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Another week in the PC gaming mines and oh, such wonders it has produced. Nic Ruben wrote an ode to parrying in general and its delivery in Onimusha in particular. 

At their best, nailing a string of parries and ripostes feels like performing Swan Lake while winning a rap battle against god. At their worst, they're the design equivalent of blending a bag of spinach into sugary pasta sauce so fussy toddlers don't realise they're eating quicktime event.

Graham spoke to the people who put Spelunky 1 in Spelunky 2 to create a new, still more powerful Spelunky. This is very important to people like us who have spent hundreds of hours in each game.

Spelunky 2's World 1, by comparison, feels designed for the player. "Spelunky 2 essentially did away with level feelings and moved its extended content into dedicated areas you can visit by taking branching paths, which ends up trading variation for player choice," says SNF. One of those choices happens at the end of World 1 after you fight a mini boss. You can decide whether to go left or right to determine what kind of World 2 you get, but

It has been a very long week in videogames, between the hundreds of games and conversations about them at Gamescom, and the single billion-dollar game that Rockstar chose to finally show off in the middle of it. As an independent media outlet we didn’t cover either of those things, though, and that’s partially a matter of free-thinking principle and also because Graham and I were both away for work so Brendy had to hold the fort. He did a grand job though, starting with taxi reports from Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. 

Even for seasoned FPS players, it's easy to look at games like Hell Let Loose: Vietnam and dismiss them as a sweaty Call Of Duty for people who take a deathmatch too seriously. It's even easier to reject it for the social discomfort of having to actually talk to strangers over the internet. But this is something I love about multiplayer war 'em ups - the small, temporary friendships you forge in hellish circumstances, the micropals you make during a big push or a desperate last stand. The medic who follows you everywhere. The squad leader who says "good fuckin job boys!" when

It has been a big week on Jank. By far the main event was Brendy’s extensive explanation of why he doesn’t like auto-battler games, which continues to rack up online commentary from the tiring “let people enjoy things” (he at no point suggested they shouldn’t) to the intriguing “there is a semi-arbitrary distinction between game feel rooted in physical movement and game feel rooted in UX design” (busted). 

My point is not that these games make us lesser players or lesser people. It's just that they're not half as interesting or groundbreaking as their huge sales numbers and endless praise suggest. Just because something is powerfully psychologically compulsive doesn't make it good art. Just because something eats your time, doesn't make it worth your time. 

So much of our life is already made slick with the grease of automation. It is absurd to think of anybody wanting the self-reading book, the self-watching movie. Why would I want the self-playing game? The whole distinction of games as a medium is that they are about doing stuff. The game that leans more and more towards autoplaying threatens to

It's been another week on Jank, and a surprisingly soggy one. Brendy celebrated the particularly alluring appeal of watersports walking simulator Pools: 

Have you ever noticed how nervousness and excitement are the same feeling? I mean bodily, when you stop and examine what's going on in your belly and on your skin and to your breathing. It's all the same response: something is about to happen. Pools makes me feel that way. For this reason, you could chalk the game up as a damp squib - after three hours of anticipation, nothing does happen. But it doesn't matter to me. Just to live in that feeling of butterfly belly and to walk through this soggy maze wondering what's around the next corner is enough. 

 He also commended Sandcastles, a game which offers everything the title promises: 

I have fond memories of battling the tide with sand as a kid, trying to keep a fort from crumbling, piling up new walls like the sea is an invading army, and secretly revelling in the collapsing facades, relishing my losing fight. Is this what Dwarf Fortress is like for Nate? Sandcastle captures that feeling with

It’s been another week in PC gaming, plus an extra day because I had some family business so apologies for the late running. Jeremy Peel kicked things off by explaining that Microsoft has always been a problem for PC gaming so we should not expect it to change now. Yes, they gave us DirectX, but they also gave us Games For Windows Live. 

It was never clear what value GFWL offered players. Nobody wanted its achievements, Gamerscore or messaging functionality, since the social hubs of PC gamers existed elsewhere. The much-vaunted crossplay between Windows and Xbox 360 barely materialised. And of course, it was the home to plenty of clumsy DRM, a role that sealed its fate in the court of public opinion. GFWL was there to police players rather than to help them.

Graham somehow curated good game writing without even being here. Upon his return he reviewed Emuurom and wants you to know that while it contains vast and complex depths you can still enjoy it for much simpler reasons. 

If you love Animal Well and Blue Prince, I think Emuurom could be your new favourite game. Someone less dummy than me might therefore

Another week has passed in glorious Jank, which means that (thanks to the generous backing of our supporters) we have survived six months and written, yikes, over 200 articles. Brendy summarised some highlights but really it's all good and we added still more this week, starting with Nic Rueben's delight at ZeroSpace’s shameless appropriation of both Starcraft and Mass Effect:  

And yet, like, there is something here, flittering about the halls of its hilariously brazen necropolis of zombie inspirations like a moth caught in a packet of moth-flavoured crisps. Do I dare call that something soul? 

He certainly can, it's our site and there is nobody to stop it. As further proof, for this month’s Living in Sim Brendy had a great time in a filthy astrology lab:

Eventually, I discover an asteroid, a planet, and a white dwarf. A few weaker signals dissolve before I can even readjust the satellites to look at them. My bosses are not impressed and they routinely pay me less than my daily wage because I have not fulfilled their exact orders in the emails. You are supposed to go outside and hike or bike

Graham went camping and lived, and he’s so drunk on success that now he’s going on holiday. His parting words were some games you can play this weekend. Brendy remains but is all tuckered out after his consideration of megastructures:

The same human absence is there in Nier Automata's peopleless ruins, in Stray's domed and sunless city. I don't know if these are big enough qualify as megastructures, but they certainly feel like them. On the other hand, I barely count the Dyson Spheres and habitat craft of Stellaris as megastructures. Not only are there too many people hanging around, but the perspective is all wrong. In Hypogea and Metal Garden you are a small being looking up, but in Stellaris you are a god looking down. For a megastructure to truly hit, the sense of scale must land on you like a ton of cement from above and beyond. For something to feel big, you have to first feel tiny. 

Jeremy Peel considered the megastructure, or at least magnificent structure, of Boiling Point, which means I have to mention the song that plays during the installation process and nowhere else in the game.

Hello, enjoyers of Jank. I am informed there are a lot of new readers among you, swamping through the gates thanks to a brutal takedown of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Come in, come in, warm yourself by the burning effigy of Ernest Cline. I think you're going to like it here. 

This newsletter is normally scribbled by Jonty. But this week he's missing, presumed on holiday. I'll do my best to fill your eyes with games industry newsbits in his absence. This will be difficult. I've been distracted because I have only this week learned of Jimothy, a creature which is either a raccoon in Seattle with shortened spine syndrome, or the latest cryptid stalking America, depending on who you ask. Anyway, I'll try. Onto the videogames.

The Oatmeal (@theoatmeal.bsky.social)

I drew a police sketch of Jimothy in case the cops need it

Bluesky SocialThe Oatmeal

Here at Jank

We began the week with a brawl. The season finale of Character Select (in which we pit game characters against one another) saw Max Payne, Octodad, Dog from Half-Life 2, the Flood from Halo, and SkiFree's Yeti having a free-