Feature

AI can't do my job. It's annoying I even have to say it (for many of you, I probably don't, but let's get into it for those at the back). There's a huge amount of valid worry about AI and the ways it's replacing human work in our industry. It has hit the voice acting in extraction shooter Arc Raiders, and the textures in whatever the fuck inZOI is. One report showed that 1 in 5 new games on Steam use generative AI. A worrying trend whether you're an artist, actor, or programmer.

In games media, though, we haven't seen as much explicit uptake. The tech is wreaking havoc in other ways, but there are few who'll admit to actually using it to write reviews or news pieces. This might be a case of some writers hiding their use out of shame (it's proven to make you look incompetent and lazy) but I doubt it. I think a lot of us, having made careers out of analysing an endless flow of games, movies, books, and music, just understand a simple, reassuring truth: humans like human art.

An AI cannot review a game because an AI cannot play a game. And

A list article is not how I imagined setting Jank up as a unique place to read about PC games. Everybody does lists. But the more we thought about it the more it made sense - we wanted a definitive rundown of our favourite games from recent years. We needed to offer you a taster menu.

This is not simply a list of cool games we reckon you ought to play, it's a way of telling you exactly who we are at Jank - what kind of sickos we are, and how to distinguish us from the other sickos. It's also a chance to stare one another down across a spreadsheet, sweating like three spaghetti western outlaws, chewing words in a tense standoff to see whether or not Balatro will make the cut. It does. [spits]

Our process was simple: we made a big raw list of all the games we liked even a little which were released between 2020 and now, and included many games that made an impact, even if we weren't that hot on them. This "shortlist" came to 172 games. From there, we cast votes. Any game with at least one vote from any of us

When survivors of Telltale Games get together, they tell war stories. I know because two veterans are speaking to me now, and they look into the middle distance as they tiptoe around the complex feelings they have regarding their time at the ill-fated studio. 

"The stories would just go on for days," says Michael Choung, who wrote for a handful of Telltale's games between 2014 and 2016. "Whenever Telltale people get together and talk," explains Choung, "it's not like 'what fond memory would you like to share with me, because I will share my fond memories with you!' It's always just like: 'Oh my god, that was happening to you? Oh my gosh.' Yeah, so it's a very complicated feeling."

I'm chatting to Choung in a video call alongside fellow Telltale alumni Nick Herman, director of The Wolf Among Us and choreographer across many Telltale games. He agrees things were sometimes messy, but would later sum up his time at the studio as "worth the squeeze".

Choung and Herman are now two