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CultureOdds and EndsI Love Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s Excellent Anime Reference
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the latest Ubisoft murder tourism sim, is a massive game. It’s brimming with intriguing activities and brief vignettes, many of which go places big-budget action games tend not to. For instance: Tucked away in one of Valhalla’s early areas, you may even find an amusing reference to a popular anime and manga…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow To Get The Cat Suit In Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Spider-Man is the hero of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. That’s not a statement about either of the Spider-Men (Peter Parker or the titular Miles Morales) but about Spider-Man, the bodega cat who charmed the internet to pieces earlier this fall. Insomniac’s web-slinging action game, out now for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, allows you to unlock…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesTips For Playing Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a superhero action game about bad guys who don’t know how to look up, has officially swung onto PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The game unmistakably shares a lot of DNA with its predecessor, 2018’s amazing Spider-Man. Still, there are some quirks to this follow-up, things you should know that will…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & Guides15 Tips To Make The Most Of Your New PlayStation 5
With the launch of the PlayStation 5, “next-gen” is no longer a thing of the future. We’re officially in current-gen territory now. But every period of novelty brings a period of learning—about new features, new functions, and new ways to play games. It can be a lot to take in, whether or not you’re coming…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow To Move Your PlayStation 4 Stuff To Your PlayStation 5
The PlayStation 5 promises the future, but that doesn’t mean you need to let go of the past. After all, we’re talking about seven years of hard-earned memories: beloved games, hard-earned save data, and sweet, sweet, Trophies. The bad news is that, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to move your screenshots…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow To Make The Most Of Your PlayStation 5’s Internal Storage
Those making the leap from a PlayStation 4 Pro to a PlayStation5 are in for a rude awakening. The PS4 Pro, of course, boasts a 1TB hard-drive. The PS5, meanwhile, is equipped with an 825GB solid-state drive (SSD)‚ but that’s only on paper. As with any modern video game console, a good chunk of the…
By Ari Notis -
OpinionImpressionsGears Tactics On Xbox Is A Lot Like Gears Tactics On PC, Which Rules
Gears Tactics finds itself in an interesting position: In the absence created by Halo Infinite’s delay, Gears Tactics has become one of the major first-party games seeing an Xbox release this month. It’s a neat game that’s well worth your time. It’s also not exactly a system-seller. The short version is this: Gears Tactics on…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesThe PS5 Lets You Automatically Invert The Y Axis (Most Of The Time)
The PlayStation 5 is brimming with novelty. You can finally, after seven long years, check out your playtime stats. The new DualSense controller is arguably the best case for the next generation. And then there’s all that beefed-up tech, which helps load games at blistering speeds. But one of the coolest selling points isn’t a…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesTip: Make Your New Xbox Your Home Xbox ASAP
It’s a fact of life by now: Console launches are never smooth sailing. If you’re a new owner of an Xbox Series S or X, you might even find yourself locked out of your downloaded games—unless you thought to set your new machine as your home Xbox. Over the course of the day, the very…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & Guides13 Tips To Make The Most Of Your New Xbox Series X Or S
And just like that, the next generation is here. The Xbox Series X and its smaller, more affordable sibling, the Xbox Series S, are available (well, to those who were quick enough on the draw to nab preorders). If you’re coming over from the Xbox One, you probably know your way around already. The interface…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow To Move Your Xbox One Stuff Onto Your Xbox Series X Or S
Making the leap from one console generation to the next is always a fraught proposition. You’re moving on from years of tangible memories—beloved games, hard-earned save data—that, historically, haven’t been so easy to preserve. Thankfully, if you’re migrating from an Xbox One to an Xbox Series S or X, the process is painless. As we…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow To Tell If You’re Playing The Next-Gen Version Of An Xbox Game
The Xbox Series X and S, which Microsoft will officially release tomorrow, are releasing with an interesting caveat. There’s no big game anchoring the launch, no Halo or Forza or Gears to hang sales on (other than a console release for Gears Tactics). Instead, Microsoft is trumpeting the system’s beefed-up tech, citing 30 or so…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow To Make The Most Of Your Xbox Series X’s Internal Storage
For such a big console, the Xbox Series X is pretty small. On paper, it has a 1TB SSD for internal storage, but 198GB of that is set aside for the operating system and other essential files. Couple that with the fact that games are bigger now than ever—the new Call of Duty will top…
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CultureHere’s How Fast Games Load On The PlayStation 5
Last night, we ran down how fast games load on the Xbox Series X and S. Today, we can do the same for the PlayStation 5, which will hit shelves next week (well, digitally). The short version? The PS5 is ridiculously fast, in some cases slashing comparable PS4 load times by nearly 50 percent. If…
By Ari Notis -
CultureHere’s How Fast Games Load On The Xbox Series X And S
Much ado has been made about the guts of the Xbox Series X and S, two new next-gen consoles Microsoft will release next week. It’s all “velocity architecture” this and “teraflops” that—technical stuff Microsoft says will cut loading times dramatically. But lingo and lofty promises are secondary to the one thing that matters most: how…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow The Xbox Series X’s ‘Quick Resume’ Feature Works (And Doesn’t Work)
Among all of the next-gen features touted for the Xbox Series X (and S), few are more promising than Quick Resume. On paper, Quick Resume grants you the ability to juggle several games in a suspended state at a system level, at which point you can load them in seconds, picking up exactly where you…
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Tips & GuidesYou Can Only Use 364GB Of The Xbox Series S’s 512GB Storage
When the Xbox Series S was first (officially) revealed in September, the general consensus could be summed up as such: “Aww!!” That’s not just a remark on the next-gen console’s diminutive physical size (and cheaper price, $300 compared with the Xbox Series X’s $500). That could have also been commentary on the internal storage, which…
By Ari Notis -
Tips & GuidesHow To Get (Some Of) Your Next-Gen Games To Run At 120 Frames Per Second
What’s the saying? “With great horsepower comes great framerates?” The next generation of gaming sure promises some great horsepower, which will allow many games from across generations to hit a framerate of 60 frames per second (fps). But some games will be able to run at double that, achieving a very pleasing 120 fps—that is,…
By Ari Notis