Patrick Klepek

No Wonder Call of Duty Isn’t Ditching Last-Gen Consoles

Black Ops 3 won’t have a campaign mode on Xbox 360 and PS3, and the game’s frame rate will fluctuate between 30 and 60 frames-per-second. But here’s why they’re making a version for aging hardware: Activision’s revealed there are still 12 million monthly active users for the three-year-old Black Ops II. Damn Call of Duty…

More Games Need Daily Challenge Modes

I’ve only scratched the surface of The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth, the latest expansion to Edmund McMillen’s popular roguelike, but I already know what might keep me coming back: the fantastic addition of a daily challenge mode. Lots of games build in reasons to play every day—The Phantom Pain gives out resources for base building,…

Treyarch’s announced that modding and map creation tools are officially coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, with a closed alpha test scheduled for next March. There will be an open beta at a later date, however, and they’re going to include things like unranked server browsers to make mod searching easier.

A Cool-Looking Xbox Caveman Game That Never Happened

One of the earliest games shown for the original Xbox was BC. Dinosaurs! Cave men! I was so hyped for this game, and then it was cancelled. Games are canned all the time, but it happens quietly and without much fanfare. It’s not like the developers suddenly release the incomplete game into the wild, so…

Shocktober, Week Four: Paranormal Activity Is Dead

October, we hardly knew ye. I’ve been watching a glut of horror movies every week as part of Shocktober, and it’s been an especially fruitful year. It’s a genre best known for jump scares, but that’s selling good horror short—done right, it’s deeply thought provoking. Every week, I’ve been filing reports from the field. So…

Planetary Physicist Tries To Work Out The Science Behind Halo

The temperature is dropping and it’s threatening to snow, so why not cozy up with Worth Reading, your weekly guide to the best in games writing? C’mon. Hey, You Should Read These “Halo Science 101” by Kevin Grazier This is an old piece, but I love stuff like this. Kevin Grazier takes the ridiculous fiction…

Sony’s announced its PlayStation Plus lineup for November, which includes The Walking Dead: Season Two and Magika 2 on PS4. PS3 owners are getting Mass Effect 2 and Beyond Good & Evil; it’s Dragon Fin Soup and Invizimals on Vita. Contact the author at [email protected]

Festival South By Southwest has reinstated the two cancelled gaming panels, and announced an all-day seminar. One panel was about harassment; the other, GamerGate-leaning panel focused on ethics and politics. Both return, though SXSW will work with them to “to develop the most productive focus for their appearances.”

Electronic Arts has announced that Mirror’s Edge Catalyst has been delayed from February 23 until May 24. No specific reason was given for the delay, other than needing more time for polish. We’ve waited years already, so why not a few more months? That’s what I’m trying to tell myself, anyway. You can reach the…

Batman: Arkham Knight’s PC Version Is Far From ‘Fixed’

When Warner Bros. decided to start telling Batman: Arkham Knight on PC again, you might have thought this disastrous story was finally over. Not quite, as it turns out. Despite months of patches, the game still has significant problems. First up, remember how older user reviews were being branded as “pre-release?” That changed overnight, and…

One Of The Best Horror Games Is Getting A Sequel

Few games shook me the way Outlast did in 2013, so it pleases me greatly that we’re finally getting a sequel next year. So far, all we know about Outlast 2 is that developer Red Barrels is targeting fall 2016 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. They’ve released a very brief teaser: It seems…

Halo 5 Makes Me Miss Split-Screen Gaming

Some of my fondest video game memories involve people huddled around one TV at the same time. With Halo 5, the sci-fi shooter series dropped support for split-screen. If there ever was a time to mark the end of an era, this is it. When I was a kid, most of the video games I…

Old Arkham Knight Steam Reviews Are Now Flagged As ‘Pre-Release’ [UPDATED]

Four months and several patches later, Batman: Arkham Knight on PC has resurfaced on Steam. Before Warner Bros. pulled it down, however, Steam users had pummeled the game with thousands of negative reviews. Now, those reviews have been flagged as “pre-release.” UPDATE (11:08 am EST, 10/29/15): The “pre-release” tag appears to have been lifted from…

The 10 Best Horror Video Games

If you’d like to be scared shitless tonight, you’ve come to the right place. Horror is a bit like comedy. What scares one person might not scare another person. Have you tried explaining why a joke is funny? It’s a bit like explaining why a monster is scary. But there’s something undeniably attractive about horror,…

Warner Bros. is selling Batman: Arkham Knight on PC again, and anyone who’s bought (or buys) it before November 16 will get every Arkham game for free. A “community challenge pack” will arrive first for PC owners in January, and the DLC that’s already come out on consoles should be coming for PC players soon.…

November Xbox Games With Gold Lineup Is Boring, But At Least They’ve Got Backwards Compatibility

Microsoft’s Games With Gold lineup for November isn’t super exciting, with Pneuma: Breath of Life and Knight Squad leading on Xbox One. However, it’s also the first month in which the company is guaranteeing every Xbox 360 game featured in Games With Gold will be backwards compatible with Xbox One. In that sense, Games With…

Rocket League is getting an awesome-looking (free!) update in November called mutators, which introduces a bunch of new game types, including low-gravity mode, bigger versions of the ball, slow-motion, and more.

A Horror Game Where Enemies Die After You Flip Them Off

Some horror games hand the player a gun, while others force them to run and hide. The Night That Speaks goes another route: flipping your middle finger. Inspired by August’s GBJam, whose theme was Nintendo’s archaic handheld, Adam R. and Guy T.—their last names aren’t listed on the game’s site—created The Night That Speaks. It’s…

Beyond: Two Souls Designer Announces Next Game, Detroit

David Cage revealed his latest game today in Paris, and it’s called Detroit Detroit is based on Project Kara, a demo developer Quantic Dream showed off years ago, in which an android becomes aware of itself and leaves the factory it was built. Designer David Cage wondered what happened next, setting up the events of…

Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games is bringing an on-rails rollercoaster horror game to PlayStation VR called Until Dawn: Rush of Blood Sony’s said its VR headset should launch sometime next year. Contact the author at [email protected]