Mike Fahey

The Best Shantae Game Is Now On Switch

Two years before developer WayForward Technologies went all super-sharp sprites with 2016’s Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero, they de-powered their magical maven and turned her into a pirate. Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is one of the most satisfying 2D platformers going, and it’s out today on Switch. If you’ve not played Shantae and the Pirate’s…

Sea Of Thieves Is No Fun By Yourself

Sea of Thieves is no place for the solo swashbuckler. Bereft of boisterous crewmates, strange thoughts enter the mind. Thoughts like, “Well this isn’t fun at all,” and “Hey, if I stand on a rock the skeletons can’t attack me.” Sea of Thieves was built with multiplayer in mind. The idea that groups of players…

The Sims Mobile Is A Great Place To Raise A Family

I downloaded The Sims Mobile to see if it would let me trap a virtual person in a bathroom-less building. Now I’m two working mothers raising a child. I couldn’t be happier, at least not without having to wait out some sort of happiness timer. There is no virtual torture in The Sims Mobile, the…

The Switch is getting Lumines? We’re so doomed. Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s rhythm puzzle game is coming to the Switch this spring as Lumines Remastered. We’ll be Shinin’ like it’s the 2005 PSP launch. Update: It’ll also be out on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Look for it in May.

Thanks to alive-action TV series kicking off in May on Freeform, teen super team Cloak and Dagger score their own Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 level pack today. The $2.99 DLC features a short adventure plus character unlocks for Mister Negative, Blackout, Shroud, Nightmare, and Silvermane. Don’t do drugs, kids.

Choosing Your Pirate In Sea Of Thieves Is Hard

Instead of giving players a deep, involved character creation tool, Sea of Thieves generates groups of eight pirate characters at a time, of which the player can choose one. One might think that would make character selection easier. One would be wrong. It’s a character generator locked on random. There are no sliders for body…

Adventure Time And Steven Universe Make A Great Mobile Game Better

Here is how to make a great video game featuring licensed characters. Step one: find a great video game. Step two: put characters from We Bare Bears, Steven Universe and Adventure Time in it. That’s pretty much how Cartoon Network Match Land was born. I’m barely exaggerating here. Last year indie developer Race Cat Games…

With Paragon Dying, Epic Games Is Making The Characters And Environments Free

Multiplayer battle arena Paragon shuts down on April 26, but its characters and environments have a chance to live on. Epic Games has released “$12 million worth” of the game’s character and environment assets onto the Unreal Engine Marketplace for free. Epic’s got no time for a MOBA that spent two years trying and failing…

Ghost Of A Tale Is This Year’s Second Really Good Game About A Mouse

It’s been an outstanding couple of months for mouse-based video games. In February we gotPlayStation VR adventure Moss, and now we have the PC release of Ghost of a Tale, an action RPG about a mouse bard slinking through a dangerous fantasy world in order to save his true love. It looked outstanding in 2016.…

Burnout Paradise Didn’t Need A Remaster, But It’s Nice

I’ve played hours of the remastered version of Burnout Paradise prior to today’s release of the game on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. So how are the higher resolution textures and enhanced lighting effects? I don’t know, man. I’m just playing Burnout Paradise again, and it’s as wonderful as it ever was. Burnout Paradise has…

Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Your Switch

The Nintendo Switch is a piece of hardware with a lot going on. It’s a console. It’s a handheld. It’s got tons of games to play, options to tweak and accessories to play with. Here are tips to help you get the most out of the latest Nintendo entertainment system. Stuff All Switch Owners Should…

The Final Volume Of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Chronicle Gets To The Good Stuff

The third and final volume in Blizzard’s exhaustive history of Azeroth comes out on March 27. Dark Horse Books slipped us a few pages from World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume 3 to give us an idea of what to expect. The first volume dealt with the formation of the universe and the rise of ancient…

Toys ‘R’ Us, RIP: One Last Trip To Toy Heaven

For nearly two decades, this pressure-washed-to-hell beige building in a strip mall off North Point Parkway in Alpharetta, GA has been one of my favorite places. Soon it will close its doors for good, along with the other 734 Toys ‘R’ Us locations across the United States. So I gathered up one of my children…

Massdrop and Hasbro have teamed up to create the perfect board game/keyboard crossover. Community designer Cassidy Williams captured the essence of Scrabble perfectly in this set. The drop runs all month, with kits starting at $47 for just the letters and numbers. Unless they fall on a red space. Then it’s $141.

Final Fantasy XIV‘s New Eureka Area Is A Tedious Grind

The 4.25 patch for Final Fantasy XIV dropped today, adding theFFIII-inspired Forbidden Land of Eureka area to the game. It’s a magical island where players can group together and kill large numbers of creatures for very little reward until they fall asleep at the keyboard. Announced back in 2016 with the Stormblood expansion and delayed…

Dragon Ball Super Action Figures Play Well With Others

Bandai America’s Dragon Ball Super Dragon Stars action figures have been flying off the shelves since the release of Dragon Ball FighterZ earlier this year, as fans and collectors scramble to pick up their favorite characters. I got hold of the first three waves, tore them open, and made them do stuff. Fun stuff. The…

Mike Dies Keeps Finding Exciting New Ways To Kill Me

If Spaceman Mike stands completely inside a portal, he’s transported to another place. If even a tiny bit of him remains outside, he dies. Developer Psydra Games does so much with such a simple mechanic in the disturbingly-named Mike Dies. Mike Dies, available on Steam, has many things going for it. It’s a Metroidvania-style puzzle…

A Peek Inside Final Fantasy‘s Ultimania Art Book, Now In English

In 2012, Square Enix Japan published a trio of Final Fantasy 25th Memorial Ultimania books collecting art, developer commentary and background information on the first 14 numbered Final Fantasy games. Now Dark Horse is publishing the books in English, with the first 336 page volume arriving in July. We got samples. Wanna see? Square Enix…

Crash Bandicoot Trilogy No Longer Exclusive, Coming To Switch, Xbox One And PC

Released last year as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, remastered versions of Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot: Warped are coming to Switch on July 10. Update: And Xbox One and PC as well. The Crash Bandicoot series was a PlayStation exclusive when it debuted back in 1996, but these days…

Praise The Sun, It’s A Dark Souls Amiibo

No really, praise the sun. It’s what the Solaire of Astora amiibo does. Due out on May 25 alongside Dark Souls Remastered, tapping the Solaire of Astora amiibo to your Nintendo Switch while playing the game will cause your character to perform the iconic gesture. I don’t know if that’s all it does—it’s all the…