Twitch Isn’t Just For Watching Games, It’s For Waiting For Them

Earlier this week, Sony announced the Death Stranding release date via a nearly day-long Twitch stream that mostly just showed handprints appearing on a black screen. The reasons why fans would watch this is obvious: Anticipation is exciting, and infectious. The reasons why it is encouraged by publishers is also obvious. Marketing on the internet…

This Weekend’s Rocket League Tournament Will Set The Stage For The World Championship

With a $100,000 prize pool at stake, this weekend’s big Rocket League tournament in Dallas will give some of the game’s biggest teams one last chance to test one another before next month’s World Championship. Now in its seventh season, the Rocket League Championship Series is divided across four continents. The winners of the biggest…

Overwatch Workshop’s Most Popular Mode Is The Card Game Uno

The Overwatch Workshop, which allows players to create new modes with robust tools and rudimentary programming, has given rise to all sorts of unexpected oddities: a Smash Bros. clone, airplane races, portal guns, Mercy reinventions, and heaps more. The most popular mode of all, though? Uno. Yep, the card game. This information comes straight from…

John Romero Made A New Doom Mod And It’s Great

1993’s Doom isn’t the first shooter, but it is the one that truly kicked off a genre. Heavy weapons and bloody demons ignited controversy, while stellar level design kept players engaged. A 2016 reboot updated the series for modern times, but those left craving classic Doom can now hop into Sigil, a new collection of…

The Cool Moments In PlayStation VR’s Blood & Truth Are Far Too Rare

For a few seconds, Blood & Truth, the most-hyped game to hit the PlayStation 4’s virtual reality headset since its October 2016 launch, is as thrilling a VR experience as one could hope for. You’re in the headset holding PlayStation Move controllers as the game’s graphics wrap around you. You’re a soldier back in his…

Meow-troid? Cat-slevania? Either Way, Gato Roboto Is Excellent

A space pilot named Gary crash-lands on a small planet, gets stuck in his ship, and sends his cat (who caused the crash in the first place) on a retro platforming adventure to find help. A real cat would lick itself and fall asleep, but this is no real cat. This is Gato Roboto, monochrome…

Gran Turismo Sport Has Spent Two Years Adding Great Stuff For Free

When Gran Turismo Sport launched in October 2017, it was easy to regard it with suspicion. Despite being the first—and at this rate, perhaps only—Gran Turismo game on the PlayStation 4, it lacked the numeral that would’ve clearly signaled it as the next step in one of the longest-running platform-exclusive series in video games. Why…

Fable Was Initially Pitched As A Game About Wizards Dueling For Each Other’s Hearts

In 2004, amidst a moral panic over the consequence-free violence of games like Grand Theft Auto, Fable broke ground for showing players the tangible consequences for their good or evil actions. But the fantasy role-playing game didn’t begin its life as Fable—or even as a role-playing game. Fable, once called “Project Ego,” was actually born…

Google’s DeepMind AI Takes Down Human Players In Quake III‘s Capture The Flag Mode

Google’s DeepMind AI lab has been hard at work creating programs to take on human players across a variety of games these last few years. In 2016 its AlphaGo beat the best Go player in the world. Earlier this year, its Alpha Star defeated two middle-tier pros at StarCraft II. Now it’s learning to win…

Cadence of Hyrule, that unlikely crossover of Crypt of the NecroDancer and Zelda, has been given a June release date in Japan. That’s probably when it’ll come out in the rest of the world, too, though Nintendo hasn’t said yet. Get ready to rock out with your ocarina out.

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for it not raining anymore, hopefully. It’s also for playing video games if it does rain (or even if it doesn’t). I’m super excited to start playing Outer Wilds, a game I’ve been following for years. There’s also, of course/always, so much more Witcher 3. Looks like I’m in for a fun…

In Fable II, The Way To A Man’s Heart Is Through Farts

Fable II is a weird game. Fable II is a Peter Molyneux game. Those two sentences are one and the same. Molyneux’s style of game development is—at least the way I imagine it—to walk into the room where all the designers are, ask them to make something outlandish and nonsensical, and leave again. It sounds…

Smash Ultimate In VR Was A Mistake

In the “Thanks, I hate it” category, Nintendo gave us Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in virtual reality last night. Nobody asked for this, and yet here we are—swiveling our heads left and right and withstanding gut-sinking nausea just to land a couple aerials on a computer-player Peach. Earlier this year, Nintendo introduced a VR kit…

Apple’s 150 MB App Download Cap Raised To 200 MB, Still Dumb

Apple’s annoying 150 megabyte data cap for downloading apps and games over cellular connections is 50 MB less annoying this week but still doesn’t give phone owners the option to ignore it. So, yay, but also boo. Finding out a cool new game has been released on the iTunes App Store, purchasing it, and then…

Deciding Whether To Restart A Video Game Is My Latest Debilitating Crisis

Sometimes, life presents you with a choice that you just know is going to Change Everything. It’s in these moments that we must take decisive action, plunge headlong into the abyssal unknown with nothing but resolute self-belief to shield us from the grasping black. Anyway, it’s with this in mind that I tell you I’ve…

How Dragon Quest XI Tells An Entire Story With Haikus

The wind blew you here. Surely it was not by chance. Will you hear my tale? These are the words spoken by Miko, the leader of the village of Hotto in the role-playing game Dragon Quest XI, which came out last year for PC and PS4. Like most of the other villagers, Miko speaks almost…