Cecilia D'Anastasio

Custom D&D Character Sheets Are A Critical Hit

Cartoonist and self-described Dungeons & Dragons nerd Luke Howard hand-crafted a convincing argument in favor of pen-and-paper role-playing: custom character sheets for D&D It’s not unusual for players to print their character sheets off D&D’s website or type their stats into a digital document. But that can feel a little impersonal. Howard’s character books are…

Overwatch‘s Latest Hero Is Wrecking Ball, A Hamster In A Mech [Update]

It looks like Overwatch’s newest hero might be who—but not what—we thought. Fans speculated that the first-person shooter’s 28th hero could be Hammond, a monkey companion to the genetically-engineered gorilla Winston. So it came as a surprise that Overwatch just released Hammond the hamster, who goes by “Wrecking Ball,” onto the game’s public test realm…

Overwatch’s Trolls Are Losing

Overwatch players needed something to incentivize good sportsmanship and, yesterday, they got it. Blizzard’s latest Overwatch patch is toning down the hierarchy of skill and introducing a hierarchy of decency. It’s a masterstroke of features, all interacting to reward civility and cleanse the game of antisocial behavior. At its heart is a new “endorsement” system…

After a slew of complaints from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds players over the game’s buggy new Event Pass, Battlegrounds is making some necessary changes ASAP: “Firstly, we’ve upped the daily XP limit and reduced the minimum play time required to count towards mission progress. We’re implementing these changes first on the test server.” today’s blog post reads

Fortnite‘s New Playground Mode Is Live And Here’s How It Works (Update: It’s Back Up)

Fortnite’s long-awaited “Playground” mode is finally live this morning. It’s a freeform, Minecraft-like practice mode that will feel crucial to players who want a less chaotic environment in which to git gud. As Kotaku posts this, Fortnitejust announcedthe mode is down for repairs while they “investigate some issues with our matchmaking services.” [Update—9:00 am ET,…

Captain Spirit Is A Two-Hour Gut Punch

In The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, nine-year-old Chris Eriksen sets up a tower of his father’s beer cans for his superhero alter-ego, Captain Spirit, to blast into the abyss. He had to practice his aim for that day’s big, imminent fight against his arch nemesis, Mantroid. While his dad slept in a drunken stupor,…

PUBG‘s Event Pass Drops, Lands Badly [UPDATE]

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds players have been through a lot since the game’s release early 2017. Although the survival shooter went viral and earned the love of millions of fans, players had, and still have, lots of complaints. The game’s been buggy. It’s been full of cheaters. And now, the rollout of a $10 Event Pass has…

Indie Games Are Getting Cloned Before They’re Even Out

Earlier this month, a buddy sent game developer Ben Esposito a surprising screenshot: an Instagram ad for a game that looked a lot like the one he’d been working on for five years. Esposito is nearly finished toiling away on an indie game called Donut County, which will be released later this year by publisher…

‘Just Build lol’ Might Not Be Fortnite’s Winning Strat Much Longer

There are a hell of a lot of ways to win a Fortnite game, but the most reliable strat has gotten a little too reliable, says publisher Epic Games. In a blog post yesterday, Epic explained that they’ll be shaking things up a little, so players will need to get a little more resourceful. Fortnite’s…

People Keep Trying To Win Fortnite Without Weapons

Winning a game of Fortnite is impressive on its own. Winning a game of Fortnite with no weapons is bonkers. The last person standing in the 100-person survival shooter wins it all. Most of the time, this takes a combination of gun skill, fort-building finesse and tactics. It’s not a thing a lot of people…

Battle Passes Are So Hot Right Now

Pay-to-win games are garbage. Loot boxes are passe. Cosmetics are cute, but not a great incentive to keep playing. Game publishers have cycled through a bevy of monetization gimmicks aimed at keeping gamers putting cash into their games, some more successful than others. Now, more and more of them seem to be coalescing around a…

All The Games Cecilia Played At E3 2018

This was the first E3 I’ve attended IRL, and I spent most of it interviewing producers of games like Splatoon 2, Jump Force and SoulCalibur 6. Between learning tidbits about whether Splatoon 2’s squid kids eat squid and why SoulCalibur 6’s women still look like pin-ups, I managed to play a few upcoming games that…

Fortnite just got Stink Bombs, super-rare grenades that deal five damage every half-second anyone is in the stink cloud. We don’t know yet whether they’ll pass our sniff test—they’re hard to find—but we hope we won’t get hurt in the process! 

Splatoon 2 Producer Explains Nintendo’s Approach To Deleting Shitposts

Splatoon 2’s face is all inky rainbows and cutesy cephalopods. It would be an adorable, idyllic wonderland, if not for the fact that controlling all of those snuggable urchins are real-life humans, who are often bad. If you’ve tromped around Splatoon 2 for more than a few hours, you might have stumbled upon a few…

At E3, SoulCalibur‘s Objectified Women Felt Like A Relic Of The Past

In SoulCalibur 6, Ivy Valentine will be as she always was: wrapped in stringy cloth, balloon-breasted, mostly naked. She wields a snake sword that extends into a whip, a dominatrix’s weapon that’s helped land her in innumerable knock-off porn videos and pin-up images. As one the Soul series’ most recognizable fighters, Ivy has always looked…

Today, the World Health Organization added “gaming disorder” to its classification of diseases. It’s apparently recognized by an impaired control over gaming, an allegedly addictive behavior. Psychologists have led a backlashagainst the classification, arguing that it could stigmatize gamers based on controversial studies.

Pokémon Go Will Finally Get A ‘Friends’ Feature And Trading

Two years after release, publisher Niantic finally announced that trading and friends lists will be coming to Pokémon Go. It’s a feature players sorely missed from the main Pokémon series, which has traditionally let two players exchange Pokémon. Back in July, 2016, Niantic CEO John Hanke told Business Insider that “it’s kind of a core element.”…

What do Squid Kids Eat? Splatoon’s Producer Explains

Splatoon 2 is a game about squid-kids waging war with neon ink. It’s not an easy one to explain to grandma. And it takes place in a freaky world that raises a lot of questions—What did squid kids evolve from? How do they get so much ink in those little ink guns? Where are these…

Jump Force Is An Anime Fighting Game For Beginners

When Bandai Namco revealed Jump Force, a crossover fighting game pitting Dragon Ball villain Frieza against Naruto himself, manga fans went berserk. It wasn’t that the headlining manga stars looked like they were plucked from the pages of Shonen Jump They don’t. In Jump Force, they appear as living action figures pummeling the crap out…

Smash Bros. Pros Are Finally Feeling The Love From Nintendo

LOS ANGELES—Paper streamers fluttered down on Smash champion Gonzalo “Zero” Barrios in the red light of a former burlesque theater in downtown Los Angeles. Barrios, the world’s best Super Smash Bros. Wii U player, winked at the camera and flashed a peace sign. Nintendo had invited him, along with seven other pro Super Smash Bros.…