Jon Hicks - Jank (Page 6)

12 Feb 2026 By Jon Hicks Bits

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check makes me feel dead inside

Sorry mate, we're full

The seed at the heart of this game is the same as Papers, Please: you're manning a checkpoint and deciding who to let in. In this case, it’s for a zombie epidemic, so the checking is of symptoms and luggage rather than paperwork, and it’s all in full 3D, and the act of checking is merely the first step in what turns out to be a lot of different tasks and challenges which feel like they have been steadily layered on top of something that would have been more engaging had it been simpler. Instead, you get a busywork lifesim that’s surprisingly short on character, at least for the handful of hours I played it.

It all begins with triaging each person through the door. Your choices aren’t simply pass or reject; you have to send people to the safety of camp, the quarantine zone or the incinerator. In what turns out to be an early symptom - pun not intended - of the game’s problems, this is a choice with no emotional weight whatsoever. Occasionally you’ll get a fleeting word of thanks or uncertainty as they’re escorted to the killing chamber, but

07 Feb 2026 By Jon Hicks

Jank Mail: BG3TV, indefinite Overwatch, types of quest

Last week in PC gaming

It’s Saturday, which means it’s time to review the week in PC gaming. Chez Jank, Brendy completed his mountain-climbing adventure by being eaten by the developer of Cairn, before killing all his squad members in Menace, reviewing TR-49 and proposing some additional Types of Quest. Graham found the perfect Speed Racer game but can’t play it, and a perfect PICO-8 that he can’t stop playing. The minds at Total Playtime decreed that the Splinter Cell novel and Split Fiction are both bad.

Beyond these walls, we learned that there's a Baldur's Gate 3 TV show in the works, although Larian are not involved which is another little data point on why they're sticking with their own IP for their next game. It's being made by Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin, which I prefer to think of as Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin because that was much better television.

i think in the name of fairness the producers of the baldur's gate tv show should demand that tv writers do at least a year of running around in circles doing unpaid writing tests before they're allowed

05 Feb 2026 By Jon Hicks Podcast

Total Playtime: Bugpunk

In which people become very cross about Split Fiction

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.

It’s Thursday, so that means a new episode of Total Playtime, and as part of our current partnership I am compelled to bring it to your attention. This week’s episode, after an extended aside about shrimp (real; either annoying or delicious) and ahead of a discussion of Silt Striders (not real; valuable public infrastructure), is anchored by the news that progress has been made on the Split Fiction movie, which Alice cited as a transparent segue into her talking about the fact that she has been playing Split Fiction and is extremely furious about it.

Total Playtime Episode 28: Bugpunk

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/3823.47085

I will not attempt to summarise her argument but the topline is that the characters, narrative and game itself are all bad in ways seemingly calculated to enrage. Some of these views are shared by Graham and, to a degree, Brendy - I have not played the game so I will not judge, but that’s okay because Alice offers

03 Feb 2026 By Jon Hicks Podcast

The first Splinter Cell novel makes Sam Fisher into a neocon Alan Partridge

I thought this guy was supposed to be stealthy

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 to bring their premium episodes to our paying subscribers - but we’re making this episode free to all.

Text Adventure is Total Playtime’s videogame book club, in which we read a videogame novelisation and try very hard to like it. In this episode, Alice, Nate and I were joined by the delightful Johnny Chiodini to read the first book based on Sam Fisher, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell by David Michaels. Nate fell at the first hurdle by erroneously reading the second novelisation, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda, which speaks to the professionalism of the Total Playtime operation and why we felt it aligned with a website called Jank.

The practical impact of this error was limited, as both books are archetypal hoo-rah Clancyverse publications of the mid-2000s, when the US-lead invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were still fresh. Both books were best-sellers, neither of them are any good, and the first is notable for capturing the spirit of the game in a startlingly negative way.

Text

02 Feb 2026 By Jon Hicks

Jank Mail: launches, losses and Morrowind

Last week in PC gaming

Welcome to Jank Mail, our weekly newsletter, summarising the last week in PC gaming and our own contributions to it. Henceforth it will arrive on Saturday, but I was running late this weekend. The thing about being called Jank is that any such haphazardness can be attributed to brand marketing, so it’s on purpose actually.

The most significant event in PC gaming last week was, of course, the launch of Jank: a new reader-funded website about PC games which strives to publish things that other outlets are too commercially sensible not to. Graham wrote our introductory manifesto, and Brendy explained and then embodied it by making three game developers climb a mountain, asking some others about working at Telltale, and explaining why AI can’t do game criticism.

We all nominated our best games of the decade so far, and debuted our regular guides to what you should play and read this weekend. We recommended Sektori and reviewed Sword of the Sea and Big Hops, and debuted our partnership with the Total Playtime podcast by making Graham read the Death Stranding novelisation, which captured the most wearing parts of the game and none of the highlights

01 Feb 2026 By Jon Hicks Feature

The Reviewer's Guide To Game Reviewers

The Reviewer’s Reviewers may only be judged by God (if unavailable, Digital Foundry)

This week Larian boss Swen Vincke, a man never short of an opinion, donned the cursed sash of Twitter Main Character with the suggestion that games critics should be subject to their own Metactritic-style judgement, just to see how they like it.

“It’s easy to destroy things, it’s a lot harder to build them," he wrote on X, a platform I’m not going to link to because I don’t want to expose you to all the horrifying footage it contains. "The best critics understand this. Even when they’re being critical, they do their best not to be hurtful.”

An image of a Tweet by Swen Vincke that reads "Sometimes I think it'd be a good idea for critics to be scored, Metacritic-style, based on how others evaluate their criticism. I like to imagine it would encourage a bit more restraint. The harsh words do real damage. You shouldn't have to grow callus on your soul just because you want to publish something." — Never be the Twitter main character.

“Sometimes I think it'd be a good idea for critics to be scored, Metacritic-style, based on how others evaluate their criticism. I like to imagine it would encourage a bit more restraint. The harsh words do real damage. You shouldn't have to grow callus on your soul just because you want to publish something.” He subsequently deleted much of the thread, correctly stating it was being taken out of context, although Edwin has preserved it over on RPS.

The idea was roundly slated for overlooking the

30 Jan 2026 By Jon Hicks Podcast

The Death Stranding novel proves that Kojima's stories don't work without him

Reading bad game books so you don't have to

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27 Jan 2026 By Jon Hicks Jank business

Jank is partnering with Total Playtime

As part of our launch, Jank is partnering with the fine podcast Total Playtime, which not-at-all-coincidentally is hosted by Jonty and Brendy along with fellow veterans Alice Bell and Nate Crowley. It has been running for a little over a year and publishes free episodes every two weeks, or monthly for those who back it on Patreon.

The free version of Total Playtime is available here, and every two weeks it offers:

Discussion of the latest PC gaming news
Judgements on the games we’re playing
Recommendations for new games
Updates on Alice’s dog and Nate’s cats
A recommendation every week of something that is not a videogame, because true satisfaction can only be achieved from a balanced cultural diet.

As part of the partnership, paying subscribers of Jank will get access to the paid tier of Total Playtime, starting from this Thursday’s episode. That means you get an exclusive members-only episode every two weeks, mostly about PC gaming, although the backing of our Patrons has permitted it to wander to some more esoteric places. Recent episodes have included:

Ranking game awards shows, because they covered the games already
Hypothetical product partnerships