Mals' Gaming Reviews

📄︱February 2026 Recap

Progressing (kind of) smoothly into college, taking a break from reviews (while also getting back to them), and numerous archipelago secessions underway and a damaging but not so damaging snowstorm, February has surely been a busy month for yours truly. Nothing extraordinary, but making some steady progression while also dealing with a bit of mental issues. Most of the early weeks were okay, but the middle/end points were getting a bit too crazy, but it's mostly done and done, since I can handle it quite well. Because of this, not many games let alone new ones were played this month, but I did end up revisiting ones I've never thought I would be revisiting! My grades mean more than my pass time, and despite having two classes, one of them occupies most of my thinking space to make me think about gaming altogether, but in the cases that I finished everything, I can look back at them games to make some little progress on them.

Anyways, time to talk about the specifics that happened this month:

Reactivating my Bluesky Account

One of the more notable events is on the 10th when I reactivated my Bluesky account after taking a break since the start of the year. I've talked about it in more detail in my January recap, but I wanted to take a break from Microblogging websites since they've been taking too much of a toll on my mental health, and that I seriously needed to let go for a bit. In the case of Bluesky though, I didn't want to 100% leave the platform unlike the others:

Prior to deactivation, I've made a thread asking the importance on Puyo Puyo Tetris since I was going to work on a ten thousand word review for that game, and what I've gotten was some of the most helpful responses that I've ever gotten in terms of a discussion on a video game provided by some of what I consider to be the "higher ups" in the EPPC: Neni for this instance. I didn't want to leave that valuable information behind for good since applying research is starting to become more troubling with AI technologies staying afloat, and I just said to myself that I'll reactivate my Bluesky account when I'm mentally ready to work on my Puyo Puyo Tetris review, which on this day, was perfect since the stars perfectly aligned. I did want to further clarify for those that will read this about how I'm going to use it in the future though:

Previously, I used to use Bluesky for talking about every thought that flows through my mind: Minor or Major. Considering that there were moments where doing that caused some heated moments between myself and some people, I've decided that I would keep the serious stuff I want to show to you guys on Bluesky alone, and keep the minor thoughts to myself. I wish I didn't have to do this since I always wished to get some points of mine across in certain situations, but I better take the safe route for my health.

Some Puyo Puyo Palaver

oh yeah and speaking of Puyo Puyo, Please correct me if I'm wrong, but at the beginning of the month, there has seemed to be something huge that Puyo Puyo had gotten at the start of February: It was through a livestream covering the 35h anniversary of the series. Instrad of providing anything new to the table to celebrate, there was absolutely nothing contained with it: Only merchandise, and Promotions/Collabs with Puyo Puyo Quest. In fact, what's supposed to be the biggest reveal of them all, was a simple decor you're able to add to your car in Sonic Racing Crossworlds.

If my information serves me right, this was the whole event that caused Puyo Puyo fans to go berserk (including myself) and started creating a new #Arle4Crossworlds tag that's supposed to show Sega that they have a game that can clearly make Sega a lot of money should they actually care about it and whatnot. Honestly, this whole deal with Sega after Sonic Mania's release in 2017 makes me dislike the company even more, but my rants of modern Sega are a story for another time, should I feel like expressing that.

That Discord Age Verification Thing

Just before the Puyo Puyo crisis, another crisis spawned and is through Discord. Discord decided on the 9th they're going to pull a Google and make their UK Online Safety Acts stuff globally. The changes are subtle, but mainly geared towards the more "inappropriate content" that some users engage with on the site: If you want to access to stuff like age restricted discord servers, channels, unblur inappropriate messages and media, and some other changes in the veins of how Friend Requests work, you gotta prove your verification by showing your face, or a government issued ID. For how small this is, it would seem normal and harmless, but there is something IMPORTANT to keep in mind about this: Just months before they've rolled these upcoming changes, after putting it out towards the UK region, they've suffered a massive data breach, some of the contents included government issued information which 100% likely came from the age verification stuff. If a company just went through a breach and not too long after they're asking for the same information but globally, you can see why this is a problem.

Another reason for the compaints is that it kogically doesn't make sense for a good chunk of people that started using their Discord account since the creation of the site itself. If we take by the logic that someone had their account from 2015 for instance, and they were around 13 when making an account then, that same discord user are highly in their adult ages, and rolling out these age verification stuff to even Discord's oldest users isn't just good at all. There's also just the people that generally don't want to give companies like discord that information since it's extremely sensitive information that is getting fed to Artificial Intelligence to determine their age. And, considering that even in the big 2026 that AI has flaws, there's some cases where children put their face and get registered as an adult and/or adults putting their face and getting registered as children, defeating the whole point of the age verification system.

Even after multiple clarifications from Discord, people suggested started building or finding alternatives to the platform, and as I've subscribed to the talk, I personally don't think I would be affected by this since in the case of using Discord for 18+ content, I don't even touch CLOSE to that kind of content, and the restrictions put onto my account and the blurring of sensitive content are all on its highest settings, and for those alternatives.... I don't think they're getting anywhere personally. The ones I'm hearing don't have as much versatility yet to make them stand out as competitors, and the only one that actually did, Guilded, shut down before this stuff happened in the first place. Some mention Signal, some mention the Matrix, some mentioned Revolt--i mean Stoat, and while they're... okay alternatives, I took a gander at them myself, and.... holy heck these are discord alternatives?????

Except for Stoat which is trying its best for it to look like a Discord alternative, the rest of the alternatives out there do NOT scream Discord, especially in the current state that it is, if we're not talking about infrastructure but the app itself. Discord has made the platform very colorful and wonderful to use having profile effects, icon enhancers, and shit, but almost every alternative I looked at aren't built to be a spiritual successor to Discord. They do have the basics, but it's screaming more on what they're like in 2015 rather than it be at least something that's around uhh... more recent times. Not only that these projects are newer than a newborn, but it also because Discord hasn't really needed enough competition, it only took up until now for it to have alternatives and for what people made right now.

All and all, I just hope that even if it may not affect me, Discord reverts this, Especially since there's some people on my friends list leaving due to the changes: One literally saying "Happy Valentine's Day" before they've decided that they had enough and moved to Bluesky, with them seemingly forgetting about the existence of mine or potentially some other people that they engaged with. I just don't want to eventually face those that leave and I don't have any other viable way of contacting them other than Discord. I'm not going to move to more alternatives than I need to even if it's an "Weak ass opinion."

NEW/Revisited Games I've played and/or reviewed this month:

Note: I've started playing these games in date order.

New

Revisited