There’s really no getting around it: many, many games are about violence, and sometimes it can be a bit much. Kill this, kill that, kill this until it all feels the same, like mowing a lawn or stomping an anthill. We’ve written a ton about it. But violence can also be incredibly powerful and interesting.…
How long will you survive in The Chamber? Can you evade the Sightless Finder? Can you really? And what will you do when confronted by The Swarm That Is One Mind? Take this quiz to find out! I only survived for two hours. I think it was the siren song of insanity that pulled my…
You’ve been there before. A spam email pops up in your inbox and it’s utter nonsense. A rancid word jambalaya of “Hello dears,” a bunch of names you never even knew could be names, and sentences not of this world. Why? Why does anyone do that? Let me explain. With the help of Harry Potter…
Downloadable content (DLC) is often a sore subject, with some gamers feeling shortchanged by map and weapon packs that cost too much, DLC that was originally meant to be main game content, and things of the like. The Witcher 3 developer CD Projekt doesn’t think it needs to be that way. They want to show…
The best conspiracy theory in gaming this week just might be that Valve fixed the game they built around their infamous Steam Summer Sale. Or the community figured out how to rig it themselves. Or something. Something crazy. If you go to the Steam Summer Adventure 2014 portion of Steam’s forum, you’ll see thread after…
It was shortly after the fifth time I got clocked in the face by an errant elbow that I realized: this mosh pit was really, really similar to a big, sweaty video game. And I loved it. It dawned on me while I was bouncing around within the pit—that is, the portion of a crowd…
Remember Frontiers? It’s basically The Elder Scrolls as created by two indies, and now it’s getting hang gliders on top of everything else. You can fly around its massive world and just drink in the sights. That got me thinking: hang gliders are really great. Why don’t more games have them? Hang gliders are a…
Adding police to a series about large-scale warfare can create some… odd scenes. At the E3 demo for EA’s mega-budget cops and robbers game Battlefield Hardline, we saw action more commonly relegated to a warzone. Countless explosions and military-grade weaponry in the streets to stop a… truck robbery. Buildings crumbling. Havoc. No civilians. No one…
An RPG party member who can’t attack or even move, who spends every turn being the butt of more than a hundred jokes? Yes, he’s real, and I learned all about him at E3. Candy Corn is his name, and he’s a small yet rather funny part of Double Fine’s Halloween-themed RPG sequel, Costume Quest…
I strap on an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to try out Lucky’s Tale, the candy colored platformer that had Kirk in love at first hop. It’s nice, pleasant, and I do enjoying leaning and looking around the environment. But before long I realize something: I’m kinda bored. This was my general feeling during my…
It was a simple enough question, I thought. “If you had been able to work with a playable woman character in Far Cry 4, what would you have done? It sounds like you were in the planning phases of it, at least.” The response from the game’s narrative director? Total silence. I didn’t do my…
There’s a PlayStation mural outside of E3. It features PS mainstays in boats, a parody of this George Washington painting. I was picking out who was who with a friend. “It’s Infamous guy! It’s Claire from Resident Evil! It’s… a basketball player!” Then a security guard walked up. “I only recognize one of those characters,”…
E3 predictions are old hat. Everybody has done them every year since the beginning of time, since before hats were invented. Instead, I made a short, very personal game about being at E3, fears, and the dangers of cynicism in a text engine called Twine. Play it over at RPS (it’s the second entry).
I use Steam all the time. You use Steam all the time. It’s our warm, safe PC gaming tree fort, the place where we gather to play with new toys and roughhouse online with all our friends. It’s also changing big-time, and we desperately need an alternative. Here’s hoping the recently announcedGOG Galaxy can finally…
I know, I know, this barely counts as information (let alone too much of it), but just… wow. Actor Hafþór “Thor” Björnsson also recently dressed up as The Incredible Hulk, so that’s nice and terrifying.
It had been the worst day in a string of very, very bad days. I was desperate and angry and sad and getting drunker by the second. I hugged a bottle of vodka like a safety blanket, but it gave me nothing in return. No sympathy, no warmth. “Maybe I’ll just go for a drive,”…
It’s been a weird pre-E3 month. Companies like Microsoft, EA, and Bethesda have made big announcements before the big show. Nintendo’s not even doing an official press conference at all. Is there still a point to E3? Or has it become a walking, talking, slowly dying dinosaur? It’s been a sort of inevitable question among…
Meat is great and all, but bacon holds a special place in the pantheon of broiled flesh and seared sinews. Why do we find it so very delicious compared to other meats? Why is its scent so intoxicating? Here’s a video that explains it all—with science!
Microsoft’s dream of a Kinect-controlled future has hit the skids. The Wii was basically a really, really long fad, and the Wii U just isn’t taking off. Are cool, innovative game controllers on the way out? Not quite. They’ve just moved to new places, is all. Rock Paper Shotgun talked to all sorts of developers…
Far Cry 4‘s box art depicts a man wearing a lavish pink suit using what might be a religious statue as a throne. He has blonde hair and fair skin and his hand rests on the head of a man of color who kneels, passively, clutching a grenade in his hands. It’s caused quite a…
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