Ethan Gach

Crank Gaming Handheld’s Creators Trying To Make Amends For Poorly Worded Email

On May 22, app developer and game publisher Panic announced a new gaming handheld called Playdate that quickly became a mini-sensation online. Playdate is also the name used by a small, yearly indie showcase for experimental games, the 2019 edition of which took place just a few days later. The back-and-forth over the name “Playdate”…

During a live stream today 343 Industries showed off gameplay from the Halo: Reach remaster coming to The Master Chief Collection running on PC. It looks clean and responsive, despite the poor streaming quality! The studio also confirmed the game’s first testing phase for Xbox Insiders will begin in June after E3.

Odds Of Beating A Particularly Devious Mario Maker Level Are 1 In 7.5 Million

There have been over two million attempts to beat a Mario Maker level called Lucky Draw, and seemingly all of them have failed because, well, they just haven’t gotten lucky enough yet. As first reported by Patrick Klepek over at Vice Games, Lucky Draw is a Super Mario Maker level that has rarely, if ever,…

Anthem Gets New Update After Weeks Of Radio Silence

After weeks of saying almost nothing about the multiplayer space shooter Anthem, BioWare has announced a new update, a public test server for PC players, and that new details about its end-game Cataclysm event, originally promised for launch in May, will be arriving tomorrow during a developer livestream. Anthem’s 1.2 update doesn’t dramatically alter the…

Watch Someone Destroy Beat Saber With A Hand Mixer

Beat Saber is a virtual reality rhythm game where you chop red and blue blocks with correspondingly colored lightsabers. It requires a lot of coordination and precise movements. Or you could do what one player did and just strap your VR controllers to a handheld cake mixer. YouTuber hu hu says he scavenged through his…

Super Mario Maker 2 Won’t Let You Play Online With Friends

Nintendo showed off Super Mario Maker 2’s new four-player competitive and co-op online modes earlier this month, and the company has now confirmed that players will only be able to matchmake online with random people, not their friends. Earlier today, Nintendo World Report reported that a Nintendo Treehouse representative had told it at a press…

198X is an arcade nostalgia piece due out June 20 on Ps4 and PC. We covered the game when it was Kickstarted last May, and the finish version will feature homages to several different genres of arcade game with a single narrative connecting each of them.

The first Star Ocean game is coming to PS4 and Switch. Square Enix announced Star Ocean First Departure R on Twitter today, which definitely sounds like either a remake or remaster of the 2008 PSP game, which was itself a remake of the original SNES JRPG which never released in the US. 

Dauntless Struggled With Online Issues In Its First Week, But Things Are Finally Improving

Dauntless, an online multiplayer game inspired by Monster Hunter that officially released earlier this week, has been slammed with matchmaking issues and server problems in its opening days, but its developers say things will get better. After launching in alpha in 2017, Dauntless finally came out of Early Access on May 21, arriving for the…

Anti-Trump Resistance Figures Who Got Banned From Twitter Were Also Big Ouya Advocates

Yesterday, prolific tweeters Brian and Ed Krassenstein were banned for life from the platform for allegedly operating fake accounts and trying to buy clout. The two brothers then took to The Hill Reporter to plead their innocence and mount a defense, which relied in part on their past enthusiasm for the Ouya. The Ouya was…

More Telltale Games Are Disappearing From Digital Storefronts

Valve recently removed the option to buy the Telltale-developed series Tales From The Borderlands on Steam, and Good Old Games has announced it will no longer be selling any of Telltale’s games starting May 27. Nobody seems to know why. Reddit user Andreas_Pires first spotted that Tales From The Borderlands had lost its purchase option…

Pokémon T-Shirt Contest Winner Disqualified, Design Pulled From Upcoming Game

Earlier this week, Japanese clothing company Uniqlo announced Chinese artist Li Wen Pei had won its UT Grand Prix contest for designing Pokémon T-shirts. He was set to win $10,000 and have his design featured in Pokémon Sword and Shield, set to come to Switch later this year. Uniqlo now says Wen Pei has been…

Warframe’s Gas City Is Now Stalked By A Giant Robotic Bird

The Ropalolyst stalks the Corpus Gas City on Jupiter occasionally feasting on the metropolis’ machinery as if the place were made of worms. Part of Warframe’s latest update, the Jovian Concord, the gigantic bird comes from an ancient race of AI terraformers called the Sentient. It’s also one of the game’s best new boss fights.…

Fallout 76‘s New Project Paradise Quest Has You Do Genetic Experiments For Big Pharma

Without stuff to kill, the masses in Bethesda’s online survival game Fallout 76 tend to get restless, taking aim at one another when nothing else worth their time is available. Fortunately, this week’s update has offered up a fine distraction in the form of a public quest called Project Paradise. The quest is located in…

Microsoft has announced the next batch of games to get added to Game Pass starting with Metal Gear Survive on May 23. The first game in The Banner Saga series will get added that day as well, with indie shooter Void Bastards coming day and date on May 29.

Mario Kart Tour Is Pretty Good When It’s Not Nickel And Diming You

The Mario Kart Tour beta is now live for Android users in the United States. I’ve had some time to check out how Nintendo’s upcoming free-to-play mobile game adapts the beloved kart racing series for smartphones. The answer is a mostly faithful but stripped-down recreation of Mario Kart decked out with all the microtransactions and…

Nowhere Prophet Is A Deck-Building Roguelike Where Losing Your Cards Matters

Nowhere Prophet has a fascinating mix of card game mechanics and choose-your-own-adventure strategizing, with a crisp art style and a straightforward interface that makes it a breeze to play. While it’s still too early in development to know if it will end up being as deep as the great indie games it draws inspiration from,…

Pokémon T-Shirt Contest Winners Are The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was

The Japanese clothing company Uniqlo has announced the winners of its Pokémon-themed T-shirt design contest. While the first-place design will be included in this year’s Pokémon Sword and Shield games, the rest are really cool-looking as well, and already have me searching for my old Game Boy Color and link cable. Each entry was judged…

Sony is working on a Twisted Metal TV show The chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Tony Vinciquerra, confirmed it was in production during a Q&A with investors earlier today. Hopefully it’s a reality TV mockumentary about a contest where everyday people battle in deadly car duels in pursuit of the American dream.

Rage 2 Has Already Been Beaten In Under Two Hours

Rage 2, Bethesda’s new post-apocalyptic shooter, takes place in a big, open world full of enemy outposts to clear and quests to grind through. That hasn’t stopped one speedrunner from already beating it in under two hours. Over the weekend, speedrunner CreeperHntr set the Any% world record for Rage 2 with a time of 1:53:26…