Culture

Xbox One Is Getting A Shuffle Button To Let You Go Through Your Backlog At Random

A new “Surprise Me” button will be added to the Xbox One’s game library, Microsoft announced yesterday on Twitter. Rolling out first for players in the Xbox One insider testing program, the “Surprise Me” button will allow the indecisive player to select a game randomly from their library to play. The button doesn’t automatically launch…

Minecraft Earth Is Now Live

There was a virtual sheep roaming around in our Times Square office today thanks to Minecraft Earth, the new augmented reality mobile game that lets players make, wreck and otherwise interact with life-size Minecraft builds. The game has been in beta in various regions, but went into wider early access release today. To get in,…

It’s Amazing That I Ever Finished My First Hardcore RPG

Inspired by the recent 10-year anniversary of Dragon Age: Origins, I decided to revisit the BioWare role-playing game for kicks. I loved the game when I played through it in late 2009 and early 2010. It was my first BioWare RPG—I didn’t have a gaming PC growing up, and I generally came to a lot…

Metal Slug: The Ultimate History Is A Very Impressive Book

When the folks at Bitmap Books offered to send me a copy of Metal Slug: The Ultimate History, I was picturing something much slimmer than the massive, 452-page tome I received. Who knew SNK’s cartoonish run-and-gun shooter series had such a rich and colorful history? Officially licensed by SNK, Metal Slug: The Ultimate History walks fans…

Track: Haul (feat. Mohna) | Artist: Christian Löffler | Album: Mare

New Sonic The Hedgehog Movie Trailer Shows His Redesigned Face

Well, it’s here. Let’s see what Sonic looks like now that the redesign is done To recap: When the first trailer for the upcoming movie was shown off earlier this year, reaction among fans (and everyone else) to Sonic’s weird face was…not kind. So Paramount went back to the drawing board, delayed the movie, and…

Sunset. Suncheon, South Korea. By Christian Mata | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line!

Nice Doggie. Good Doggie.

Brynn Metheney is an artist specialising in creature design who has worked on stuff like Men In Black, Valerian and Magic: The Gathering You can see more of Brynn’s stuff at her personal site

A Look At How The ESRB Rates Video Games

Danny O’Dwyer’s Noclip documentary series recently got the chance to visit the ESRB and see just how the organization works. The 44-minute video touches on a number of topics. First, it’s a pretty good history of the ESRB, detailing their originsin the wake of social and political hysteria surrounding video game violence in the 1990s…

Witcher Cosplayer Turns Geralt Into A Firefighter, Football Player And Rock Star

Having released one a few years back, Witcher cosplayer extraordinaire Maul has decided to do another one, only this time he’s imagining Geralt jumping through The Witcher 3’s portals and ending up in more Earthly forms of employment. And so we have Geralt, no longer a Witcher, but a firefighter: And a rock star: A…

Red Dead PC Players Find Hidden Princess

Ever since Red Dead Redemption 2 was released last year, some fans have been trying to find Princess Isabeau Katharina Zinsmeister, a missing person who is mentioned repeatedly in the game but (until now) never seen. Now that PC players can dig through the game’s code, though, she’s been found. Observant players might have seen…

YouTube Changes Renew Calls For YouTubers To Unionize [Update]

To say that YouTubers have an uneasy relationship with the company that hosts their videos would be a massive understatement. It’s not uncommon for YouTube to demonetize videos with little in the way of explanation and, as a recent terms of service update reminded users, it can also just straight up remove videos and channels…

Assemble With Care Is Helping Me Handle Myself With Care

In Assemble With Care, a mobile game from the makers of Monument Valley, you play as a woman who’s made a career of restoring old and broken things. It’s a pretty tactile game where you rotate objects to connect wires and replace broken parts before putting them back together again. You even repair an old…

Twitch Streamer ‘Trained For 3 Months’ To Try And Break 569-Hour Streaming Record

Humans do lots of inadvisable things in public for attention (see: hot dog eating contests, “the worm”). There is, though, a fine line between inoffensively asserting your existence and setting a bad example by putting yourself at risk. This is the debate at the heart of record-setting. Right now, Twitch streamer Andrew “GiantWaffle” Bodine is…

Track: Daijoubu | Artist: Radwimps | Album: Weathering With You Complete Version 

The Week In Games: The British (Pokémon) Are Coming!

A brand new Pokémon game is releasing this week. I’m not even a big Pokémon fan and I’m still excited about Sword and Shield, the first big main entry Pokémon RPG to land on home consoles. Sure, not all the Pokémon from the past are coming back, but I doubt the internet will get angry…

Sugar, Spice And Everything Nice

Alfred Achiampong is a character artist from Ghana. You can see more of Alfred’s stuff at his ArtStation page

Esports Team Gets Its Own Adidas Sneaker, And It’s Not Terrible

In the interests of fairness, after panning the last sportswear giant x esports deal I came across, it is now time to compliment one. Adidas have released a sneaker based on a French esports team, and I like it. This is the AM4 VIT.01, and it’s based on Team Vitality, a French esports organisation that…

EA Staff Twitter Accounts Hacked After YouTuber Gets Banned For ‘Vulgar’ Comments

A number of Electronic Arts employees have had their personal Twitter accounts hacked after a prominent FIFA player received a lifetime ban from official events for his “abusive, harassing, and vulgar” behavior. The player, Kurt “Kurt0411” Fenech, has been the subject of several disciplinary moves by EA over the last few years, which are outlined…

Super Mario 64 Land, An Enormous Fan-Made Mario Game, Is Out Now

Superstar Mario modder Kaze Emanuar, whose work we’ve featured here a ton, has a huge new project out today: Super Mario 64 Land, an all-new Mario game based on Super Mario 64 that adds new levels, new bosses, new powerups and new music. There’s a catch—it’s technically a mod for Super Mario 64, not a…