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

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.

We also discovered the font it uses for the game's dramatic (comically inconsistent) mega-text splashes. We didn't tell you how many shitposts you'd be getting when you signed up for Jank, and this is information we will withhold forever.

Graham has been requieming some golden eras himself. He dons deeply reflective sunglasses to inform you of Sprawl Zero, a shooter inspired by the freshest brown sci-fi nonsense of 2005. 40 weapons, bullet time, a gravity gun - who could resist? If shooters are not your cup of mocha latte, he also spotted a hyper-nippy racing game called Project Turboblast which he describes with retroactive irony as "F-Zero on wheels". We should start a collection of these.

Even Jonty, deep in unsafe territory, managed to requiem a better time, when the internet would come up with silly browser games like this new one: Payphone Go. Are we all afflicted with a disease? An ailment that leaves our brains stewing in the past? I fear it may be so. Possibly because the present is so... Well, let's look.

Around the internet the news fires blazed.

Former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan revealed one of the reasons he left Blizzard - because an executive was an asshole and tried to futureblame him for upcoming layoffs. According to Kaplan, the company's CFO told him if the hero shooter did not hit a huge revenue target "we’re going to lay off 1,000 people and that’s going to be on you." Yeah, fuck off mate. I'd quit too.

Microsoft are deleting marketing materials related to their much-piss-betakened marketing drive "this is an Xbox". Extremely funny corpo web-scrubbing, a cowed admission of humiliation, and purge of history all in one.

Shinji Mikami, the former Resident Evil director and Evil Within lead, has set up his own studio, it transpires. At least one of the folks from shuttered studio Tango Gameworks is joining him, and others who have worked on Silent Hill and Shadow Of The Colossus. Could mean interesting things. Could mean another studio closure next year. You know as much as I do on this one.

Master Chief actor Steve Downes complained about the White House using his voice as part of their "disgusting and juvenile war porn". This is not the first time Halo has been used as hateful propaganda. Sadly, the US government's social media accounts continue to be run by chucklefucks who think the war on Iran is like Call of Duty and not a heinous crime against humanity that results in the deaths of hundreds of innocent school kids.

All right. That's all I have. I should probably wait until Jonty is back in the relative safety of the UK before I start spitting in fascist faces, but I'm sure he'll be okay.

If you are reading this newsletter from the decadent comfort of your email inbox, please requiem to visit us at Jank to check up on our regular features too, including:

What You Should Play This Weekend - our short list of new game recommendations every Friday, where all commenter's recommendations are likewise welcome.

The Total Playtime Podcast - our partnership with Alice and Nate grows unstoppably strong with every passing Thursday, when this post goes up. This week Alice wrote the post despite being missing from the actual pod recording, and spends much of that text roasting us.

The Lie-In - our weekly roundup of the best writing about videogames. This week's entry hasn't been written yet because it goes up on Sundays and that's not how time works.

Okay. I'm done with you now. Go buy your ma a gift for Mother's Day tomorrow. She likes the purple flowers. You know the ones.