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OpinionImpressionsWorld Of Warcraft‘s Improved Character Creator Will Enable A Lot More Diversity
My first World of Warcraft character is still around, largely unchanged even after 13 years. WoW’s character creator, too, exists in nearly the same, unchanged state. But with the upcoming Shadowlands expansion, character creation is getting a long-overdue upgrade that’ll give me something I’ve been yearning for: a real afro. This has been a long…
By Ash Parrish -
OpinionImpressionsRuinous Effigy Is One Of Destiny 2‘s Best Guns Yet
Destiny 2 has had a ton of great, overpowered guns over the years, but Ruinous Effigy, the latest exotic weapon to get added to the game, already feels head and shoulders above most of them. Introduced on Tuesday as part of Season of Arrivals’ new exotic quest line, Ruinous Effigy is actually pretty straightforward to…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsHow Paper Mario: Origami King‘s Puzzle Battles Work
Nintendo’s next big Switch game is Paper Mario: The Origami King, announced less than two months ago via a humble tweet and arriving on July 17. The Paper Mario series’ reputation has been a bit spotty as of late, but Origami King has by and large gotten rid of the more annoying parts of the…
By Chris Kohler -
OpinionImpressionsDeadly Premonition 2 Is Incredibly Rough But All Sorts Of Charming
FBI special agent Francis York Morgan (call him York, everybody does) should not be a likable character. He’s eccentric. He’s self-absorbed. He holds lengthy, movie reference-filled conversations with a voice inside his head while the real people around him stare and shrug. Despite his many flaws, he’s one of the most engaging protagonists I’ve played.…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsOne-Of-A-Kind Action RPG CrossCode Is Out On Consoles This Week
In October of 2018 I fell in love with CrossCode, a solo PC action RPG disguised as a retro 2D fantasy MMO. I put it on my top games of 2018 list, where Jason Schreier saw it, played it, and fell in love as well. On Thursday CrossCode finally comes out for consoles. Now everybody…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsNier Creator’s Fairy Tale RPG Is So Grim It’s Silly
In SINoALICE, a new mobile RPG for iOS and Android directed by Nier creator Yoko Taro, fairy tale characters brutally murder everyone and everything in order to somehow revive their authors and make their bloodiest wishes come true. At first it’s shocking. Then it’s silly. Little Red Riding Hood just wants to play all day,…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionI Loved The Last Of Us 2 Except For All The Parts I Deeply Hated
I do not like The Last Of Us 2. I didn’t like the first one either (it kinda fell apart for me in the final act) and everything I’d heard about its sequel made it sound like a carnival of violence I’d feel okay about abstaining from. And yet, despite the foul taste left from…
By Ash Parrish -
OpinionGames Should Make Creating Just As Satisfying As Destroying
I’ve had a lot of fun with The Last of Us Part II, especially its more gruesome gameplay elements. As awful as it feels to admit, Naughty Dog made virtual murder fun. There’s a great sense of accomplishment in sneaking up on a pair of enemies, grabbing one, headshotting the other, and executing your captive…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressions200 Players Isn’t Too Many For Call Of Duty‘s Warzone
Call of Duty’s Warzone just got a little more crowded with the addition of 200-player battle royale matches. You’d think this would be total chaos, but so far it doesn’t seem to have changed things much. Modern Warfare’s mid-season update for Season 4 arrived on June 30 across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and…
By S.E. Doster -
OpinionImpressionsMin Min Kicks Off Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Second DLC Pass With A Helluva Punch
Min Min ruined my Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and I’m completely fine with it. Before yesterday, my character selection screen was the picture of perfect symmetry—a six-row rectangle featuring mustachioed plumbers, space-faring canines, and one question mark, but mostly just Fire Emblem characters. Now, the screen looks like this: It’s a total affront to the…
By Ari Notis -
OpinionImpressionsHarmonix’s Fuser Is A Different Way To Mix Music And Gaming
Coming this fall to PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One from Harmonix and NCSoft, Fuser is the ultimate freestyle DJ simulator. It casts the player as an up-and-coming disc jockey, gives them access to over 100 pop, rap, country, and rock songs, and drops them into spectacular arenas to play a music-mixing game of Simon…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsThe Star Wars Episode I: Racer Remaster Is A Little Ugly, But I Love It
The excellent 1999 racing game Star Wars Episode I: Racer received an HD re-release for Switch and PlayStation 4 last week. It’s hideous in the unique way that only sharpened-up ‘90s-era 3D games can be, and I adore it. Episode I: Racer expanded upon one of the few shining moments in Star Wars: Episode I…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressions26 Years Later, Classic Adventure Beneath A Steel Sky Gets The Sequel It Deserves
Way back in 1994, Revolution Software released Beneath a Steel Sky, a cyberpunk point-and-click adventure game collaboration between Broken Sword creator Charles Cecil and comic artist and Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons. I spent the weekend with Beyond a Steel Sky, a sequel I’ve been waiting over two and a half decades to play. In adventure…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsBeautiful New Borderlands 3 Expansion Tries To Tell A Better Story
I wasn’t expecting much heading into Bounty of Blood: A Fistful of Redemption, the third of four planned Borderlands 3 expansions. The vaguely western theme has been done to death and, truth be told, I hadn’t spent much time with the game since the last major update dropped. But what I found was a unique…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressionsNinjala‘s Cute Shinobi (Literally) Kick Ass And Chew Bubble Gum
In my first match of Ninjala, Gung-Ho Online Entertainment’s free-to-play brawler for the Switch, my baby Hatsune Miku-looking character smacked around my kid-sized competition with a giant bat made of bubble gum, beat up random robots, was transformed into a pile of poop, and then exploded. I am not exactly sure what happened. I got…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsCyberpunk 2077 Is Complex And Overwhelming, But It Works
Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t quite click with me until I met Certo. In a recent demo with the Cyberpunk 2077 devs, I was guiding my character, an urban mercenary and hacker, through her neighborhood when I was stopped by a local boxing coach near his outdoor gym. He had history with my character, apparently, and needed…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressionsPokémon Café Mix Is Nothing New, But It Sure Is Cute
I’ve played many free mobile games that function almost exactly like Pokémon Café Mix, but none that prominently feature a super-adorable Charmander who I would follow anywhere and give my life to defend. Available now on Switch, Google Play, and iTunes, Pokémon Café Mix is a Disney Tsum Tsum or Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble style…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsSpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated Is Pure Platforming Joy
One of the most beloved licensed games of all-time, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom is a wonderful hodgepodge of all things good about 3D platforming. It’s got multiple characters with different abilities, big boss battles, endless collectibles, entertaining mini-games, and all sorts of secrets to uncover. SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated has…
By Mike Fahey
