Nathan Grayson

Rust‘s Anti-Stream Sniping Mode Exists Because of Cheaters

Stream sniping is when someone watches your stream to get an upper hand—to essentially cheat—against you in a game. It sucks. Rust developer Facepunch is, to my knowledge, the first game developer to build a preventative measure against it into their game. They call it Streamer Mode. Here’s how it works, per a post by…

Counter-Strike Player Pulls Off Incredible Ace

Damn. Just… damn. The Counter-Strike community’s been freaking out about an economy round ace pulled off by EnvyUS player Happy—and with good reason. It’s completely ridiculous. First, just watch. It will make your eyeballs explode out of your head no matter how familiar you are with the game: Happy downed the entire opposing team in…

Fallout And XCOM Had A Baby, And It’s Tough As Nails

Its name is Bedlam, and it will probably kick your ass. In a good way, mostly. I love Fallout, but the recent games have been lacking in one major area. I wish there was more for me to be authentically, tangibly afraid of. Bethesda’s Fallout games (Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas) told me I was…

Star Wars KOTOR II Getting New, Player-Created Achievements

Against all odds, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, a decade-old game, keeps getting official updates. After a big out-of-nowhere update a couple months ago that added snazzy modern features like Steam Workshop support, ultra-high resolutions, and cloud saves, the (best) Star Wars role-playing game is getting even more achievements. There’s a twist,…

The Backlash Against Counter-Strike‘s New Bomb Defusal

The bomb. Counter-Strike matches revolve around it. Suddenly, it’s different, and that changes a lot of things. As part of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s latest big update, Valve added a bunch of new animations to the more-popular-than-several-million-high-school-jocks-assembled-into-one-mega-jock multiplayer shooter. Some just make the game look nicer (or worse, depending on who you talk to), but the…

Fantastic New RPG Lets You Talk Your Way Out Of Every Battle

Undertale made me grin until my face hurt. Then it broke my heart. And that was just the prologue. Undertale is a new RPG that just landed on Steam. It’s cut from the same cloth as stuff like Earthbound; that is to say, it’s charming, weird, wacky, and subversive, but not without substance. It might…

Five Nights At Freddy’s Mod For Fallout Is Actually Kinda Creepy

Now I really want a Fallout horror game. Five Nights at Vault 5 is a mod that reimagines Five Nights at Freddy’s in the Fallout universe—specifically, Fallout: New Vegas. You’ve got your multi-night scenario, complete helplessness, and killer robots skulking about, but there’s one major difference: you can actually move. You’re not rooted to one…

Valve Fixed Counter-Strike‘s Biggest Problem

Thank fucking goodness. As part of a huge update released late yesterday, Valve took aim at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s most egregious problem: awkward, unreliable hitboxes. Hitboxes are what they sound like: they dictate where players can be hit when you shoot at them. For years, players complained that they could, for instance, unload clips into…

The UFC’s Weirdest Fighter Got Banned For Weed, And That’s Bullshit

Five years. That’s how long the Nevada State Athletic Commission decided UFC fighter/enigma Nick Diaz won’t be allowed to fight. That’s more than most steroid users. All over goddamn marijuana. If you have friends (or enemies) who are super into MMA, they probably haven’t shut up about Nick Diaz in the past 24 hours. That…

Horror Game Tries To Terrify You Without Jump Scares

They saw me. Damn it all, they saw me. Albino Lullaby is a new Steam horror game that really wants you to know that it “doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore.” Having played and beaten its first episode, I can safely say that, yeah, by and large that’s true. Albino Lullaby is an earnest…

Metal Gear Solid V Glitch Lets Players Make Silenced Rocket Launchers

Forget Metal Gear. This is the ultimate weapon. Sneaking is hard. You’ve got to blend svelte form and lethal (or at least incapacitating) function, all while keeping light on your tippy toes. Big guns and bigger explosions? Not the best idea. Unless, of course, you’re playing Metal Gear Solid V, in which case they can…

Bizarre DOTA 2 Tournament Sounds Like The Best Kind Of Mess

High-level competitive games almost unanimously have the same problem: players use a very narrow range of characters—over and over and over again. It makes sense. After all, if there are big bucks on the line, why risk it all on a character or class that players have deemed underpowered or less-than-ideal when matched against other…

Elite: Dangerous’ richest players are bored. PCGamesN has a great feature on what the space sim’s players do when they become ungodly rich. It’s revealing. “It got boring to do anything,” said space billionaire Andrew Jennings. “Once you get the best ship for whatever you’re doing, you didn’t need anything else.”

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux is now available on Steam. If you already own the rather excellent original, it’s a free update that ports the story driven adventure to Unreal Engine 4, adds a new save system, and removes backtracking from the endgame. Small changes, but welcome ones. Find out more here

Grand Theft Auto V Delorean Travels Back In Time

This isn’t just any Delorean. It’s the Delorean from Back to the Future—time travel functionality included. The Back to the Future time circuits mod adds a script to Grand Theft Auto V that lets you prime a Delorean (a separate mod, which you can grab here) for actual, factual, fictional time travel. Check it out…

Seven Reasons I Actually Love Mad Max

“You’re the video game writer person,” said one of my friends last night. “What do you think of Metal Gear Solid V?” I looked down at my Shadow Moses shirt, slightly embarrassed. “I haven’t played it much,” I confessed. “I’ve been spending most of my time with Mad Max.” Mad Max is not, strictly speaking,…

Steam Game Sells Papercraft DLC For You To Print Out

Well, this is a first. I’ve seen all sorts of stuff sold as DLC on Steam—in-game content, soundtracks, art books, etc—but never a pattern that you print out and fold up to make a physical model of a game character. And yet, for the shockingly existent price of $0.99, snazzy looking action adventure Cross of…

Metal Gear Solid V‘s Joke Weapon Can Actually Be Pretty Useful

As with previous games in the series, Metal Gear Solid V is full of goofy easter eggs. One of them, however, is actually pretty handy. (Minor Metal Gear Solid V spoilers ahead.) Steam user Akutare put together a Very Serious Guide for one of MGSV’s least serious weapons: the water pistol. It is not—despite what…

A sequel to Garry’s Mod is in the works. The original, a game/tool/sandbox that began as a Half-Life 2 mod, has spawned more player creations than perhaps anything else in Steam (and maybe even PC gaming) history. The new one is still early. Read more here Image credit: COSMOMAN

Circa Infinity Is A Puzzle Game That Makes My Head Hurt

Circa Infinity isn’t quite like any other puzzle game I’ve played. Now I understand why PewDiePie dug it so much Circa Infinity just launched on Steam, and it’s hard. Hard on the reflexes, tougher on the brain. The idea is that you’re moving through a series of concentric circles, and there are two ways to…