Nathan Grayson

Players Fire Bullets From Their Faces And Other Weird Counter-Strike Facts

In first-person games, the disconnect between what you see and what you are can be tremendous. What you see: your own hands, sometimes a gun. What you are: an awkward flesh mound stapled to a camera, portions of which you have no control over. The always excellent 3kliksphilip has put out a new video in…

The Wild Eight is a co-op survival game with a story, quests, and established characters. It’s pretty atypical for the genre, and it makes for an enticing idea stew when paired with a deathly cold setting (ala The Long Dark). The game is on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight right now. It might also be a…

Being A Shopkeeper Is The Hottest Job In Steam’s Version Of The Hunger Games

The Culling is a Steam hit that’s essentially Hunger Games: The Video Game. Set loose in a massive environment with nothing but the clothes on your back, your goal is to be the last person standing. So of course, players have invented a 100 percent non-violent role. Yep, in a round-based competitive game of life,…

Mod Makes XCOM 2 More Like Fire Emblem

I have been a fan of both XCOM and Fire Emblem since I was but a wee pile of childish hope and bacteria, watching the extra-long Sacred Stones epilogue during a precious family Christmas dinner. I have dreamed of a game that includes elements of both. Thanks to mods, XCOM 2 is now that game.…

Steam’s Latest Hit, Enter The Gungeon, Kicks A Lot Of Ass

Enter The Gungeon has been near the top of the Steam best-seller list for the past couple days, and I get why: it’s the type of roguelike shooter you can lose hundreds of hours to. Also the enemies are bullets. You get to kill bullets… with bullets. Enter The Gungeon is a roguelike (or roguelite,…

Steam Rival Itch.io Is Trying To Get Its App Onto Steam

On April Fools Day, indie-focused PC gaming storefront itch.io posted a listing to Steam Greenlight. Everyone assumed it was a joke, and a pretty solid one at that. Turns out, they were deadly serious. OK, maybe not deadly, but indie gaming’s favorite mom ‘n’ pop shop, where many smaller games release before making it onto…

April Fools Joke Messes Up Counter-Strike‘s Marketplace

We’ve made it past another April Fools day, and civilization is thankfully, mercifully still intact. Sometimes, though, April Fools jokes have lasting consequences, and I’m not just talking about people losing their jobs after they Google mic-dropped their bosses. The Counter-Strike economy—which involves highly sought-after cosmetic items and deals in real money—is still a bit…

New Overwatch Update Adds Ranked Play, Seasons

The latest Overwatch update didn’t just give Tracer a different, slightly more in-character butt pose; it also gave players a reason to fight until they can’t fight anymore (that isn’t butts). I speak, of course, about competitive play. Now, if you so choose, you can play Overwatch’s beta to rank up throughout monthly seasons and…

The ‘Social Justice’ Controversy Surrounding Baldur’s Gate‘s New Expansion [Update]

The expansion to beloved 17-year-old video game Baldur’s Gate has been getting shelled with angry user reviews all week. The complaints? Many are coming from people who say they are angry that the game is buggy and also filled with “social justice” issues and “LGBT tokenism.” Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear has been out for…

The Valve-Backed HTC Vive Is Virtual Reality At Its Best And Worst

For the past five days, I’ve spent nearly as much time in virtual reality as real reality. My calves ache and my neck is sore, but all in all I’ve had a pretty good time. I’ve been using the Vive, an ambitious new virtual reality system created by HTC and Valve. With the Vive set…

CHKN Is A Survival Game Where You Build Monstrosities

As far as survival games go, CHKN is certainly… unique. CHKN has some of the usual survival trappings: you’ve gotta eat to live, collect/kill to eat, and the game world’s god just said “fuck it, I’m tired” when faced with the idea of creating any shape other than a cube. But it also has creature…

Counter-Strike Pro Destroys Other Team Seconds After Hosts Question His Strategy

The $1 million Counter-Strike MLG Columbus Major has been running for a few days now, and it’s produced no end of crowd-flooring highlights. The latest? An oddball play that decimated an entire team in seconds. The moment couldn’t have been better if somebody had scripted it. With his team down 14-6 against Ukrainian powerhouse Natus…

Leap Of Fate Is Cyberpunk Binding Of Isaac

Leap of Fate popped up in Steam’s “popular new releases” section this week, so I decided to give it a shot on a whim. Surprise: it’s rad. Think Binding of Isaac in an occult-tinged cyberpunk setting, with a really cool structure, and you’re there. OK, that’s kind of… a lot. Maybe it would be better…

The Struggle To Bring Back Baldur’s Gate After 17 Years

Baldur’s Gate is one of the most revered RPG series in video game history. It helped write the book on Western-style RPGs, putting a focus on memorable followers and party-based combat, and tossing it all in a blender with a dungeon and a dragon. Nearly two decades later, it’s back. This piece originally appeared 3/31/16.…

North American Counter-Strike Has Its Best Moment In Years

Counter-Strike is not exactly a sport where North American teams dominate. North American Counter-Strike is something of a joke in the CSGO community, known more for drama and sloppy team play than stunning site takes or bodacious bomb defusals. But that might be changing. In a stunning upset against the best CSGO team on this,…

Nevermind. Ferhod used Valve’s Source Filmmaker to recreate a moment most every Fallout player has experienced. Alternative titles include “NOPE” and “There’s not enough mini nukes in the world.”

Players Feeling Abandoned After Strategy Game RUSE Removed From Steam

Remember RUSE? It was a Ubisoft-published strategy game about espionage and subterfuge that came out in 2010. Critical consensus pegged it as decent, but not amazing. Despite that, it’s maintained a consistent, occasionally growing Steam player base for six years. Unfortunately, it appears that admittedly itsy bitsy slice of the player pie (a few hundred…

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Is Now On Steam

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the Nintendo 64 was the first game that made me feel like I was really soaring through a Star Wars movie, my X-Wing buoyed by glorious trumpets and gentle flecks of Bantha poodoo. Now it’s on Steam. The arcade-y flight game, originally released on Nintendo 64 and PC back in…

16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve’s Approval

Watch Paint Dry is a 45-second-long game about watching paint dry. It was made by a 16 year-old guy who’s not even a game developer. Despite not going through Greenlight or otherwise receiving Valve’s holy lambda of approval, it got onto the Steam store. This might sound like the beginning of a horror story—an odious…

Pro Counter-Strike Team Wins Round Using Only Tasers, The Game’s Riskiest Weapon

Counter-Strike’s Zeus taser is a very particular weapon. It’ll down anybody in a single shot, but it’s for use at extremely close ranges, and it can only fire once. In a moment of apparent mania, one team, Selfless, purchased only Zeuses in a round of a pro match. They won. It was the second game…