Jank (Page 13)

11 Feb 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

Is Overwatch actually worth playing again?

Someone's been huffing the hype balloons

Last week a blitz of articles asserted that live servicey shooter Overwatch 2 was making a comeback, a conclusion that presumes the hero blaster had ever "gone" anywhere in the first place. PC Gamer called it a long-in-the-works "glow-up", a fairer assessment than Kotaku's grandiose statement: "While you weren't looking, Overwatch put its crown back on". Neither article examined the hero shooter and how it plays today from the position of a long-lost player, instead providing a summary of changes and dramas over the years. The recent influx of press has more to do with a PR push developers Blizzard have been making to bring attention to an (admittedly large) update that adds five new heroes in one day. The silliest part of this update is the decision to rebrand Overwatch 2 to simply Overwatch, a walking back of the sequel's grand intentions so clownish that it resulted in some more fun headlines.

So, the natural question arises: is Overwatch actually good again? Was it ever even "bad"? Maybe if someone - I dunno - replayed it and wrote about it, we can find out. So let's do that.

For context, I loved Overwatch but stopped playing in 2018

10 Feb 2026 By Graham Smith Bits

I wish videogame culture would take more cues from readers

It's time to ditch the release cycle and select what we play via more interesting constraints.

The book readers have it figured out. I listen to book podcasts and follow a lot of (I hate this word) bookstagrammers, and the turnover of a new year is the best time to do either of those things. This is because they're all reviewing their reading goals for the year that was and the year to come. Did they finish the number of classics they'd hoped? Did they finish the bibliography of Ballard novels? And will next year be the year they really commit to #JanuaryInJapan, when all over the world people dedicate themselves to reading translated fiction from the country?

I wish we did more of the same in videogames. Our equivalent discourse gets as far as ranking the best games of the year that was, and then immediately moves on to anticipating the next year's new releases, pre-emptively stuffing our backlogs with games we'll rue not having had the time to play when the next year draws to a close. Couldn't we set ourselves some more interesting constraints?

The problem - I don't think I'm blowing anyone's mind here - is in part that videogames culture is so commercial. Publishers make money by selling you something new,

09 Feb 2026 By Brendan Caldwell News

Samurai Gunn 2 got rebuilt from scratch and it's still ferocious

A nippy new engine to die in

It is Sunday night and I am kicking my own severed head around on the paving stones. My brother stands on a filthy platform high above me, hand on his katana, he is grinning precisely as a terrible killer might. He dashes left and turns invisible. Not this time. I focus. An entire second passes - a lifetime. I scan the air for signs of hopping feet.

There! I fire my gun, a flaming bullet strikes a wall, hitting nothing but stone. My two hands freeze with rigor mortis anticipation just as my body is severed into two large pieces. My brother reappears, cackling. I am dead, but at least Samurai Gunn 2 has been reborn.

If you peer back through the bamboo forest of yesteryear you might remember Samurai Gunn 2 coming out in 2021 as an early access couch brawler. It was a high-functioning sequel to one of the most brutally fun multiplayer party fighters this side of Nidhogg. You get three bullets and a sword: fight.

It saw a roster of special guest characters added over a couple of years, including the little guys from Minit, a crewmate from Among Us, and the cast of

08 Feb 2026 By Graham Smith The Lie-In

The Lie-In

Our weekly roundup of links worth reading.

Good morning, videogames. Stretch at the knees, spread your toes, and feel the brushed cotton ensconcing you like a big toasty cinnamon bun... Uh oh. Gotta read some good reads from across the week.

Obsidian released three games last year - an absurd number from a single studio in the modern era. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier visited the studio in the aftermath as it attempts to change its development processes to make games more quickly and cheaply.

Last year the developer released three games—a rare and impressive achievement for a studio of its size—but two of them failed to meet sales forecasts set by Obsidian’s parent company, Microsoft Corp. “They’re not disasters,” Urquhart says. “I’m not going to say this was a kick in the teeth. It was more like: ‘That sucks. What are we learning?’”

Stardew Valley is ten years old. IGN's Rebekah Valentine spoke to developer ConcernedApe about the game's success and his future.

So I asked you about big positive moments in the last 10 years. What about challenging times? Is there any moment in the last 10 years of Stardew that you recall as being exceptionally difficult or frustrating?

Barone: I think

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 to write for the show
— Bruno Dias (@brunodias.bsky.

06 Feb 2026 By Graham Smith What We're Playing

What you should play this weekend

Tell us what you are playing in the comments

Another weekend? So soon? I am not at all prepared for this collision with two days of supposed non-work, but I hope that you are making merry, putting your feet up, and stuffing your gullet with salty, crunchy videogames.

Here what you should or could be playing. Tell us what you actually are playing in the comments.

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined

I am not an RPG guy, but oh how I dream of being. Alas, I tried playing the Dragon Quest VII Reimagined demo and fell asleep on the couch within an hour. I'm like yer da putting the snooker or bowls on TV on a Sunday - I see the colour green and I'm out. If you've greater fortitude than I, this seems like a great modernisation of one of the genre's classics, with lots of fast-forward and automation options to make the combat more fun (and an anthology structure to make the 85-hour runtime less intimidating).

A spaceship with a lot of complicated parts, viewed from above, possibly on fire. — This is fine.

06 Feb 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

Menace wants you dead

Joke's on you, I love to die

Take a good look at that title font, you'll be seeing this shade of red a lot. Menace is the new XCOM-flavoured turn-based tactics lad who just dropped in from orbit to shoot you in the shinbones and make a mocking crybaby face at you as you bleed out. It is quite difficult.

It's also a very slow burner. I have put nine hours into the brutal early access build and all I have to show for it are three dead friends and a rocket launcher made out of sellotape. If you're familiar with Battle Brothers - the previous tactical death sentence this studio released - you'll know how it goes. You are once again raising a mercenary army, yet are persistently outnumbered, outgunned, and underfunded. There is an element of sci-fi horror to how quickly you can run out of money. In space, no one can give you a small business loan.

A dropship hovers over a desert planet as many troops stand watching it fly away. — That dropship looks a little familiar but let's say nothing.

A disaster has occurred aboard your military spaceship, and as the highest-ranking officer to survive the catastrophe, you are now in charge. Great timing, as your vessel has arrived in a foreign solar system of pirate scum,

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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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 judgment

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