Today, cyberpunk card game Netrunner released a murder mystery expansion, Terminal Directive. It’s a novel twist on an already-fantastic game, and its first story-based campaign. The obvious question: How does a narrative of cyberwarfare unravel through a card game that requires shuffling decks? The answer is, slowly, in fits and starts, and in spite of…
A big fighting games tournament organizer says his company lost $20,000 throwing its first Super Smash Bros.-centric tournament earlier this month. As a result, Florida-based CEO Gaming does not have plans for a future CEO Dreamland event. “Dreamland came about as a way to show the Smash community that our team cares and appreciates their…
Yesterday, a localizer for the publisher XSEED took a dramatic stance on what he saw as potential censorship, asking his company to remove his name from the credits of the upcoming JRPG Akiba’s Beat after the developers removed a controversial phrase involving the KKK from the game. “I wanted to make a statement,” localization specialist…
Today, England’s Old Bailey court jailed 20-year-old hacker Adam Mudd two years for initiating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against several popular games and gaming services, the BBC reports Mudd created the malware Titanium Stresser when he was 16 and, in the intermittent years, several thousand users have carried out an alleged 1.7 million…
Amazon recently introduced a little chaos into the world of anime streaming. Anime Strike, which launched earlier this year, is taking heat from anime fans for disturbing the harmony viewers finally reached with English-language streaming services. It’s made a mess of the streaming ecosphere, and was (for me) pricey to boot. But despite consumers’ somewhat…
CosmicSwordsman is one of the highest-ranked For Honor player on Xbox. Playing the Orochi class, they have killed 5,384 players and died four times, according to their For Honor tracker network page. They have lost once. Of course, there’s a catch: allegedly, and ironically, they got there by gaming For Honor’s ranking system. According to…
Attack on Titan—is it a real, earnest anime or a super-efficient meme factory? Yesterday’s episode, and the reactions it inspired, brings us one stop closer to the answer. In the latest AoT episode, titan-fighting trainees are hiding from the naked giants in a castle when—spoiler—the titans breach it. Reiner, one of the trainees, discovers the…
Since League of Legends migrated their servers from L.A. to Chicago, serious gamers in Hawaii have experienced bad latency, The Outline reported today. Hawaiian gamers are disadvantaged by the lag, and reportedly, there have been no internationally-competing professional Hawaiian LoL players since the switch.
Later this year, Splatoon will debut as a manga, publisher Viz Media announced today.
Spring has sprung, but probably, so have your allergies. Stay inside. Drink some iced tea. Watch our remarkably good picks for this season’s anime. Re:Creators Genre: Magical realism Studio: Troyca Where to Watch: Amazon’s Anime Strike Plot: Re:Creators is an anime that asks: What if anime was real? An everyday otaku is sucked into the world…
This season’s breakout anime is Re:Creators, a show that asks the question “Should we have empathy for our anime heroes?” Then it asks, “Are we responsible for our fantasies?” and “Why do magical girls love cheeseburgers so much?” Re:Creators is about an otaku high school boy named Sota. His thing is drawing. One day, when…
In 2008, I brought my laptop over to my friend Amanda’s house to pirate Spore. Her boyfriend Nate, who worked at the local GameStop, told me to. It’s the shit, he said, and everyone’s downloading it for free. I connected my laptop to her internet and opened Limewire, 2008’s file-sharing software du jour. It was…
Elizabeth E. looted everything in Fallout 3’s Raven Rock. She collected three units of vodka, five stealth devices, four cuts of mirelurk meat and 88 Stimpacks, which weighed her down a considerable 3,169 pounds. Her pack was so heavy that traveling from Raven Rock to Fort Independence took four hours. She was over-encumbered and couldn’t…
After receiving a “tremendous amount of feedback,” Blizzard changed the way Overwatch does ties in its competitive mode. Now, one team just has to gain more progress than their enemy, with a minimum of 33% progress. That means there will be more ties.
Healing in Overwatch isn’t always appreciated—usually just a “Thanks, I’m glad someone is doing it.” Now, players are complaining that it’s not only unappreciated, but it’s also under-rewarded. Recently, healers werereportedly seeingfewer skill rating gains than their more damage-dealing allies. Yesterday, Blizzard responded to the controversy by noting that they haven’t found a “broad systemic…
Overwatch just broke one of its big design rules: Every car is a flying car. And in response, fans are deeming the game “unplayable.” In a 2015 interviewwith the L.A. Times, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan explained that the rule came out of Titan, Blizzard’s never-released MMORPG project. Titan’s dev team had hard-banned flying cars.…
The other day, our intrepid snack and gaming hardware reporter Mike Fahey picked up KFC for lunch. He brought it home and returned to his office, where, at the most recent count, he keeps 11 mechanical keyboards. Collecting them is his new hobby. And he’s taking it very seriously. He refused to eat anything anywhere…
Yesterday, on Easter, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson chased his daughter around the house wearing a Pikachu costume. And how did you celebrate? Eggs? The 6’5″, 260-pound wrestler was playing his daughter’s favorite game, “I run away and you chase me Pikachu,” according to The Rock’s Instagram. Adorably, his daughter pronounces “Pikachu” like “Peekyu.” “The Rock”…
The anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is full of perfect moments. And buried in it is a very, very anime love story. Protagonist Edward’s martial arts trainer is a woman named Izumi. She’s tough as nails. And how she got that way is revealed in the bonus episode “Tales of the Master.” When she was 18,…
“I need healing.” Yeah, well, get in line, buddy. In Overwatch, needing healing is a way of life. It’s also a thing you can spam in “All” chat until your teammates want to throttle you. And, of course, a meme. A week after Overwatch came out, players noticed that Genji mains in particular like spamming…
Mode
Follow us
