Heather Alexandra

An Ode To Nick Valentine, Fallout 4‘s Best Companion

I was sick this week and decided to play Fallout 4 to relax. I’m not 100% on board with Fallout 4—I find its emphasis on action over roleplaying frustrating—but it’s full of fun characters. One of them, the robotic detective Nick Valentine, isn’t just one of the best character in the game. He’s one of…

Sea of Thieves‘ New Update Finally Makes Things Feel Dangerous

Sea of Thieves is full of jerk playersand giant sharks, but the game has never felt all that dangerous. The latest update, Cursed Sails, mostly corrects that. The addition of terrifying skeleton threats, battles packed with cursed cannonballs, and a brand new player ship brings a welcome sense of urgency to a game that often…

Speedrunner Beats The Wind Waker HD In Under One Hour

Most players will take days to complete The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but speedrunners do it much faster. Thanks to a year full of new discoveries and attempts by hard-working runners, The Wind Waker HD has been completed, for the first time ever, in under an hour. The new Any% world record—a speedrun…

How To Make Lots Of Money In No Man’s Sky Next

Unless you’re running tons of side missions, it can be difficult to raise funds in No Man’s Sky. If you’re not interested in farming or running errands, you might want to consider investing in cryo-pumps. They’re easy to craft and sell for obscene prices. The first thing I did in No Man’s Sky after the…

The Octopath Traveler Musical Cue I Can’t Stop Thinking About

Octopath Traveler’s battle music has all of the zest you could want, brimming with quick drumbeats and arpeggiated chords. One simple trick ties together the game’s story and boss battles, creating amazing musical cues that make each new encounter even more exciting. Octopath Traveler assigns each character an instrument that’s used prominently in their leitmotifs,…

Oh my gosh, it’s happening! Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! and Drum ‘n’ Fun! —new entries in the amazing Japanese rhythm game series— will release on November 2nd for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch. Start practicing now, friends.

YouTube Video Breaks Down Some Of Nintendo’s Best Gear

The YouTube channel Boundary Break usually checks out what goes on out of bounds in video games, but their latest video breaks down some of Nintendo’s most well-known hardware to show secret messages and exactly what made your Zapper sound so weird. I’m not much of a gearhead when it comes to consoles, although I’ve…

Fortnite Funeral Goes As Badly As The Rescue It Memorialized

Last week in Fortnite, an in-game rescue attempt to help a trapped player went awry. The incident achieved near-memetic status, and Epic added a tombstone into the game commemorating the fallen player. Now, players hold mock funerals, and they’re going just as poorly as the bungled rescue. It all started when the streamer Muselk happened…

A Giant Mech Game About Flirting With The Enemy

Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel about giant robots, political intrigue, and maybe even smooching the enemy. It combines evocative writing with a multi-perspective story that’s as engrossing as any anime. In Heaven Will Be Mine, a strange extraterrestrial threat has driven mankind to the stars by the year 1980. In this alternate…

Salt and Sanctuary, a darn good 2D Souls-like, is coming to the Nintendo Switch on August 2nd. Combined with Hollow Knight and Dandara, the Switch is becoming a titan of portable exploration games.

Speedrunner Beats Battletoads‘ Infamous Turbo Tunnel While Blindfolded

Old school Nintendo fans dealt with tons of challenging games, but Battletoads was one of the toughest. The third level contains the dreaded “turbo tunnel,” a long hoverbike gauntlet that wrecked careless players and grizzled experts alike. Yesterday, a speedrunner not only completed it without losing a single life, but while blindfolded. Piotr Delgado “The…

It’s official. Dragonball FighterZ newest DLC characters are base form Goku and Vegeta. They’re calling this Goku “Goku (Black Hair)” but there’s already a Goku Black and.. oh boy, how many Gokus do we have now?

Speedrunner Completes All Five Main Fallout Games In Under 90 Minutes

A casual playthrough of a Fallout game can take dozens or even hundreds of hours of wandering through wide wastelands. This new speedrun completes the entire series in under an hour and a half. The “Any% Main Series,” carried out by the dubiously named speedrunner tomatoanus, completes all five main titles in the Fallout series—Fallout,…

Octopath Traveler‘s Best NPC Is This Reclusive Old Man

Every party member in Octopath Traveler has a special ability that allows them to interact with NPCs throughout the world. Ophilia the cleric and Primrose the dancer can temporarily recruit NPCs into the party and summon them during battles. One unassuming old man is able to unleash Hell upon enemies. I’m pretty sure he’s a…

Prey‘s Mooncrash DLC Is Better Than The Main Game

Prey: Mooncrash released last month, adding a rogue-like twist to the 2017 game’s mix of action and exploration. The DLC arrived during E3 and was easy to sleep on—I ignored it in favor of big releases like Octopath Traveler. That was a mistake. Mooncrash might be even better than the main game. In Mooncrash, you…

Dying In Games Can Be Its Own Reward

In real life, death is my greatest fear. In video games, I’ll court disaster. When faced with obvious traps or perilous dialog choices, I will run in with reckless abandon. I’m not really sure what this says about me. Death, in video games, often feels to me like a carry over from the arcade designs…

Shadow Of The Colossus Player Rips Through 16 Giants In 36 Minutes

Shadow of the Colossus battles are supposed be dangerous clashes against massive foes, but a new boss rush world record highlights some intense climbing tricks and AI foolery that turns the game’s iconic beasts into pushovers. The boss rush speedrun was completed by ChurchNEOH using the current-gen HD remake, but many of the techniques work…

Clever Puzzle Game Feels Like Sega Made An Asset Flipper

Clever game design can take advantage of even the most limited resources. Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica is a marble-rolling game set in abstract space, which is made using mostly Unity assets. For some people, that might be infuriating, but sitting down to play it shows off what smart level design can do for a game. Created…

Hands-On With Days Gone: Fun, But Kind Of Generic

Yesterday, I checked out a handful of upcoming PlayStation games and finally got to play Days Gone. Zombie apocalypses seem a dime a dozen these days, and while the setting and characters felt generic, the teeming zombie hordes are some of the most terrifying I’ve ever faced. Days Gone is an upcoming action-survival game by…

Sonic Mania‘s Encore Mode Is The Perfect Excuse To Play Again

Sonic Mania’s blend of classic stages and ROM-hack inspired originals createda mix tape of everything awesome, fast, and blue. The Encore DLC, released today as part of Sonic Mania Plus, embraces the mixing and matching that made the base game great. Sonic Mania Plus is an expanded version of the original game that has new…