Nathan Grayson

Broken Half-Life Is Scary Half-Life

The original Half-Life, in my opinion, is one of the most memorable games of all time. This, however, is not Half-Life as you remember it. Not at all. The purveyors of endless video game nightmare fuel over at Vinesauce got their hands on a Half-Life mod called Glitch-Life. In short, it randomizes Gordon Freeman’s legendary…

Years Later, Blizzard Finally Fixes Obnoxious World of Warcraft Bug

World of Warcraft update 6.1 just launched, and it adds all sorts of new stuff: a selfie cam, racing, new blood elf character models, and more. On top of that, players have discovered many hidden fixes, among them the satisfying squashing of a bug that’s been plaguing the game for years. As documented by ZwuckeL,…

Mod Turns Skyrim Into A Full-Blown Pirate Game

I just got done reading Red Seas Under Red Skies, so I’m super stoked on pirates right now. Luckily, I stumbled across a new Skyrim mod that turns Bethesda’s nigh-immortal fantasy role-player into a surprisingly robust pirate game. You get a ship, a crew, open seas to sail, and all sorts of loot to pillage.…

An MMO That’s Like Game Of Thrones Meets EVE Online

Crowfall has made over $400,000 on Kickstarter in a day, and with good reason: it aims to break the wild, player-driven antics of MMOs like EVE Online into time-based “campaigns” while combining them with complete world destructibility. It’s an attempt at reinventing the genre, and a much-needed one. Crowfall combines combat and EVE/Game of Thrones-style…

Excited Counter-Strike Player Will Not Calm Down

We’ve all been there once or twice. Sometimes games are exciting. Sometimes we scream. This Counter-Strike player, though, is really into it. Nearly every shot, every bomb plant, and sometimes for no real reason at all. “OH SHIT. HOLY— OH MY GODDDD THAT WAS AMAZING.” Screaming, yelling, hollering. He never stops. Reckless Pug came across…

Wanna know when a Steam game you can’t afford is on sale? Steam Alerts lets you pick a game, set a price, and wait until the stars align—at which point you’ll receive an email. It’s a handy tool for people who don’t have time to incessantly scour Steam with their own eyeballs, which is everybody.

How To Make Edible Team Fortress 2 Food And… Drinkable Pee

Team Fortress 2 isn’t all guns and people screaming about the extent to which they are or are not on fire. Sometimes there’s food, too. But—no, no, stop trying to put your hand through the monitor—you can’t eat it. Or, you couldn’t. But now you can with these recipes, only one of which is for…

A Quake Tournament Where Nobody Knew How To Play Quake

The longer a competitive game’s around, the less its high-level matches resemble matches between typical players. Pros begin whipping out plays that blur the line between technique and exploit. So what happens if you press the reset button on all of that? Some people consider Quake III and its spin-offs to be the forgotten rulers…

Why Riot Is Pissed Off At A League of Legends Streamer

If you’re a popular League of Legends eSports player, who actually owns the streams of your matches? That’s a complicated question, but in the case of ultra-popular pro Sanghyuk “Faker” Lee, the answer seems clear cut. Another streamer, however, found a loophole that’s thrown it all into question. And controversy. Twitch streamer StarLordLucian runs a…

‘Realistic’ Smash Bros. Clapping Video Is The Dumbest Way To End Friday

You made it to the end of another week. Congratulations! Your mother and I are proud of you. And so are all of these Super Smash Bros. characters, who will now clap “realistically” at you for five minutes. Just watch (with sound on). It’s as great as it is dumb. GrumpOut created this video that…

Blizzard Testing Diablo III Microtransactions, But (Phew) Only In Asia

Diablo III has changed a lot over the years, dropping a much-loathed auction house and gaining all sorts of balance overhauls, enemies, and entire new areas. Now, however, it could be looking at a change of a very different sort: real money microtransactions and a new in-game currency to support them. Patch 2.2.0, which will…

People Are Already Making Bizarre Mods For Dragon Ball Xenoverse

Dragon Ball Xenoverse isn’t even out yet in America. That, however, hasn’t stopped people from tearing the Japanese version to pieces and reassembling it into, well… whatever this is. The main culprit behind these faster-than-a-speeding-Goku mods is Melpontro. Speaking of Goku, I imagine these ridiculous giganto-pants—what I imagine would happen if MC Hammer learned the…

The Latest Counter-Strike Anti-Cheat Measure? Inspecting Players’ Homes

“Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Counter-Strike police. Open your door. We’re here to inspect your computer for cheats.” Pro Counter-Strike has a cheating problem. Dishonesty and illegal tools have cast a dark cloud over a bright, growing spectator sport. This, though, might be the most intense solution proposed yet: random testing ala physical sports, but for video…

Guy Uses Dog Shock Collar To Keep His Video Game Rage In Check

Well, this is certainly one way to deal with gamer rage. Martin “AmbossTV” Rabl has a habit of getting mad at Fifa 15. A little too mad. As someone who suffers from the occasional bout of flailing, wailing gamer rage, I can identify. Rabl’s solution? A shock collar—yes, the kind intended to keep dogs from…

In the mood for adventure? And uncomfortable feelings about puberty? Then you should check out Clickhole’s hilariously bizarre pulp adventure parody game, The Mysterious Shadows Of Skullshadow Island. It’s about growing up, murder, bad rock ballads, and murder. Think Venture Bros, only somehow darker. Make sure to play to the end. No, the real end.

Doors, The Ultimate Counter-Strike Enemy

And now, repeat after me the hallowed words of our people: “Aaaaagghhh nonononoooo! …God damn it.” Here’s the full video of a situation I’m sure at least a few of us have encountered, courtesy of Sergey Menshykov: You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around Valve’s stupidly popular PC gaming service.…

Overpowered Bot Puts Top Smash Bros. Player In His Place

If you’ve paid any sort of attention to the competitive Super Smash Bros scene over the years, you’ve probably heard of Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman. He’s won countless championships in every iteration of Smash and advanced the scene with discoveries about game physics and technique. Recently, he lost to a CPU. It all came of an…

Team Fortress 2 Player Sounds Like T-Pain

Not new-school, amazingly talented R&B-singing T-Pain either. No, I’m talking the T-Pain of yore—egregious amounts of auto-tune and all. This Team Fortress 2 player keeps the gag going, completely straight-faced, through an entire match, and it’s glorious. TwilightWolfVidjaGames stumbled across the mysteriously musical player in a random TF2 match, and he knew he had to…

War Never Changes, Except Sometimes When It Does

It looks like Fallout and seems to taste like Fallout (although that might just mean my monitor tastes like Fallout—which is… ominous), but it’s not Fallout. CreepBOOM made this gorgeously mournful piece in Garry’s Mod, along with copious others. Here are a few Garry’s Mod shots based on the excellent STALKER Chernobyl survival FPS series,…

Not Even Gabe Newell Death Threats Can Keep This Game Off Steam

You might remember that roguelike FPS Paranautical Activity was yanked—with a large cane of plus 12 unceremoniousness—from Steam after its developer threatened to kill Valve head Gabe Newell. Now, amazingly, it’s back. I imagine it helps that the dev in question is no longer involved. It all went down after Valve accidentally mis-classified the finished…