Our weekend gaming picks: From Castlevania chaos to zombie sandboxes
Key takeaways
- Team spans Castlevania replays, horror marathons, sandbox exploration, and Factorio introductions
- Belmont's Curse generating expected franchise fandom discourse among series veterans and newcomers
- DayZ Badlands finally getting tested after Gamescom technical issues prevented earlier hands-on
The LagPing team is scattered across a variety of gaming pursuits this weekend. Jeremy continues his Castlevania: Belmont's Curse walkthrough despite mixed review notes, while Mark circles back to Assassin's Creed 3's remaster after years of abandonment. Callum is balancing Star Wars: Zero Company with horror demos like Haunted Paws—described as co-op Little Nightmares with dogs in hats—and the wonderfully grotesque Rolla. James finally gets hands-on with DayZ Badlands after a Gamescom PC failure, and Ollie is introducing his brother to Factorio with what he hopes will be a memorable experience. Julian teases a secret project alongside Dreadline Express, while Edwin is stepping away from playing to attempt game creation through a text adventure experiment.
The bigger picture
This weekend snapshot reveals the seasonal gaming calendar shift: horror dominoes stack into autumn, remaster revivals draw returning players, and experimental indie projects find their niche audience. The Castlevania discourse Jeremy highlights—purists versus Metroidvania fans versus Netflix adaptation viewers—underscores how legacy franchises splinter fanbases. Competitors like Hollow Knight and the broader Metroidvania renaissance mean Belmont's Curse exists in a crowded space where critical consensus matters less than where individual players land on the classics debate.
We love these weekend roundups because they show how diverse gaming actually is—nobody's playing the same thing. You get real texture from what the team chooses, from Edwin's creative tangent to Callum's absurdist indie streak. It's a nice counterweight to the blockbuster cycle noise.
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