A double date in the first half of twenty twenty-six

While I am slowly being done with video games, it’s not done yet during the first half of 2026. Yours truly just happened to play more new releases in those six months than the entirety of 2025. Just one more to be precise. The pair did make me realize that I do prefer more expansive polygonal extravaganzas when they are done right while one really should go into “indies” with calibrated enthusiasm.

Pair 1 Developed in Chinese (the language), published by Japanese (the people)

Those 2 games are made by the Chinese speakers in Taiwan, then put onto the international marketplace by Japanese game publishers focusing on small scale projects. They really make one come to the conclusion that when smaller crew play with polygon, they can either be gamey or polished but not both.

4 Homura Hime

This would be the gamey one. A pretty obviously beefed up “student game” published by Playsim, one of the old guards among Japanese indie game publishers. They really put their back into this one as they helped hooking up this character action game with a voice cast of anime usual suspects, young and old.

I got several bones to pick with this one with so much less sauce. Since a Capcom title would appear, I would stick with this shtick: the mandatory boss rush before credits roll. Capcom’s Pragmata wisely let its credits roll before the boss rush in a NG+ option the game calls Lost Signal. Yours truly prefer when smaller scale project deal out less bullshit than their more expansive counterpart. This Flame Lass sadly failed to cross that threshold.

3 OPUS Prism Peak

This would be the polished one. While its developer Sigonos is long established, the publisher Shueisha Games is so new that the developer’s last game predated it. Suppose any self-respected “weeb” would recognize Shueisha as the publisher of manga magazine line called JUMP. The short hand would be they are the Japanese counterpart to Marvel comics. And indeed the publisher started their game arm partially to develop tabletop games out of their bestselling manga titles.

In contrast, the publisher’s video game focus is more on the “indie” side. Even though Prism Peak is the most ambitious title in Sigonos’ OPUS series, it tells a much more personal story just through a magical realism lens. It’s all about a middle-aged man reflecting on his sorry lot in life as the people he met appear as different animals. There is no combat, just the man talking photos in a 3D he can move freely in.

It might be intentional, but Sigonos’ stories always end in a hauntingly real and abrupt fashion. In other words, they are not fun, not during one’s first playthrough anyway. Prism Peak has the additional disconnect of not feeling like part of the star faring world of the first 3 OPUS titles. But if you want a game about sad hairy dad and no ludo narrative dissonance, this would be a nice one to pick up.  

Pair 2 Gun totting interns

The next 2 are similar to each other. Both under that over-the-shoulder orthodoxy. Both announced in the year 2020, cast in 2024 and released in 2026. Both starring an intern wielding guns with limited ammo. Both have wide angle shots that would make one go “What’s the point of Cory Barlog’s one-shot bullshit?”. And both drained my Deck battery in a little more than an hour, which made me wonder how long I can keep up with this vice we call video game.

2 Pragmata

Of all the titles Capcom getting acclaim for this year, I only picked this one up because the player character is a power armor wearing bloke. Well, that plus his android companion Diana is played by Nao Toyama in Japanese. Ms. Toyama was in a sci-fi anime series title Beatless, based on a novel. On that show, she learned how to speak long sentences without making her breath audible just to sound more robotic. Ironically, while Pragmata tells a simpler story, Beatless’s theme of “unwanted attention” bleed through.

Beatless is set in 2100s where androids known as Humanoid Interfaces are common. The novel was started by anime magazine New Type with the design of 5 pretty young women in futuristic outfits. Then science fiction author Satoshi Hase got the gag to write it and he focused on how attractive life-like androids look would impact society. The book does go some dark places, much darker than the narrative crew of Capcom would. And yet not as dark as the places some audience members of Pragmata did.

Video essayist peterspittech’s take of “You all ought to be more careful with an image of young child” is fair enough to me. At least all other robots are more naked than Diana since they do not have human skin on their lower limbs like she (Or “they”?) does. There is no Phantom Pain bullshit here. But the player character Hugh William is analogue hacked, a item Hase coined for Beatless, by Diana’s more human appearance. Capcom’s narrative is just so simplified that people went out of their way to discuss it…

1 007 First Light

But I guess Capcom should be proud of themselves that a plot thread in one of their 1998 games had influenced a long running spy fiction franchise. Isola in 007 First Light is very much an Ada Wong. She mostly dresses in red for starter. The actress played her is older than Patrick Gibson and partially Asian. Also, the character is closer to the any older 007 than Double-O trainee James Bond in the game. She is the character who like Martini shaken not stirred. And she told her boss to wait longer before a shag.

Anyway, First Light is a designed from top down to mimic the cinematic 007 James Bond experience, And IO Interactive does understand the assignment of making a video game by making this young Bond into a “brat with hero complex”. (Or was that insult from enemies the more vulgar “twat”?) I paid full price for this, pat on the back is not much to ask.