The Video Games You Should Play This Weekend – February 13

I was not following CiniCross prior to release, and frankly, I was a fool! It merges a genre I love (nonogram a.k.a. Picross puzzles) with a genre I like (rogue games), to create something that I don’t want to stop playing. Basically, you complete nongram puzzles as quickly as possible to acquire upgrades that you must choose between to improve yourself so that you can survive until the final floor. It has some faults. I have hit some consistent game-crashing bugs (which are particularly painful in a rogue game), and I don’t love the music and sound effects, but I adore the core mechanics and dark aesthetic. I have been playing on my Steam Deck and have had this much trouble putting the device down since it was my Vampire Survivors machine when I first acquired it. I don’t know that this is the game that will convince you love nonogram puzzles, but if you do love nonogram puzzles like I do, I hope I’ve convinced you to check it out.

I am on the review for God of War Sons of Sparta, so look out for a proper scored review the game soon. As of this writing, however, I am about an hour in and I am so far enjoying the experience of getting a glimpse into Kratos’ childhood. I have played every God of War game at release (even God of War: Betrayal, the pre-smartphone mobile game) and at this point I feel like I have lived his life alongside him. He’s been through hell (often literally) but I like this chance to see him before it all went wrong. I also appreciate the framing of him telling his daughter, Calliope, a story. She is crucial to his life, but we’ve really only seen how she affected Kratos in God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP.  Turns out he doesn’t really like to talk about the most devastating event of his entire life. The action has a few shortcomings and some stiffness, but I am eager to get a better handle on it and see all the game has to offer.

Seven years ago, this would have been my weekly recommendation of what to play – after all, I did put over 1,000 hours into the original Overwatch – but if you told me coming into 2026 that I’d be back into it, I would have laughed at you. But here we are; Overwatch’s recent complete overhaul, which saw the game stripped of the “2” in its title, made me curious enough to jump back in. As a regular player from 2016 to 2019, Overwatch sits near the top of my personal favorite games of all time, but following the announcement of Overwatch 2 back in 2019, the title fell off hard. Content slowed to a drip as the team focused on Overwatch 2’s story content, most of which never saw the light of day. Then, when Overwatch 2 arrived, I still enjoyed it (I gave it an 9 out of 10, after all), but it was a far cry from the novelty and excitement surrounding the original game during those first several years.

This reworking of the entire game is so much more than just a simple title rebrand; in addition to a more prominent story, complete with Blizzard’s famously great cinematics, it’s also refocusing on what players love. A permanent 6v6 mode is there for those who favor the original Overwatch team compositions. A ton of new heroes are joining the roster this year (including five heroes just this week), completely flipping any existing Meta on its head. And speaking of Meta, the new Conquest Meta Event has you pick a faction and fight for it over the course of a five-week event, earning rewards every step of the way. As someone who hasn’t played the game for several years now, I’m struggling to not only rewire my rusty muscle memory, but also relearn my favorite heroes, as many of them have received reworks in my absence. It’s a little overwhelming, and many of my old strategies now fail, but I’m having a blast dipping my toe back in. And when I am able to go on a run as one of my old favorites, I’m reminded precisely why I fell in love with this game in the first place.