Phil Owen

Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Attempt At Episodic Storytelling Is Off To A Rough Start

I got restless after waiting three months with little to do in Star Wars: The Old Republic since the launch of the expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire. Initially, the idea of continuing its story through monthly episodes seemed compelling. The first of those episodes, Chapter X: Anarchy In Paradise, came out this week, and…

Top 5 Lines From The X-Files Video Game Episode

Like many of you, I’ve been making my way through The X-Files over the last several months in anticipation of the new six-episode revival later this month. And this week I came upon an episode in season 7 written by acclaimed author William Gibson, “First Person Shooter,” about a VR video game. It might be…

2016 Is A Crucial Year For Star Wars: The Old Republic

With Knights of the Fallen Empire, the latest expansion for SWTOR, Bioware tried something different, and right now I’m not talking about all the gameplay changesI applauded back when it first hit in October. The game is in a better place than it was. Now it has to keep improving. Though KOTFE did technically release…

Witcher 3 Dev Says There’s No Enhanced Edition Coming [UPDATE]

Update: PR for CD Projekt RED says “There’s no Enhanced Edition of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that we are aware of, this is some kind of error that we will look into.” So. Original post: It’s probably too soon to know what this means, but a pair of European store websites have posted listings…

Somebody Hacked Watch Dogs Into GTA V

As intrepid modders the world over continue in their quest to make dicking around in Grand Theft Auto V more fun and chaotic, we may have reached a new milestone. JulioNIB has engineered a script that inserts a whole bunch of Watch Dogs-inspired hacking fun into GTA V, and it’s really wild. You can explode…

What Game Would You Fund With Your Powerball Winnings?

As a relatively poor human being, I enjoy fantasizing about what I would do were I to suddenly become obscenely wealthy. As the Powerball jackpot has shot through the roof, to $1.3 billion for this coming Wednesday’s drawing, I’ve naturally been thinking about that a lot this week. Hello! I’m Phil, and I’ve returned to…

Star Wars: The Old Republic Now Feels More Like A Classic BioWare RPG

Star Wars: The Old Republic’s new 4.0 update changes everything, as does a fresh expansion to one of the most controversial massively multiplayer games in recent memory. Last year I asked developers working on the game about their plans for the future. What they told me then is a phrase that reps for the game’s…

It’s An Awkward Time To Be A Star Wars Fan

Star Wars is not a series of movies. It’s not a collection of interconnected stories. And it’s not a genre. Star Wars is instead a place, a universe, a setting for a series of movies and other interconnected stories. Now, Star Wars is being refreshed, but it’s still Star Wars. While the events are different,…

Boston Police Arrest Two Pokémon Players After Apparent Gun Threat Against World Championships

Two men who drove from Iowa to Boston for the Pokémon World Championships were arrested Friday after seemingly threatening violence over social media against attendees of the event, according to the Boston Police Department. Kevin Norton, 18, and James Stumbo, 27, were arrested on several firearm-related charges. The official Pokémon site lists Kevin Norton and…

The Forgotten Narrative Innovation of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Black Ops 2 did a rather strange thing with its campaign that no other Call of Duty has, and it’s a twist that made it one of my favorite games from the last generation just for the story (that Treyarch multiplayer isn’t the only reason I have affection for Blops). Black Ops 2 has a…

The broadcast of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ESL One Finals match between Fnatic and Team EnVyUs is underway. You can watch it live on Twitch or in the embed below.

Here’s a Handful of Awesomely Hypnotic Poly Bridge GIFs

As has been demonstrated on this venerable website previously, Poly Bridge players have made some weird and cool stuff. They haven’t stopped yet, and I haven’t stopped watching their GIFs. And you shouldn’t either. By Violets-Are-Blue by Bolt986 by Iwajira by Xotice by Charlbarl

I Saw Hitman: Agent 47, and It Was Fine

Nobody likes Hitman: Agent 47. It’s one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year, and it’s not making much at the box office. But I saw the thing Friday night anyway, and I liked it. Video game movies exist in a weird place. They’re 90-to-120-minute adaptations of games that are probably like 15 or more…

The final match of the League of Legends LCS Summer Playoffs is today at 4pm ET at Madison Square Garden in New York. The scene yesterday for the third place match was wild (photo by Ben Gilbert for Tech Insider), with about 20,000 11,000 fans (a sellout) packing the place out as well as the…

Deus Ex Propaganda Posters Spotted In The Wild

If you live in a big city you’ve probably seen many poster walls around that are plastered with an ever-changing sequence of ads, sometimes a whole row of the same thing and other times just a assortment of stuff or, when worse comes to worst, every Mortdecai character poster in sequence. It appears Square Enix…

The League of Legends LCS Summer Playoffs 3rd place match is tonight at 6pm ET. Get excited! It’ll be streamed live on Riot Games’ Twitch, which I’ve embedded below.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Beta Is Good–Mostly

As I noted this morning, Call of Duty is one of those rare things I like. I like the campaigns because the stories are usually decently told and efficiently delivered—I can play through each new one in a couple sessions, and playing them again never feels like a daunting proposition. And I like the multiplayer…

The Metal Gear Franchise, Sorta Explained In Under 12 Minutes

Metal Gear lore is remarkably complicated and goofy. Michael Huber at GameTrailers tries to quickly sift through it all and distill it down to the main points. I think it pretty much works! There’s a ton of noise in these games (I mean Para-Medic talked about movies so much, and that one guy kept shitting…

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 beta is now open to all PS4 players. Previously you needed a PSN download code to play. The PS4 beta ends Sunday night, and the Xbox One and PC betas will start Wednesday, August 26

Today is day two (of three) of the Pokemon World Championships, which include both video game and TCG Pokemon, and you can watch all of what is sure to be madness right there on your electronic internet device via Twitch. I’ve got the stream embedded in this post as well.