Overwatch’s beloved particle cannon-wielding tank, Zarya, will have a new canon soon: Heroes of the Storm Blizzard revealed at Gamescom today that Zarya will be a playable HotS hero in the new Machines of War event. Two StarCraft stages are also being added as new battle maps.
“Dunno if I’m out of the loop, but what the hell is this?” Crypt of the NecroDancer player RireMakar asked on Reddit last May. In the main folder of the game’s SteamApp root directory, the data-miner unearthed a cryptic sigil, an iris embedded in the palm of a hand, which he posted online. A few…
Last weekend, I hopped a train to Baltimore to report at Otakon, an anime convention with upwards of 20,000 attendees, many of whom were decked out in mind-meltingly good cosplay. One thing I noticed was that, on the whole, Otakon’s women were absolutely killing it cosplaying Overwatch heroes. One of Overwatch’s main draws is its…
Venusaur gets a lot of flak for being a gross, warty toad who’s kind of trash after the third Pokémon gym. He’s also my favorite Pokémon (fight me). At Otakon last Saturday, Chelsea (@lordcreepypeepee) cosplayed the cutest damn Venusaur I’ve ever seen. Now, look me in the eye and tell me Venusaur isn’t the very…
From the makersof The Smash Brothers, Metagame, a documentary about the “Gods of Melee,” is coming this Winter. The film follows the rise of Smash heroes Mango, Armada and PPMD as they amass fame championing a 15-year-old fighting game. An excerpt dropped late last week and it looks great:
Overwatch’s Roadhog, the wheezing, porcine tank from Hell, is my favorite video game character of 2016. The rush of visceral win I feel when I hook an enemy and blast scrap metal in their face is unparalleled. I love it all: the way his Scrap Gun bounces up and down when he lumbers to the…
The hunt for details about Overwatch’s alleged next hero, Sombra, has finally reaped something—and it’s literally a reaper (not to be confused with the hero Reaper). The 5,000 Overwatch fans struggling to unravel Blizzard’s increasingly obtuse information puzzles have been investigating the latest Sombra clue for nearly two weeks. Last night, they finally made some…
The mobile puzzle game Deus Ex Go will be available for Android and iOS on August 18th. You can check out the trailer here
Weird tropes find their way into anime, and I’m not just talking about tentacle porn. Judgment aside, cat girls, superpowered transfer students and Vespa-riding aliens are objectively a little eyebrow-raising as television plot hooks. To be an anime fan, you get used to things you wouldn’t normally poke with a five-foot pole. Regardless, I was…
Riot Games last Friday filed a lawsuitagainst LeagueSharp, a cheating software for League of Legends that automates gameplay, locates enemies and boosts accuracy, allowing players to gain experience at an inhuman rate. In the lawsuit, filed in California, Riot alleges that its 67 million LoL players per month are disadvantaged by LeagueSharp, an “enormous threat”…
Hardship is a social glue, especially in games. Shared victories and mutual defeat, confusion, frustration— these are bonding mechanisms that transcend the IRL-URL barrier. In MMORPGs, in which community is a main draw, the difference between a challenging game and an easy game can also mean the difference between a strong and weak community. I…
Falco and Fox trump Mario in this beautifully-choreographed Smash Bros./Super Mario Bros. crossover, “Super Fox Bros.” Pixel art animator Rebaz Talei crafted a “runthrough” of a Mario World level with a Falco-Fox duo. “Come on!”
Jamel Wilkins says he Smashes with honor and dignity. And yet, for over a month, he was marooned in what players are calling “Smash Hell,” apparently an alternate server on which soft-banned Super Smash Bros. 4 players are forced to play with each other, regardless of their innocence. The troubles started when Wilkins picked up…
Kickstarter may be the closest thing we have to democracy in game development. Although gamers, in a sense, always vote with their wallets, Kickstarter lets them feel integral to the game development process by directly funding games. The results have been excellent: From Kickstarter funding, we’ve gotten knockout titles like Hyper Light Drifter, Pillars of…
Akira will never not be the shit. Released in 1988, the cyberpunk-ish anime still boasts a cult following that appreciates biker gangs, science fiction and big, sad explosions. Yesterday, filmmakers Brad Kremer and Dean Fowler released an incredible CG Akira tribute “trailer” that was six years in the making. The short film focuses on protagonist…
Contrary to popular belief, high schoolers grinding daily on World of Warcraft may not need to fear for their GPAs. A study released in the International Journal of Communication today found that kids who game erry’day score 15 points above the average in reading and math. Surveying 12,000 Australian high school students, Royal Melbourne Institute…
After requests from Hiroshima officials, Niantic removed Pokémon, PokéStops and Pokémon Go gyms from Hiroshima Memorial Park before last weekend’s annual ceremony marking the city’s World War II bombing, the AP reports It is the 71st anniversary of the U.S. attack on Hiroshima, in which 140,000 were killed. Late July, in preparation for the city’s…
It is a rule of the internet that, when a fandom is taken too seriously, it will develop its own special brand of self-mockery. But how does that happen exactly? In the case of dark fantasy manga Berserk’s 26-year-old fandom, it happened when the stale franchise’s subreddit fell into the hands of an over-pious fan.…
The first promo video for a 3DS game based on gag manga The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. launched today, Anime News Network reports. An anime rendition of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. began airing early July and follows a psychic high school student striving to lead a normal life. In the new video,…
Twitch announced today that they’ll be cracking down on Pokémon Go streamers who rely on third-party cheats. Streamers who play the game aided by software that tracks Pokémon or spoofs their GPS location will “receive a strike on their account.” Three strikes results in a ban. Niantic defines cheating as “using modified or unofficial software;…
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