Nathan Grayson

In Can’t Drive This, You Race While Someone Else Builds The Track

Can’t Drive This is a multiplayer driving game where one player putters along in their car while the other furiously scrambles to finish the road their arch-frenemy is driving on. In real time. Those are some grade-A ingredients for a batch of chaos-and-yelling soup. Here’s the game’s Steam Greenlight description: “Drive your Big Rig WHILE…

Designing A Counter-Strike Weapon Skin Isn’t Easy

Prolific Counter-Strike cosmetic item designer The Honey Badger just unveiled their latest creation, a piece (both in the artistic and, you know, gun senses) inspired by Greek myth. They also revealed how they came up with it, both thanks to and in spite of Valve’s rules. For those unfamiliar with the process, Counter-Strike players can…

The Most Popular Words In A Big Counter-Strike Tournament’s Twitch Chat

Large event Twitch chats are a blank canvas for the human id. Aggression, filth, comedy, occasional insight—all blasting by as though fired in unison from a thousand circus cannons. Despite this, they can be very… telling On a rather brilliant whim, dontstalkmepls decided to log every Twitch chat message during the recent DreamHack Masters Malmö…

Valley is a game about controlling the forces of life and death. Also grappling hooks. Your special L.E.A.F. suit grants you the ability to give and take life from any living thing. Also interesting: the more you die, the more the valley itself will die. The game will be out this summer.

A Survival Game About Being A Refugee

Games have applied survival mechanics to everything from dinosaurs to zombies to aliens. Once relegated to childhood sandboxes, we can now explore these topics in… video game sandboxes! But there have been more grounded takes on survival as well. This War of Mine kicked off the trend, and HomeBehind looks to continue it. It’s a…

The Overwatch Beta Ends Next Week

Overwatch’s closed beta has been quite a ride. Between changes for the better, clever player strategies, and butts, it’s gotten everybody talking (or making entire games about how they’re missing out) on multiple occasions. Next week, it’s coming to a close. Blizzard just announced that Overwatch’s long-running closed beta will conclude on April 25. The…

My Weekend Hanging Out With PC Gaming’s Most Hardcore Players

Face-to-face LAN parties—local game gatherings, usually PC-focused—just aren’t what they used to be in this modern, always connected age. Not even one of the biggest in the world can escape time. But the thousands of PC gamers who gather in Texas every summer are pushing off the inevitable as heroically as they can. This piece…

IKEA In VR? Sure, Why Not

For your Friday afternoon viewing pleasure, watch me go to IKEA. Yes, as part of humanity’s ceaseless goal to bring every element of RR into VR because, fuck it, why not, there’s an IKEA VR Experience. Upon hearing the title, I actually found myself somewhat excited at the prospect of exploring a sometimes overwhelming store…

What’re The Biggest Mods In Skyrim These Days?

Time flies. Skyrim has been out for nearly five years, giving its mod scene time to grow and change and then change again. It’s a culture unto itself, one that’s weathered identity crises and that whole money fiasco. So, all these years later, where does it stand? Yesterday I found myself curious about the state…

Overwatch‘s Silliest New Strategy: Kill Rooms

Whether you’re an itsy bitsy baby Overwatch player or that Junkrat who keeps using his exploding tire to hunt me and only me (I WILL FIND YOUR HOME), you’ll fare about the same against a room plastered with death lasers: poorly. Popular Team Fortress 2 YouTuber Muselk has been branching out into Overwatch’s beta recently,…

A Steam Game About Dating Older Men

These days, Steam is a boundless ocean of visual novels, with dating sims as far as the anime eye can see. In most of them, you’re a guy (or occasionally gal) romancing strapping young lads/ladies/pigeons. Not so in Pub Encounter Pub Encounter does something that many visual novels on Steam—and games in general, really—seem hesitant…

XCOM 2 Mod Lets Your Soldiers Hook Up And Have Kids

Last week I posted about an XCOM 2 mod that let squadmates gain stat buffs by bonding with each other over time, ala Fire Emblem. I concluded my post with the question on everyone’s mind: “When can my XCOM 2 soldiers start smooching and get married?” The answer: now. RealityMachina’s Bonding and Time Travelers mod…

When Counter-Strike Meets Fallout, Everybody Dies

Counter-Strike is a game of hair-trigger reflexes, twine-thin seconds that stretch like eons. Fallout’s VATS system actually is that. Time literally slows down, and you get to pick shots to maximize strategic potential and/or head-exploding-ness. Westracer combined the two in a snazzily edited video, and the result is a fast, funny ride: It’s a shame…

Sandstorms, Segregation, And Other Challenges Of Running A Women’s Video Game Convention In Saudi Arabia

When people talk bustling gaming scenes, Saudi Arabia is not the first place that comes to mind. It does, however, have one, and it’s growing slowly but surely, despite geographical hurdles and cultural stigma. GCON is the first ever women’s video game convention in the country. Running it has been… difficult. Tasneem Salim is one…

EA’s UFC Game Adds One Of MMA’s Most Notorious Moves

EA Sports UFC 2, a game I enjoyed quite a bit despite some issues, just got a big update. Additions include a couple new fighters, a few game mode updates, balance tweaks, and the most powerful attack in all of mixed martial arts history: the Stockton Slap. Yes, I’m being facetious. Sorta. The Stockton Slap…

VRRRRRRRRGHHHHHH

Sometimes HTC Vive VR is amazing. Other times it’s this (via Parachuteee). Here’s the full thing: You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around Valve’s wildly popular PC gaming service. Games, culture, community creations, criticism, guides, videos—everything. If you’ve found anything cool/awful on Steam, send us an email to let us…

Valve Blocks Competitor From Putting App On Steam

The great litmus test of Valve’s tolerance for potential competitors in their midst is over. The verdict? Sorry, but nope. Despite Valve’s general openness to a lot of stuff major video game companies like Sony and Microsoft would categorically fire out of a catapult and into the ocean (players making entire games with their IP/characters,…

Enter The Gungeon Secret Lets You Play As A Bullet Who Shoots Bullets At Bullets

Enter The Gungeon is a roguelite dungeon crawler that’s taking Steam by storm. As players are discovering, it’s riddled with secrets, like it’s been shot in the head a bunch of times by a gun that fires secrets. Case in point: the mysterious “Case Closed” achievement. (Minor Enter The Gungeon spoilers ahead.) If you go…

VR Game At A Glance: Adventuring Through Call Of The Starseed

Valve and HTC’s Vive is the most impressive VR experience out there, but the majority of its games feel like glorified tech demos. Mystery adventure The Gallery—Episode 1: Call of the Starseed is a bit meatier. Here’s a video of me playing the game: What it is: The Gallery—Episode 1: Call of the Starseed is…

Moonlighter is a rogue-lite about a shopkeeper who dreams of becoming a hero. In it, you’ll delve into dungeons, fight monsters, and claim legendary loot… which you’ll then sell in your shop. Gotta pay those bills. It’s currently angling to receive support from Square Enix via their Collective program