Nathan Grayson

Your Favorite Elder Scrolls Character Probably Died A Horrible Death [UPDATE]

An Imgur user has put together reposted an exhaustive list of recurring characters in Elder Scrolls games—from Arena all the way up through Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls Online. Is your favorite character on it? Probably. Did they suffer some kind of cruel, shocking fate between games? Yeaaaaah… probably again. UPDATE 11/24/14: The English-language Imgur…

Borderlands Rap Album Is… Not Half-Bad, Actually

Yes, somebody made a rap album entirely about loot-tacular shooter Borderlands. Surprisingly, it’s not the worst thing ever. It’s kinda good, actually. I know, right? The group’s name is RPG-Unit (hah), and they’ve put together a six-song Borderlands-themed EP called Rock, Paper, Genocide. You can listen to it for free on Soundcloud. I think… I…

Lose Your Mind. Eat Your Crew.

That’s Sunless Sea‘s tagline, the reason I was pretty much certain I had to play it. I’ve been quite pleased with my decision. The game puts you in the role of a ship captain in the dark, sewer-y “underzee” of Fallen London, a steampunk dystopia sunken below the earth (also a rather good browser game).…

Watch These People Speedrun Pretty Much Every Game You Can Think Of

Do you like speedruns? Of course you do. They’re incredible, mesmerizing feats of human determination. Do you like them enough to watch 135 of them for a week straight, though? Well, if you’d like to speedrun the very concept of speedrunning, now you can, with games ranging from Final Fantasy VII to, um, Rock Band.…

Fist Bumps Better Than Handshakes, Says Science

I knew it! I knew it. Looks like Army of Two was onto something after all How do you greet people when you first meet them? Do you reach out a hand and grab on for dear life, as though you’re about to slip off the deck of the Titanic into the icy depths below?…

Something To Watch While You Wait For Half-Life 3

Ever the beacon of hope, resilience, and the most useful coping mechanism of all—denial—I continue to believe we’ll see legendary shooter sequel Half-Life 3. Someday. Until then, we can always torture ourselves with great videos that make us desperately want to see more of this world. Good idea, no? So the ending is kind of…

Uh-oh, Game Of Thrones Might Be Omitting A Very Important Character

A new Game of Thrones season means heaps of new characters, so I can’t blame people for getting excited when new cast members are revealed—even with season five almost a year out. One very important book character was conspicuously absent from the announcement, however, and I’m worried. It’s not just me, either. Before we go…

New Adventure Time Game Looks Great, But I’m Still Worried

What time is it? If you said, “Comic-Con,” you’d be technically correct, but also missing my reference entirely. Good job, reference misser. The convention’s firing news on all cylinders, though, including a new Adventure Time game that wears its Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past influences on its sleeve. Adventure Time: The Secret…

Freedom Planet Is Basically A Classic Sonic Game, Except When It’s Not

If Freedom Planet were sitting at a bar with its back turned to you, you’d almost certainly mistake it for your old pal Sonic The Hedgehog. And I mean old. Classic, 2D, pudgier than today’s model, who inspires body image issues in hedgehogs the world over. This is a love letter to classic Sonic, except…

The Best Games Convention I’ve Been To May Soon Be No More

We’re in San Francisco club called Stud, and there are people in fur suits everywhere. Colored lights and crashing beats flash like fireworks in a thunderstorm. Everyone is sweaty and drunk, but most of all they’re happy. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you GaymerX, my favorite game convention—and also maybe the last of its kind.…

It’s 2014 And GTA IV Looks Better Than Ever

Version 3.0 of Grand Theft Auto IV‘s ever-popular iCEnhancer graphics mod is finally out and downloadable for all. It is, predictably, gorgeous. I can’t wait to see what these folks end up doing with the PC version of GTA V My favorite part? The plant. It really is the little things. The new version just…

You Can Now Play The Most Avatar Game This Side Of Korra

Bayonetta creator Platinum is making an Avatar: The Legend of Korra action game, which is crazy exciting if you’re an Avatar nut like me. But why wait to bend the elements when you can just start flinging around earth, wind, and fire (not the band) right now? Quoth Son of Nor, which is now on…

The history of sex in video games is… not so sexy. Cara Ellison’s “Gloriously Stupid History Of Sex In Games” feature on Vice looks back on the early days of sex in games, all the way up to the present. And you thought Custer’s Revenge was a travesty. It gets worse—but also thankfully better.

Timeless Life Advice, Brought To You By Mario Kart

Video games rot the brain? Pffft, hardly. I’d like to think some of my most valuable life lessons have come from games, lessons like “be cool to people” and “that jerk took the piece of loot I wanted, nevermind.” How about Mario Kart 8, though? What can we learn from that? Let’s find out with…

Reminder: Kickstarter Still Has Cool Stuff

If you’ve been shying away from backing Kickstarters for the past few weeks, I don’t blame you. Between the half-a-million-dollar Yogventures fiasco and Areal‘s increasingly confusing saga, I’ve been hesitant to commit coins to my daily coffee without concrete proof I’ll get a finished product. That said, Kickstarter still regularly hosts great stuff. Case in…

A Shooter Where You Have To Cheat To Win

“Hey, stop looking at my screen!” is a pretty common refrain when people are playing competitive multiplayer games in the same room. In Screencheat, it’s the only way to win. The competitive multiplayer shooter may, at first glance, look like any other (albeit 17 million times more colorful), but there’s a twist: everybody is invisible.…

‘Quake Is Good For You’

Nowadays many video game ads are loud, in-your-face, and teeth-grittingly serious. Back in the day, though, developer id Software made the original Quake—an unabashedly gore-spattered first-person shooter—look like the perfect Christmas present for grandma and the whole (weirdly creepy) family. Courtesy of imgur user Paperkut, these Quake magazine ads from the ’90s are shotgun blasts…

A Tiny Talking Mountain Is Actually Making My Life Better

The mountain with a horse for a head sighed, “I’ll never forget this snowy day.” And then it got hit by a flying truck, right in the umbrella. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mountain Any given sentence from a Mountain “play” session can look like a complete load of gibberish, but it’s actually a…

The Best Non-Violent Moments In Video Games

Violence in games can be great—not to mention really powerful, as we recently discussed. What about the other side of the coin, though? The moments (or even entire games) when bloodshed stops and everyone shows their true colors? Let’s sit back, get all deep, and talk about those. It’s tough to pinpoint my absolute favorite…

Even Portal Turrets Like Game of Thrones

How do the infamously talkative turrets from Valve’s puzzle phenom Portal express their love of Game of Thrones? Why, through song, of course. Glorious harmonies, soaring shotgun blasts of sound. And ineffectual wiggling. I want to see Companion Cubes next. Yep, so there’s my daily dose of cute. I think I need to go eat…