The Weekend In Esports: Overwatch Contenders Starts For Real

It’s a quieter weekend in the world of pro gaming compared to earlier in the month, but there’s still plenty going on, especially if you’re an Overwatch fan. While lots of money changes hands as the ground work gets laid for Blizzard’s premier Overwatch League, the game’s lower tiers continue to grow into their own…

England Wins FIFA Interactive World Cup For First Time In 12 Years

Over the course of this week’s FIFA Interactive World Cup, Spencer “Gorilla” Ealing scored 46 goals across three days on his way to the grand final. In a 7-3 aggregate, Ealing not only took home $200,000 in prizes, but the first FIWC win for England since 2005. The lead up to the final FIFA 17…

The Division’s Latest Updates Hint At How Interesting The Sequel Might Be

“More is more” must be the mantra of the makers of The Division, Ubisoft’s fun but flawed post-disaster shooter that has somehow not collapsed beneath the weight of the latest mound of content added to it. Less really would be more, and probably will be when Ubisoft gets around to releasing a sequel that starts…

This Week In The Business: Splatoon 2 Hits Number One Without A Single Bullet

STAT | #1 – Splatoon 2‘s rank on the NPD Group’s list of July’s best-selling games in the US. The accomplishment is more impressive when you consider that Nintendo is one of the few major publishers that doesn’t share digital sales figures with NPD, so its ranking only reflects physical retail sales. QUOTE | “Paradox…

Overwatch‘s Best Korean Team Loses To Underdogs’ Daring Doomfist Gambit

So far, there have been three Overwatch APEX tournaments in South Korea. Lunatic Hai has won two of them. Widely regarded as one of the best Overwatch teams in the world—if not the best—they were expected to dismantle relatively unheralded team MVP Space without breaking much of a sweat. Instead, they lost. Lunatic Hai started…

Wildlands Helicopters Apparently Just Do Whatever They Want

Ghost Recon: Wildlands received a complete overhaul to the helicopter controls last month, but that didn’t solve the frustration of weird and fatal landing mechanics. Wildlands gives you the choice to spawn a pickup truck, a van, an armored SUV, or a helicopter, but the vehicles needed to traverse the mountainous terrain of this open-world…

Finally, A Horror Board Game Where You Are The Monster Killing The Obnoxious Teens

Upcoming horror board game Monster Slaughter taps into the best thing about watching campy horror movies: the order in which teens die. Where it one-ups popcorn and The Blair Witch Project is that, in Monster Slaughter, the player is the beast killing off the obnoxious teens. In Monster Slaughter,players operate a family of monsters—zombies, werewolves,…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for deciding to buy a blender, but why are there so many different blenders? Also, video games. I’m going to keep working through Agents of Mayhem, which is a lot of fun. I also bought Sonic Mania last night, which will be the first Sonic game I’ve played since the original. So…

At Gen Con, a 24-hour charity event called CardHalla has attendees stacking thousands of Magic, Dragon Ball and Pokemon cards in a meters-long sprawl of card towers.

The Switch Has Made Nintendo Cool Again

In the past, Nintendo has been synonymous with baffling business decisions and out-of-touch thinking. While that Nintendo still exists, the Japanese company has also started to reinvent itself this generation—and it’s all because of the Switch. The Switch actually feels cool in a way that the Xbox One and PS4 don’t. In the latest episode…

After Cancer Diagnosis, Dota 2 Commentator Returns To The Game Between Chemo Sessions

Jorien “Sheever” van der Heijden is lively when we sit down to chat. A five-time veteran of The International, this event isn’t quite the same as the previous ones. In May, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sitting on the concourse floor in Key Arena in August, several weeks into the Dota 2 tournament that…

Developer Jokes About Adding ‘Good’ Ending To Game, Sends Players On A Wild Goose Chase

“Added good ending,” read a recent patch note for the sci-fi Souls-like Immortal Planet. The game’s small community was thrilled. They had a new goal, a reason to put on their sleuthing caps. But after weeks of struggling to unlock this secret ending, the game’s developer revealed it was all a big joke. Immortal Planet…

I Learned Calculus With A Video Game, And It Was Surprisingly Fun

I, like many people, am terrible at math. I need a calculator to do basic addition and subtraction. Math class was excruciatingly painful for me, not to mention boring. But the open-world game Variant: Limits aims to make learning math, specifically calculus, fun. In Variant you play as Equa, a young man (Correction 4:29: a…

War In EVE Online Is The Best, And Also The Worst

A few days ago, in front of an audience of over three thousand people, the leader of the Imperium—the largest coalition in EVE Online and perhaps the largest player alliance in any video game—announced that it would go to war. Over the next 24 hours, Imperium pilots deployed over 1200 capital class vessels to the…

A Device That Turns Almost Any Camera Into A Webcam

Game capture hardware maker Elgato made streaming a little bit fancier this week with the release of Cam Link, a $129 USB device that allows users to use any camera with an HDMI output as a webcam. Plus it also does game capture. It’s pretty nifty. Packaged in a box with a quick start guide…

Sims Players Are Trying To Spawn Cool Kids From Random Parents

The Sims is a virtual dollhouse, and that freedom should mean that coming up with new scenarios for your sims should be easy. In actuality, after you play a while, you find yourself making the same old sims over and over. Sims players have found a way to shake up their games. Sims players love…

Overwatch Player Creates Zombie Mode

Blizzard’s only just now getting around to FPS mainstays like deathmatch with Overwatch’s official modes, but custom games have allowed players to tunnel their way outside the box. In order to create an Overwatch-flavored variant of the ever popular “zombie” FPS mode, one player got very creative. An Overwatch fan by the name of “Deltin”…

No Man’s Sky’s Weird Melee Jump Is Still The Most Fun Thing In The Game

No Man’s Sky keeps changing, almost entirely for the better. With each update, I’ve worried Hello Games is finally going to take out my favorite move in the game. So far they haven’t. I’m starting to worry less. The move I’m talking about is the melee jump, a weird and unusually satisfying method for getting…