Black Desert, the MMORPG with theridiculously detailed character creator, is now in open beta for the Xbox One. From now until November 12, Xbox One owners can raise characters up to level 40, or just sit there and stare at them, marveling at how pretty they are.

PlayStation Classic Plays Fine, But It’s A Bare-Bones Experience

With the PlayStation Classic’s release less than a month away, I went to PlayStation HQ this week for three hours of hands-on time with Sony’s nostalgic mini-console. It plays its selection of 32-bit classics like Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil: Director’s Cut just fine, but the features of the device are pretty much the…

75% Of Final Fantasy XV’s Remaining DLC Just Got Cancelled

Square Enix just announced in a livestream that three of the four upcoming pieces of downloadable content for Final Fantasy XV have been cancelled. The one remaining will be out next year. Back in April, we were told there’d be four more pieces of DLC coming for the 2016 game, with episodes called Ardyn, Aranea,…

Skatebird is a game about a bird who skateboards. Not sure what else you were expecting, really. In it, you skate around an “expansively tiny world,” do Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater-inspired tricks, and try to cheer up your “big,” probably human friend. It’ll be out sometime next year.

Welcome To Overwatch, Ashe

Kim-Seang “Nesskain” Hong, formerly a Blizzard fan artist, is now a Blizzard artist, and has worked on the last few character reveal trailers, including the latest one, Ashe. Here you’ll see loads of the illustrations he did for the trailer, which were storyboarded by Blizzard’s Mio del Rosario. You can see more of Nesskain’s stuff…

Jeff Kaplan’s Plans To Combat Overwatch Fatigue

This year’s BlizzCon was an odd one on a lot of levels, but I was personally stricken by the number of friends and acquaintances who told me they’d taken weeks or months off from playing Overwatch. Last year and the year before, it was an obsession. Lately, though, it’s felt a little stale. Despite that…

Dragon Ball Z Composer Elected To Texas State Senate

Anime fans might know Nathan Johnson for his work composing the score to a bunch of Dragon Ball Z episodes and movie dubs, but yesterday he put a very different feather in his cap: he was elected a state Senator in Texas. Johnson, a Democrat, won 54% of the vote to beat out the incumbent,…

An Outstanding Book For People Who Like Looking At Video Game Consoles

If you’ve ever looked up a video game console on Wikipedia, odds are you’re familiar with the work of Evan Amos. Annoyed by the low quality of console images in the online encyclopedia, Amos began taking and sharing his own console photos. Amos’ passion for gaming and photographic skills come together beautifully in The Game…

Players Have Discovered Payday 2‘s Secret Ending

Payday 2 came out in 2013, but players are only just now uncovering what appears to be its secret ending after weeks of piecing together esoteric clues in the culmination of a challenge that began even before the game was officially released and was finally able to be completed thanks to a new update to…

A Game Packed With Games Studies Knowledge

Games are a complicated medium with various subcultures and tons of academic thinking on matters like mechanics and design. Footnotes is an exploration game that combines study and play, introducing players to nuggets of games academia and knowledge while wandering through colorful spaces. Created by Patrick LeMieux and Stephanie Boluk, Footnotes feels like a playable…

World Of Final Fantasy Looks Rough, Plays Great On Switch [Update]

The cutest Final Fantasy adventure ever isn’t quite as cute on the Switch. While it lacks the sharpness and clarity of its PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC counterparts, World of Final Fantasy Maxima is just as enjoyable on Nintendo’s hardware. Update: A game glitch is partly responsible for the rough edges. Released in 2016…

One Of My Favorite Red Dead Redemption 2 Details Exists Outside The Game

Many a critic will discuss a game’s verbs: the things you do in the game. That’s too general an approach for me. I’m here to praise Red Dead Redemption 2’s present participles. If you’ve played Red Dead Redemption 2, you may have not noticed them. You may have not noticed them because you can’t see…

Nintendo Says It Will Remove Racist Native American Animation From Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

In pre-release marketing materials for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, set to release on December 7, the character Mr. Game & Watch uses racist Native American imagery during one of his attacks. Nintendo now says it plans to remove that imagery from the game and has apologized to fans, saying the caricature doesn’t represent the company’s…

Welcome To The Age Of Indie Game Cosplay

Soundfall, a “rhythm-driven dungeon crawler that’s procedurally generated to music”, looks cool as hell. It’s also doing some interesting stuff as far as cosplay is concerned. Rather than rely on just trailers and demos, developers Drastic Games decided to get two of the most well-known cosplayers in the US, Stella Chuu and Bindi Smalls, to…

My Bloody Hero Academia

When a cosplayer is also a photographer, things can get a little creative, as we see here in this pic by Deegan Marie This cosplay image of Toga Himiko, from My Hero Academia, is a composite, meaning multiple photos have been stitched together to obtain the effect. And while we don’t normally post edited pieces,…