Tips & Guides

How To Unlock The Rest Of Paper Mario: The Origami King’s Settings

For a modern game, Paper Mario: The Origami King’s settings are archaic. When you first start out, you can adjust the brightness, or the rumble in your Joy-Cons. You can toggle the motion controls on or off. There are three other options, but they’re listed, literally, as “????” To find out what they are—as well…

What Happens When You Abandon Your Animal Crossing: New Horizons Island

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game that demands attention. The way it’s structured, you’re supposed to play every day, or at least check in to see what’s up. Like brushing your teeth or taking out the trash, Animal Crossing is, at its core, a chore. So what happens if you forget to do that…

Grounded‘s Arachnophobia Slider Turns Spiders Into Cute Floating Blobs

We learned back in April that Grounded, the new miniaturized survival game from Obsidian Entertainment, would include an “arachnophobia mode” for players with an aversion to spiders. Let’s take a look at how this accessibility option works now that the game is out in the wild. Upon booting up Grounded for the first time, the…

Here’s The Deal With Ghost Of Tsushima‘s Final Stance

Success in Ghost of Tsushima requires one thing: mastering the game’s four sword stances. Each stance deals boosted damage against specific enemy classes, which is essential for managing crowds and quickly taking down Mongols. There’s Stone stance, which wrecks anyone wielding a sword. Water stance makes short work of shields. Wind stance trumps spears. And…

The Best Side-Quests In Ghost Of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima is an open-world game, which means you spend a lot of your time tackling side-quests. Having completed all 92 quests in the game, here are the ones you don’t want to miss. Quests in Ghost of Tsushima are gussied up in unconventional nomenclature that can be tough to parse at first. Here’s…

Paper Mario: The Origami King Is Better When You Turn Off Motion Controls

You won’t find many customization options in Paper Mario: The Origami King’s menu. But there is one thing you can and absolutely should change: Turn off the motion controls. For the most part, motion controls in The Origami King are relegated to a move called 1,000-Fold Arms. It’s the most dexterous of Mario’s magical abilities;…

Tips For Playing Ghost Of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima, out today for PlayStation 4, is a lot of game. As Jin Sakai, one of Tsushima’s last surviving samurai, you’re singularly tasked with the goal of repelling an entire Mongol fleet. No sweat, right? The truth is it actually is no sweat, once you learn the ropes. The following compendium will help…

Tips For Playing Paper Mario: The Origami King

The world’s most famous plumber (or not) returns to a two-dimensional state in Paper Mario: The Origami King, out today for Nintendo Switch. This latest entry in Nintendo’s long-running formerly-an-RPG series both sticks to formula (Peach needs saving again) and bucks it (the battle system is one-of-a-kind). Whatever you’re expecting, know this: You’re bound to…

How To Efficiently Upgrade Your Skills And Gear In Ghost Of Tsushima

You’ve surely heard about Ghost of Tsushima’s overwhelming large open-world. But Sucker Punch’s action-adventure game is also overwhelming in a different way: In the first few hours, you’re given access to a mind-boggling number of skills to unlock and gear to upgrade. It’s enough to make a new player’s head spin with indecision. When you…

Ghost Of Tsushima’s Best Early Charm Will Have You Rolling In Loot

After an hour of flashbacks and melodrama, Ghost of Tsushima, out tomorrow for PlayStation 4, cuts you loose in an open world. The game features a whale-sized map, full of a dizzying amount of question marks and fogged-up regions. With all those options, it can be hard to know where to start. So here’s some…

How To Reach The Top Of Hyper Scape‘s Lobby Tower

There is a tower in Ubisoft’s new battle royale Hyper Scape. Most people are very bad at climbing the tower. Let me tell you how to reach the top of the tower. There’s nothing particularly special about the tower, aside from the fact that it is there. It’s the centerpiece of the lobby players wind…

How To Deal With A Ridiculously Loud PlayStation 4

The Last of Us Part 2 might be the loudest PlayStation 4 game ever made. I’m not talking about the sound design, impressive as it is. I’m talking about what the game does to basically any PlayStation 4. Boot up Naughty Dog’s latest masterpiece, and you can barely hear the sound of clickers clicking over…

Kubfu Is The Star Of Pokémon Sword And Shield’s New Expansion

Last week, Pokémon Sword and Shield’s Isle of Armor expansion introduced plenty of cool new features to Nintendo’s latest monster hunting/gathering game. Some hits include the fact Pokémon that follow you (Gen IV-style) and a pair of deliciously snarky rivals. But the real star of the show is a roundhouse-kicking bear named Kubfu. You get…

Play Your Last Of Us Part 2 New Game Plus On Hard

By now, some of you have wrapped up The Last of Us Part 2, which came out last week for the PlayStation 4. You may be weighing a second playthrough, which begs the question: Really? Are you… okay? Admittedly, there’s also the possibility that you simply can’t get enough of that polished stealth-action gameplay, or…

Why You Should Find (Most Of) The Diglett In Pokémon Sword And Shield’s New Expansion

What do you get if you take the original 151 Pokémon and replace them with carbon copies of an eighth generation reimagining of one the more forgettable ones? The Isle of Armor expansion for Pokémon Sword and Shield, out last week for Nintendo Switch, answers that head-scratcher. Kinda. Early on in the DLC, as you…

Here’s The Deal With The Last Of Us Part 2

The road to launch for The Last of Us: Part 2, out tomorrow for PlayStation 4, has been lined with questions. The leaks in April were one thing. The review conditions provided by Sony were another. We adhered to those guidelines, and signaled that to readers in our review. Of course, even considering the leaks…

The Grounded Demo Is At Its Best When You Leave The Beaten Path

Obsidian Entertainment’s next game, the miniaturized adventure Grounded, received a demo on Steam yesterday. It’s a fun game, if a little constrained by the preview’s 30-minute time limit. Players looking to get the most out of their time with the demo would probably do well to just ignore the story missions altogether. Grounded opens with…

Pokémon Sword and Shield’s new Isle of Armor DLC is out today, but you can only access it from a certain location. You need to first head to the Wedgehurst Station and then show the man next to the gate your Armor pass. And make sure you already caught the Slowpoke.

How To Make The Most Of Your Two Hours With Session

The upcoming Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater remake is getting a lot of hype, but Xbox players take note: Session, the skateboarding sim from indie studio Crea-ture, is currently available as a free trial on Xbox Game Preview. It’s a challenging game rooted in realism, more akin to EA’s Skate series than anything with The Birdman’s…

How To Split Your Video Games After A Breakup

Breaking up sucks. It sucks even more when you weigh external factors. Who gets the cat? Who gets the friend group? Who gets to keep the video games? If you’re currently struggling with that last question, we’ve collected some expert advice that might help you. A tweet from Vice editor Sara David kicked off some…