Patrick Klepek

Harmonix has announced the final slate of songs for next month’s Rock Band 4, including Mumford & Son’s “The Wolf,” R.E.M.’s “The One I Love,” Gin Blossoms’ “Follow You Down,” Imagine Dragon’s “I Bet My Life,” and more. The whole tracklist list is available right here.

Why The Internet Freaked Out Over “Hot Ryu”

Most have Labor Day to thank for a shorter week, but that doesn’t mean Worth Reading, our weekly collection of the best games writing, is taking a break. Hey, You Should Read These “The “Hot Ryu” Meme: Sexiness vs. Sexual Objectification” by Maddy Myers I’ve never seen my Twitter feed so collectively freak out over…

Twitch Beats Dark Souls‘ Hardest Boss

It took the Internet 28 days, eight hours, seven minutes, and 14 seconds to beat the game’s nastiest pairing. Twitch Plays Dark Souls received lots of attention when it first started, as morbidly curious onlookers watched thousands try to collectively play one of gaming’s most notorious challenges. The key word is “try” because Twitch Plays…

Metal Gear Solid V Is Way More Fun When You Stop Caring About Your Score

When you finish a mission in The Phantom Pain, the game dishes out a letter grade, based on your performance—S, A, B, C, etc. For the first few hours, I found this paralyzing, as I got anxious over any mistakes. Now, having ceased caring what the game thinks of me, I’m enjoying it a lot…

How Until Dawn Messes With Two Of Horror’s Most Overused Tropes

“Blondes make the best victims,” said filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock to CBS in 1977. “They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.” Blondes are hardly the only character-specific trope in horror, of course. There’s the the black guy who always dies, the mean jock who is murdered horribly, the character who wanders off on…

Battle Chasers: Nightwar, a new collaboration by a bunch of ex-Darksiders creatives, is on Kickstarter right now The JRPG-inspired game looks terrific, and is already well on its way to meeting its $500,000 goal after a single day. Contact the author at [email protected]

The PlayStation Turns 20 Today — What’s Your Favorite Memory?

As incredible as this sounds, PlayStation is 20 years old today in America. (It hit Japan back in December 1994). My first encounter with the original PlayStation wasn’t on launch day, but rather, the machine’s first Christmas. It was nearly a total disaster, too, with two kids on the verge of tears for hours. I…

Three Cool Surprises From PAX 2015

One of my favorite things to do at PAX is wander around in search of games I’ve never heard of. Even though I’m paid to know as much about games as possible, some slip through the cracks. Here are the ones that stood out to me in Seattle. Ultimate Chicken Horse This is a bad…

Surprise, Dragon’s Dogma Is Coming To PC

Dragon’s Dogma is one of the most criminally underrated action games of the last few years, but it’s getting a second chance at life on PC, with Capcom stealthily announcing that Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is coming this January Dark Arisen was originally an expansion, but it also included everything that came with Dragon’s Dogma.…

The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth, a massive expansion for Edmund McMillen’s twisted roguelike, finally arrives on October 30. Afterbirth adds new game modes—one focused on “greed,” another with daily seeded runs—and tons of new items, endings, and other secrets for players to discover.

Years Later, Players Haven’t Really Solved Fez‘s Biggest Mystery

Some light reading never hurt everyone, especially on a holiday weekend. As labor day grows near, it’s time for Worth Reading, our (mostly) weekly roundup of the best in games writing. Hey, You Should Read These “The Immortal Mystery of Fez’s Black Monolith” by Devin Raposo I went deep down the Fez hole when it…

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently praised Minecraft. “If you play Minecraft, you’re basically writing code when you’re converting a hammer into a pickax,” said Rubio, according to the AP. “Kids might not realize they’re coding, but that’s going to be almost a basic proficiency just because of the way they grew up.”

Holy Crap, Monkey Island Is 25 Years Old

Monkey Island turned 25 years old earlier this week, and designer Ron Gilbert used his blog to share some truly interesting (and bizarre!) stories about the game’s development. In 2015, releasing a game to the world is pretty simple, especially digitally. It’s not quite click-one-button-and-it-appears-on-the-Internet, but it’s close. It was much different in 1990, though.…

Emily, Who Is The Worst, Deserves To Die In Until Dawn

Until Dawn is a game about survival, unless we’re talking about Emily, in which case I’m waiting for the first opportunity of death’s sweet embrace. The characters in Until Dawn largely play into well-known horror archetypes, whether it’s the sexpot blonde who’s always getting herself into trouble, the character who can’t die and seems destined…

Borderlands has joined the growing list of Xbox 360 games compatible with Xbox One, Microsoft announced today. It’s already available for Xbox One preview members, while everyone else joins the party in November. Contact the author at [email protected]

Binding of Isaac Designer’s New Game Is Both Uncomfortable And Funny

Edmund McMillen is known for games with a twisted sense of humor, but none of them have made me feel as bad for laughing as his latest, Fingered. The premise is simple. There’s a police lineup of bizarre characters being investigated for a crime that’s never disclosed. Murder? Theft? Jaywalking? That’s irrelevant to the matter…

Backlash Over Supposedly Educational ‘Slave Tetris’ Video Game

This is a screen shot from Slave Tetris, which I can assure you was a very real mini-game once featured in Playing History 2: Slave Trade. Originally released in 2013, the mini-game has now been removed, following a backlash after the developer promoted a Steam sale. The Playing History series comes from Serious Games, a…

Rocket League’s next big patch is coming in a few weeks, and it’ll let you immediately play another ranked game when a match is over (finally!), filter out PS4 players while on PC, fix the endemic of ******** usernames, kick off the game’s first competitive season, and more. You can reach the author of this…

Arkham Knight PC Patch Briefly Appears, And Early Reports Are Promising

Warner Bros. has been cagey about Batman: Arkham Knight’s long-promised PC patch, but a beta version accidentally went live for some folks today—and they’re reporting good news. This is a pretty confusing saga, so bear with me. When players cried foul at the game’s technical incompetence on PC, Warner Bros. stopped selling the game. They…

Stasis Shows How Spooky A Point-And-Click Adventure Can Be

Who knew 2015 would be delivering some of the best horror games in years? You can now add Stasis to the growing stack of games proving crowdfunding can, for all its problems, produce some seriously excellent video games. It was only a year late, too! (It was promised for August 2014, but went live on…