This Week In The Business: Casual Casualties

QUOTE | “[O]ur games for core audiences did extremely well, but the casual audience has not yet emerged on next gen consoles.” – An Activision Blizzard representative explaining why the company laid off developers after disappointing debuts for Skylanders SuperChargers and Guitar Hero Live. Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… QUOTE | “Up…

Devil Daggers Keeps Kicking My Ass, And It’s Great

My first play session with Devil Daggers, a new ‘90s-inspired shooter on Steam, lasted five seconds. When I’m playing Devil Daggers, my face pretty much always looks like this: Because of this: Devil Daggers is not what I would call a kind game. Everything about it is leering, hostile, agonized. The game’s sole room is…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The shortest month of the year is cruising into the home stretch, and there are still so many games to play. What will you be playing this weekend? I’ll go first: I’m in the thick of an XCOM 2 playthrough that is likely going to end with the fall of the Advent, though who knows…

A Game Disappeared From Steam, And Nobody’s Saying Why

A few weeks ago, a pirate-themed RPG called Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry vanished from the Steam store. At that point, it was surrounded on all sides by (unproven) allegations of fake reviews and shady dealings. Flash forward to now: people still can’t figure out precisely why it disappeared. I’ve been keeping a close eye…

High-Level Player Talks About Being Trans in the Fighting Game Community

XCOM 2? Fire Emblem? Street Fighter V? There’s so many games right now, which only helps Worth Reading, our weekly guide to the best games writing around. Photo Credit: David Zhou Hey, You Should Read These “The Struggles and Victories of the First Transgender Fighting Game Champion” by Michael Martin (Note: This link takes you…

Street Fighter V‘s Launch Sure Has Been a Bummer

On February 16th, Street Fighter V came out at a full price of $60. The big problem with that is Street Fighter V is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fully finished game. The just-released version of Street Fighter V feels like it was rushed out the door. The Battle Lounge multiplayer lobbies…

Ask Dr. NerdLove: My Girlfriend Won’t Stop Cheating On Me With Her Ex

Hello, Internet! Welcome to Ask Dr. NerdLove, the first dating advice column to break through to the 8th dimension with the power of the Oscillation Overthruster. On occasion I get a reader letter that’s so complex and dramatic that the only thing to do is go through it piece by piece, peeling back the layers…

The Hunt For A Fallout 4 Secret That Might Not Exist

Yesterday, Fallout 4 game director Todd Howard teased everyone watching this year’s DICE summit. During an interview with comedian Pete Holmes, Howard was asked if there was anything hiding in Fallout 4 that people hadn’t found yet. “There’s a couple of things, but I don’t want to say em,” Howard replied. “[Players] eventually will find…

No Lawyer Could Stop This Standing Ovation For Hideo Kojima

Hideo Kojima was fucked over at last year’s Video Game Awards, reportedly prevented from getting up on stage as his Metal Gear Solid V won awards. Last night at the DICE awards, a free man with a new studio, nothing was going to stop him getting his dues. This is Kojima’s reception having got up…

Huge Elite Dangerous Fleet Leaves Galactic Center In a Classy Way

Traveling to the center of the galaxy in Elite Dangerous takes time. A lot of time. 52 players of the Distant Worlds fleet made it there together and the moment they all jumped into hyperspace next to Sagittarius A*, one of the largest objects in the game, looked pretty damn awesome. Here are some more…

Snake, Running On A Keyboard

Not Solid Snake but the classic arcade and mobile game Snake, ported to a… Corsair K70 RGB keyboard by Mythic Maniac It’s a small thing he made in C#, and all the rules are the same as in other versions of Snake: The red snake gets longer as it moves and grabs yellow dots, and…

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright vs Conquest: Which To Buy

Fire Emblem Fates is out today, and it comes in two different versions: Birthright and Conquest. Which one should you play first? Fire Emblem Fates is not a Pokemon-type situation where no matter what game you pick, you more or less get the same experience. Birthright and Conquest are two very different games, with different…

Fallout 4 is DICE’s Game of the Year

DICE’s all-peer-based voting panel must have had a great time hacking supermutants apart to Skeeter Davis’s End of the World, ‘cause Fallout 4 took three awards home, including Game of the Year. But of course, Fallout 4 wasn’t the only big winner at the 19th DICE Awards In total, five games had wins in more…

XCOM’s finest sniper is here to save the day.

Five Things Revealed about Hideo Kojima and His New Game

Hideo Kojima has set up a new studio and is working on a new game. He hasn’t revealed much about the game, but did touch on it in a new GameSpot interview, revealing a wee bit more about the game and himself. Via GameSpot, here are five things I’ve learned about Kojima and his upcoming…

The Biggest Selling PS4 Games in Japan

Some of the big sellers will not surprise you. Some of them might. In the latest Weekly Famitsu, the magazine looks back at the last two years of PS4 hardware and software sales. As of February 7, 2016, here are the biggest selling games in Japan, based on Famitsu’s retail sales data: 20. Watch Dogs:…