Half-Life 2

27 May 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Character Select

Dog vs Cat

Let endless battle endure

Welcome to season one of Character Select. How many seasons will there be? Some mysteries deserve never to be revealed.

Ah, now we're suckin' diesel. It is a conflict that has raged for as long as humanity has had a gristly bit of mammoth salami they did not want to eat. Who will get the scraps: man's best friend, or best frenemy? One is known for boundless enthusiasm, strength, loyalty, and also for going "bee-woop-dee-boop" while battering gasmasked dorks. The other is known for putting small dead rodents in your slippers, and rescuing an entire city of robots from an endless night. This will be a tragic fight, because in another world, at another time, Dog and Cat would have been inseparable pals. But not here and not now. This is Dog from Half-Life 2 versus the Cat from Stray. It's now or it is never now. Select your character!

The case for Dog from Half-Life 2

He can lift a car and he can throw a car. That's got to count for a lot. He once jumped on top of an alien tripod and tore the top of its skull off, as if he was dismantling a cheap chew

13 Apr 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

The best singleplayer levels in first-person PC games

Let me level with you

Last week we confronted Jank readers with the 17 best multiplayer FPS maps in living and possibly unliving memory. Did you think we were finished? You imbecile. You clown. Now it's time for all the brilliant singleplayer levels. And some of them aren't even about shooting.

We had originally sat down to hash out all the finest levels in first-person games without caring how many players were enjoying the view or dying from a ruptured skull. But after compiling that megalist we realised: my god, if we split this monster into multiplayer and singleplayer maps... we will have TWO articles. It was a revolutionary idea, and one that has made Jank approximately 0.05% more efficient this week. We provide stupid jokes and shareholder value.

Fort Frolic - BioShock

A bunny eared enemy with hooks waits outside the doors to Fort Frolic.

Graham: Someone, somewhere is going to say: what about The Cradle, the most beloved level from Thief: Deadly Shadows? To them we say: sorry, we haven't played it. But we have played Fort Frolic, the BioShock level from the same level designer, Jordan Thomas, in which the player is trapped in a district by Sander Cohen, an artist who works across mediums, from "creepy living statues" to "classically scored murder ballet"