Do You Smell Your Video Games?

Here’s a fun fact about me: I was born without a sense of smell. Here’s a fun fact I learned today: people like to smell their physical video games. Help me square these two facts, readers. While browsing reddit today, I came across a thread about someone surprising their wife with a video game. A…

My Favorite Final Fantasy Taught Me Some Bad Lessons About Love

Final Fantasy VIII, the sorceress epic about a hormone-fueled romance, has been my favorite game in the series ever since I was 12 years old. I beat it almost that many times before I unlearned the lessons that Squall and Rinoa’s relationship taught me about trying to fix sad, broken guys, like the game’s gunblade-brandishing…

Beating Dead Cells Fast Is Mostly About Running Away

Behold someone who has clearly played a ton of Dead Cells kicking the game’s ass in record time and making it look easy. Motion Twin’s side-scrolling rogue-lite came out just last month, but before that it spent a year in Early Access on Steam. That’s given a lot of players plenty of time to master…

Tips For Winning Destiny 2’s Gambit Mode [Updated]

Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion introduces a lot of new stuff to the game, but the most significant addition is a new hybrid competitive/cooperative mode called Gambit. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, once you know what you’re doing. Note: This article originally ran on 9/04/2018. I’m bumping it up with some new tips…

An Exploration Game About Breeding Plants

Plenty of explorations games give you the opportunity to walk through colorful fields or strange, alien worlds. But sometimes it feels like all you can do is wander around. Mendel allows the player to breed plants in order to create wild and unexpected new species. Created by Owen Bell, Mendel is as much a science…

I Really Want To Help Spider-Man Find All His Backpacks

Spider-Man has done the unthinkable and turned me into a completionist. I hate busy work and repetition, and I’ve never 100%’ed a game in my life, but Spider-Man’s various idiosyncratic collectibles changed all of that. As I said in my review, I enjoyed most of the side missions, but I especially loved hunting for Peter…

How Metro: Last Light Flipped The Script On Players 

Metro: Last Light is relentlessly linear, right up until it isn’t. It gives you a trusty ally to follow, right up until he betrays you. As the game pulls the rug out from under you, leaving you completely alone, it becomes clear: all of this was by design. This piece first appeared 11/5/15. Last Light…

Spider-Man‘s Take On Police Feels Out Of Touch

Spider-Man has taken on his share of street thugs and supervillains, sometimes teaming up with the police to face down foes and rescue the people of New York. While Spider-Man on PS4 undoubtedly shows Spidey’s allegiance to his community, it also casts him as a big fan of police and their tactics that sometimes conflict…

Japanese Celebrity Attacks Enemies With Vibrator In New Sega Game

Project Judge stars Takuya Kimura as a tough lawyer named Takayuki Yagami. In the game, he beats up baddies with punches, kicks and a variety of weapons including a vibrator. Kimura is a pop star, actor and celebrity. He’s been called the Brad Pitt of Japan. Yet, even that comparison doesn’t seem fitting, because he’s…

Teacher Inspires Students With Chalkboard Art

Naohiko teaches art at a junior high school in Japan. To inspire students during athletic day competition, the teacher drew some encouraging chalkboard art. In Japan, a school’s athletic day is a big deal, with students divided up into different colour-coordinated teams. Naohiko’s class, it seems, was the green team As GameOver points out, here…

Market. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. By Aleksandr Zykov | Flickr 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! 

Roadhog!

One of the coolest things from PAX West this year was shyaku_cosplay’s Roadhog cosplay, so it’s a treat to be able to showcase some close-ups of the costume. All photos below by Ashley Russell