Nathan Grayson

The Five Stages Of Video Game Disappointment

I didn’t want to believe that Fallout 4, the sequel to one of my favorite games of all time, wasn’t really doing it for me. So, like any rational person, I made myself miserable trying to convince myself that I was having A Really Great Time. Originally posted on January 7, 2016 I think it’s…

Conor McGregor Has The UFC Under His Thumb

The UFC is not super kind to fighters. Don’t get me wrong: some champs and popular up-and-comers make decent bank, but they have little leverage. A few ugly losses, ill-advised words, or hell, a uniform violation can leave them jobless—or at least on the UFC’s shitlist. So it’s crazy to see a fighter making the…

Undertale, As Told By Steam Reviews

Undertale came out of nowhere and turned RPGs upside-down with its deft mix of emotions, dogs, emotions, and more dogs. It’s become one of the biggest games on Steam. Undertale currently has nearly 30,000 Steam reviews, a whopping 97 percent of which are positive. As I discussed in my own review, this is a game…

Counter-Strike’s new gloves look snazzy. Valve decided to ring in a new year of CSGO by giving your in-game hands a modern makeover. Players are already coming up with ideas for (pretty cool looking) skins, and other players are saying, “Shhhh, quiet! Valve will get ideas about monetizing glove skins!”

Ark: Survival Evolved Mod Lets You Make Disgusting Meat Houses

Well, this sure is… uhhh. That is to say… er. Hm. Ever wanted to live in a house made of glistening meat, blanched bones, and striated fibers, all pulsating together in nauseating harmony? Now, now, don’t screamvomit (from excitement!) all at once. Instead, check out infinitesunrise’s Meat Structures mod for Ark: Survival Evolved. It’s everything…

Rainbow Six Siege just got a big update. 1.2 is not meant to fix all top issues, but it does improve hit registration (again), server tick rate, and matchmaking. Basically, if the game pissed you off with server issues or lopsided matchmaking (hi, that’s me), it might be time to give it another shot.

Just Cause 3 Mod Gives You An Infinite Grappling Hook

In the Just Cause series, your grappling hook is love, life, and all that jazz, but it does have limits. Making it infinite turns the game into (even more of) a demented, goddamn wonderful cartoon. There are actually a couple grappling hook mods for Just Cause 3, but the first and most versatile is Qub1’s…

Undertale has an officially sanctioned fan album, and it’s awesome. I’m a bit late to the party on this (the album came out right before Christmas), but if you’re a fan of Undertale’s soundtrack and metal/electronic music, this is an excellent set of covers. Warning: emotions. Also dog marriage.

Someone Is Making Mirror’s Edge In Dying Light

Back when Techland first announced mod tools for their zombie-dropkicking parkour game Dying Light, my first thought was, “OK, how long until somebody makes Mirror’s Edge with them?” Here it is, the moment I ended up waiting longer than I thought I would for. I just stumbled across Elimina’s work-in-progress recreation of Mirror’s Edge’s prologue…

Ark: Survival Evolved Has Downgraded Its Dinosaurs

Ark: Survival Evolved is one of the most popular survival games ever, and if you can’t see why, you’re the dumb adult in one of those old Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials. It’s the dinosaurs. So what happens when a patch makes them markedly less useful? Things go south in a hurry. The PC version of…

Valve Bans Match-Fixing Counter-Strike Players For Life

Nearly a year after a notorious scandal, Valve has clarified their stance on the punishment for match-fixing (that is, conspiring to lose on purpose, typically for the purposes of illicit moneymaking) in pro Counter-Strike: a permanent ban from competition. Not “indefinite.” Permanent. With teams like iBuyPower—whose members were found to have participated in a major…

Player Creates Crowd-Sourced Trash Talk Generator For Steam Games

For many players, friendly (or unfriendly) trash talk is as much a part of competitive games as, well, gaming. Truly clever quipping, however, ain’t easy, so one Steam user decided to crowdsource an automated trash talk generator. This being the Internet, things of course went horribly wrong—at least, at first. Davis Ford’s Shittalk Generator allows…

SOMA Mod Stops Monsters From Attacking, Improves The Game

SOMA is a contemplative horror game dripping with psychological, oftentimes existential dread. It’s also about running from scary monsters. Surprisingly, however, stripping out that second part actually makes the game more enjoyable and, in some ways, scarier. The Dreamer’s rather derisively named Wuss Mode: Monsters Won’t Attack mod is actually really cool. They describe it…

Just Cause 3 Becomes Pure Chaos Even If You Do Absolutely Nothing

Sandbox games offer players fully functioning worlds in which characters go about their daily business until somebody starts lobbing rockets or blowing up bridges. But what happens if you just leave NPCs be? In Just Cause 3, things still find a way to go topsy turvy—fast ThingsWePlay decided to just stand still in Just Cause…

Undertale Creator: It’s OK If People Dislike The Game 

As I mentioned in my Undertale review, the game’s fans can be a bit… insistent. “You can’t dislike it! That’s not possible!” That kind of thing. I get it. To an extent, I am one of those people. But, as these things often do, it’s resulted in some heated exchanges. Undertale fans are dedicated. They…

The Steam Winter Sale Is Over, But People Are Still Hunting For Clues

Shortly after the big Steam winter sale kicked off, intrepid users started sleuthing around, believing that they’d latched onto some kind of alternate reality game (or ARG, for short). Surprisingly, they ended up finding a secret search bar within Steam, as well as other hints. But… that’s it. And now it’s over. When I first…

Five Cool Steam Games I Played Over The Holidays

This holiday season, I received the most precious gift of all: a bit of free time. I ended up using it mostly to play an ungodly amount of Fallout 4 (it’s alright), but also to check out a handful of Steam games from last year that I never quite got around to. While I haven’t…

Nathan Grayson’s Top 10 Games Of 2015

If you’d have asked me at the start of the year what I thought my favorite games of 2015 would end up being, I would’ve guessed stuff like Fallout 4, Hotline Miami 2, and Just Cause 3. This year, though, a cool thing happened: most of my favorite games were ones I’d never even heard…

Counter-Strike Player Savagely Defeated By Balloon

The world of Counter-Strike is a dangerous place. Lethality lurks around every corner. Think that birthday balloon won’t knock you dead? Think again. Counter-Strike player Slegg posted a clip of their fatal encounter with a balloon and/or picnic table on Overpass. Watch: They skip into a party so chill that everyone died (or left because,…

Steam Problems Linger After Christmas Fiasco

You might remember that, a few days ago, Steam had a caching issue that let users see each others’ personal information. It was kind of A Thing. Since then, Steam has been in a fragile—some would argue busted—state. Steam’s gone down a handful of times since the aptly named Steam Winter Fail. On top of…