCATIONS IN A SANS SERIF FONT

The big font splashes in Resident Evil Requiem are so cool and stylistic! Many might mistake these pseudo-title cards for a stylish flourish that looks neat but remains utterly meaningless as a scene-setting device when you can already see exactly what the giant text is declaring – but you’d be missing the true brilliance of these stylish, cool, aesthetically booming words. Big spoilers in this discussion.

First of all, plastering big all-caps text onto the screen is a great, impactful way to introduce new characters, fresh to the Resident Evil series, like FBI agent Grace Wrenwood.

But it works even for characters we know and love, like former cop and successful car salesman Leon Rhodes Hill.

Oh, wait, no. I see the confusion now. He’s Leon Scott Kennedy. She’s Grace Ashcroft, not Wrenwood. Excuse me. I misunderstood the format. Once you get it, it’s very simple and effective. Clearly it goes:

FIRSTNAME
PLACE

That’s okay, now that we know the format, we can continue to meet new characters like…

Oh, no, wait. I see the new confusion. Elbridge is not a person. That’s okay, the title cards don’t need to be consistent or actually

04 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

The 7 best salesmen in PC games

Earlier this week I earned the disdain of not only wristwatch fans but also fans of older men, in a hyper-efficient blast of upset caused simply by pointing out that Leon Kennedy is a salesman now. But maybe this was harsh. Maybe my spitting upon the practice of product placement was unfair to the salespeople of the world, who do their part to keep the global economy afloat. Afloat, like a raft made out of Coca-cola bottles and bubble wrap drifting on the great Pacific garbage patch.

By way of apology, here is a celebration of the best salesfolks in PC games.

The Merchant - Resident Evil 4

"Hello, stranger!" says this friendly, white-eyed, hooded man in an accent that is either Cockney or Australian depending on the mood of both speaker and listener. He is a decent guy, always willing to buy or sell an egg. He wears odd clothes, is extremely desirous of jewels, and suspiciously well-stocked in harmful weaponry for someone who lives so deep in a ragged and remote part of the Iberian peninsula. Typical British expat to be honest.

Chu-Chu - Quadrilateral Cowboy

There is a bit between levels in first-person hack 'em up

02 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

Leon S. Kennedy is a car salesman now

Stop pretending this man is cool

I have been provided a copy of Resident Evil Requiem for review purposes not by Capcom's PR team, but by my own brother, who threw the game at me at 10:30pm on a Saturday night like a £60 baseball pitched at my skull. In our family we call this a "golden spanner" - a nice surprise that fucks up your entire week's plans. But he made the error of not setting a deadline, so our review will be late.

I have played long enough to discover one important thing. It is not only a horror game, but also a big advert. The developers have delivered unto Resident Evil the overt product placement techniques of a James Bond movie. It was previously thought that Leon Kennedy was deemed too heroic and cool to leave out of this story. The truth is he was required to appear because the game needed a man to sell cars and wristwatches.

Leon Kennedy behind the wheel of his vehicle, a Porsche. — Leon S Kennedy, popular videogame hero and noted sellout.

The first advert lands almost the moment Leon appears on-screen. He's inspecting a murder scene - something is rotten in this city. But a call comes in, his handler says he should go check

28 Feb 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

The demos that didn't quite make the cut in this month's Next Fest

Our big pile of leftovers

At least twice a year we feral games journalists rummage through the bins of Steam like malnourished city foxes, looking for the best demos during Next Fest. It is a ritual of survival that we sometimes loftily call an act of curation, as if we are refined museum directors and not a gang of scurrilous weirdoes seeking sustenance from pixels.

The upshot is that you readers get a few recommendations, a short list of cool stuff to keep an eye on. But what about all the demos we played that didn't quite pass our cryptic taste test? Surely that'd be equally useful. A "not all that" list. A "save yourself some time" list. Here are all the leftovers we chewed once and spat out.

Altered Alma

A pixel hero slices an enemy punk in a purple tinted cyberpunk city.

Graham: I feel bad calling this a leftover, because it's a slashy-dashy-grapply metroidvania with a cyberpunk world and dating sim elements, and it feels good to play. It's somewhat reminscent of Iconoclasts, an oft-overlooked but excellent action-platformer. The problem is that the metroidvania genre has become rapidly overstuffed. I haven't finished Silksong yet and I've barely put a dent in MIO: Memories In Orbit, both of which are obviously stellar. From the