Nathan Grayson

Game Developers Mourn Sudden Passing Of Ex-Harmonix Dev Roger Hanna Morash

Roger Hanna Morash was an indie game developer who used to work at Harmonix. Among other things, he was code lead on Amplitude and one of the minds behind brain-bending platformer Shard. Yesterday, Morash and his wife, Valerie, unexpectedly passed away. According to local publication SF Gate, the couple’s bodies, along with those of their…

Overwatch‘s New CTF Mode Has Too Many Draws

Overwatch’s new seasonal event is the automated cosplay and porn generator’s first stab at a time-honored first-person shooter tradition: capture the flag. So, how does it fare? The short answer is, not great. Let me preface this by saying Overwatch’s Chinese New Year-themed “capture the rooster” brawl isn’t terrible. I’ve played for about two hours…

The Invisible Bunnies That Power World of Warcraft

Yesterday, I posted about a Fallout 4 mod that uses a complex, intertwining network of, er, kitties to make radios work. Turns out, game development is full of stories like that. World of Warcraft, for instance, is overrun with ghost bunnies. WoW encounter designer Nathaniel Chapman explained it to me via Twitter “A lot of…

We’ve got a long week ahead of us. So here’s Reinhardt from Overwatch joyriding down Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road. Thanks for lifting our spirits, Noilleber. (P.S. stick around for the video’s ending.)

So That’s Why Doom‘s Hell Has So Many Candles

Everybody has questions. What’s our purpose? Will we ever achieve true peace? Why is it fucking impossible to plug in a USB cable correctly on the first try? Me, though, I have just one: why, in Doom (2016), were there so dang many artfully arranged candles in hell? A new video by Harry101UK posits a theory:…

Popular Fallout 4 Radio Mod Runs Because Of Invisible Cats

It’s been said that video games are all smoke-and-mirrors—elaborate feats of code and trickery that imply possibilities far greater than what you’re actually able to do. Sometimes, though, the truth is much stranger. Sometimes the truth is radios powered by invisible cats. Old World Radio: Boston is a mod for Fallout 4 that adds more…

I Love Astroneer For Its Optimism

Yesterday I was feeling pretty down because, well, I knew tomorrow would be today. On a lark, I decided to try out Astroneer, because it’s managed to remain among Steam’s top sellers for a month, which is no small feat. Turns out, it’s just the game I needed. Astroneer is the most fundamentally optimistic survival…

Dead Cells is Castlevania meets permadeath. You explore an interconnected castle that sprawls and shifts like those stairs in Harry Potter, except evil. Death, however, replaces backtracking, and each death will unlock more of the world. Combat is Souls-inspired. It’s on Steam Greenlight right now.

Long War 2 Completely Changes XCOM 2

Long War was one of the first XCOM reboot’s most popular and beloved mods, so much so that XCOM 2 ended up liberally cribbing notes from its playbook. Now there’s a Long War for XCOM 2, and it’s a doozy. The goal of the mod is to make players feel like they’re waging a real…

Overwatch Players Honor Fallen Friend With 12-Gun Salute

Willem Den Toom was an avid Overwatch player and contributor at the site Too Much Gaming. On January 15, he passed away. He was only 36. Still grieving, his friends decided to give him a proper send-off. Willem’s friends at Too Much Gaming explained the rationale behind the video: “As a tribute to a fallen…

Necrobarista is a game about “a supernatural cafe where the living come to mingle with the dead.” It looks like what would happen if Persona took over a coffee shop, which is to say, stylish as heck. It’ll be out on PC in October.

The Difficulties Of Turning Doom Into A Sex Game

“If only you could talk to the monsters,” a now-infamous review once said of the original Doom. Here’s a thought, though: what if you could fuck them? (Warning: this post is very NSFW.) The original Doom has been modded to hell and back. It’s been turned into everything from a ninja girl anime to a…

The Most Interesting Answers From Gabe Newell’s AMA

Today was one of those occasions that comes once, maybe twice (but definitely not thrice) in a lifetime. Gabe Newell arose from his Scrooge McDuck-esque lake of knives and cash to conduct an AMA. Spoiler: he likes Portal 2 more than Half-Life, and despite appearances to the contrary, Valve still makes games. Newell didn’t stick…

Blizzard Responds To Ongoing Fan Anger Surrounding The Overwatch Test Server

Overwatch’s PTR, or public test realm, is a blessing and a curse for players. On one hand, they get to try out new changes before they go live. On the other, if players don’t love a change, there’s no guarantee Blizzard will do a 180. Right now, D.Va’s staring down the barrel of a big…

Popular World of Warcraft Legacy Community Shutting Down Again To Avoid Being A ‘Pirate Server’

What goes up must come down. This indelible law of nature applies to precisely two things: gravity, which you may have heard of, and World of Warcraft legacy community Nostalrius. While the servers that hosted the new Nostalrius remain, all Nostalrius data is being removed from them. After Blizzard dropped the hammer on Nostalrius earlier…

Heads Up: Resident Evil 7 Ending Spoilers Have Leaked

Resident Evil 7 won’t be out for another week, but it appears to have leaked in some parts of the world. People have already finished the game. You know what that means: the internet has transformed into a pukey, undead pile of spoilers. According to Eurogamer, the first spoiler virus outbreak came from 4chan, because…

Blizzard Banning Players Who ‘Nuke’ Overwatch Matches

Overwatch cheaters on PC have a new trick up their sleeves. It’s called “nuking,” and it’s essentially a targeted form of a DDOS attack that slows matches to a crawl, sometimes to the point that players can’t even report the infraction. This form of cheating doesn’t appear to be as widespread as, say, aimbotting yet,…

YouTubers Face Fines, Possible Eviction For Making Videos From Their Home

YouTuber and Call of Dutyteam owner Justin ‘KOSDFF’ Chandler recently moved into a home in Cobb County, Georgia with a bunch of fellow YouTubers. Their plan? To play games, vlog, and, you know, exist. But then they got in trouble with the law. It was a strange situation from the get-go. Seemingly out of the…

Overwatch Player Gets Teams Dancing To Funk Music

It’s been a hell of a day. Sometimes, you just need something to make you smile. Here’s a person blasting funk music at teammates in Overwatch. Cute dancing ensues. Dunno Anything brought the funk to Overwatch, and Overwatch boogied until it couldn’t boogie anymore: Thank you for healing our shattered souls with the power of…

A Game Where You Play As The Boss In Classic Boss Fights

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, boss fights are a time-honored video game tradition. Nefarious is a game that turns The Old Ways on their head. You’re the boss taking on a band of annoyingly plucky heroes. You might even recognize some of the boss fights. Here’s what the game looks like: If you’ve played Sonic…