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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 Published June 30, 2020 -
OpinionThe Last Of Us Part II Has A Very Good Baby
There comes a point in The Last Of Us II where you encounter a baby, and for a short moment, everything is good in the world. I wrote a couple of years ago about Yakuza 6’s Haruto, and how at the time it was easily the Best Baby In Games because the Yakuza team took…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 30, 2020 -
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 Published June 30, 2020 -
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 Published June 30, 2020 -
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 Published June 30, 2020 -
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 Published June 29, 2020 -
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 Published June 29, 2020 -
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 Published June 26, 2020 -
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 Published June 25, 2020 -
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 Published June 25, 2020 -
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 Published June 24, 2020 -
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 Published June 22, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsWhat Do You Know, Burnout Paradise Kicks Ass On The Switch
The left side of this image is the recently-released Switch version of Burnout Paradise Remastered. The right side is the same game running on a high-powered gaming PC. The difference? Doesn’t matter. Both are Burnout Paradise. Both are awesome. The sky and shadows are more detailed on the PC side of the image, but these…
By Mike Fahey Published June 22, 2020 -
OpinionThe Last of Us Part 2’s Metacritic Page Shows How Broken Numerical Scores Are
Despite The Last of Us Part 2’s mixed critical reception, review score aggregator Metacritic shows it with a critical score of 95 out of 100, with a plethora of 10/10s developer Naughty Dog has been happy to tout. The user scores, meanwhile, sit at an abysmal 3.5 out of 10, based on over 31,000 reviews…
By Riley MacLeod Published June 20, 2020 -
OpinionNaughty Dog Showed A Fake Last Of Us 2 Scene To Preserve One Of The Game’s Surprises
To be crystal clear, this video covers major spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2. If you’d prefer to go into this game totally cold, turn back now. Seriously. We mean it. All right, then. Don’t say we didn’t warn you! Spoilers follow for The Last of Us Part 2—specifically, for events that occur…
Ari Notis & Chris Person & Riley MacLeod Published June 19, 2020 -
OpinionLet’s Talk About Crypto’s Mustache
During last night’s EA Play, Apex Legends developer Respawn announced the game’s next collection event, Lost Treasures, alongside upcoming crossplay and a Switch version of the battle royale game. Lost Treasures will feature everything you’d expect—new gameplay, new cosmetics—as well as technophile character Crypto with a mustache. I’m here for it. Crypto’s mustache appears to…
By Riley MacLeod Published June 19, 2020 -
OpinionIt’s Time For Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Cops To Quit Their Jobs
As a general rule, I don’t like cop shows. Until recently, I made one exception. That show was Brooklyn Nine-Nine, an NBC series that just wrapped up its seventh season. It’s more of an office comedy than a cop show, which is what I liked about it. Many of its situations, which involve an admirably…
By Nathan Grayson Published June 18, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsThe Destroy All Humans! Remake Demo Has Me Excited To Do Exactly That
The cult classic game Destroy All Humans is getting a full remake courtesy of Black Forest Studios. A new demo released this week on Steam has me optimistic for the full release in July. It captures the spirit of the original game while looking and playing in a sharper, more modern way. In video games,…
By Zack Zwiezen Published June 18, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsHardspace: Shipbreaker Would Be More Relaxing If Not For The Bone-Crushing Space Capitalism
A growing number of games focus on turning monotonous work, like running a border checkpoint or renovating a home, into compelling gameplay. Hardspace: Shipbreaker, the new simulation game from Homeworld 3 developer Blackbird Interactive, fits that description perfectly. It tasks you with stripping spaceships under the constant gaze of a megacorporation that sees the main…
By Ian Walker Published June 17, 2020 -
OpinionImpressionsDesperados 3 Is A Modern Stealth Masterpiece
It has been a weird and quiet year for video games this year, both because we’re in a pre-next-gen lull and, you know, everything else. Out of this downtime though has come a pleasant surprise: a genuine game of the year contender emerging out of the long-dormant Desperados franchise. Despite this being the third game…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 17, 2020