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Ms. Pac-Man Is a Feminist, and Three More Daring Video Game Arguments

This has been a very good year for video games, but it has been an exceptional year for books about video games—surely the best ever. I can’t tell you who will win the prestigious BAGOTY award for 2015, but Cara Ellison’s Embed With Games, Simon Parkin’s Death by Video Game, and Michael W. Clune’s Gamelife…

How I Survived My Latest Mario Maker Nightmare

After nearly seven hours of ridiculous platforming, The Klepocalypse is finally over. As part of my ongoing Super Mario Maker rivalry with Giant Bomb editor Dan Ryckert, I played yet another stage designed to completely ruin me. That moment above came after a “breakthrough” that resulted in forward progress in the stage. The problem with…

Star Wars: Battlefront Helped Me Understand How The Empire Lost On Endor

How could a powerful military force like the Empire lose to a scruffy band of rebel scum and a handful of teddy bears? I’m thinking it has something to do with the Imperial dress code. While I’ve only been playing the release version of Star Wars: Battlefront since yesterday, I’ve played enough to dread the…

Luke and Vader Face Off in Marvel’s Best Star Wars Comic So Far

Star Wars canon has changed, and some of that has happened in a new wave of Marvel Comics series. Months ago, we saw Luke Skywalker wield a lightsaber against his father way before their fateful meeting in The Empire Strikes Back. This week’s Star Wars comic has them dogfighting against each other and it’s damn…

Fallout 4 Mod Replaces Mini-Nukes With Your Baby

Babies can be like ticking time bombs. You never know when they’re gonna go off. In Fallout 4, they can also be literal bombs. The game’s main quest sees you searching for your lost son, Shaun, who was abducted as a baby. Trainwiz’s Atom Bomb Baby mod makes the hunt for your babbling bundle of…

Let’s Play A Round Of Paladins, Where Overwatch Meets Hearthstone 

Launching into closed beta today, Hi-Rez Studios’ Paladins is a hero-based shooter like Overwatch, but its collectible card-based in-game leveling system is something else. Here’s how a match of Paladins plays out. Players pick a character out of the eight currently available (no doubling up) and spawn in their base. The match begins with the…

Two Classic Cartoon Secrets Discovered In LEGO Dimensions

The release of the Doctor Who level pack for LEGO Dimensions unlocked some wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey cartoon secrets in the game. What good is having a time machine if you can’t travel back to the stone age or forward to Earth’s flying car future? I’ve barely had time to play LEGO Dimensions since the Doctor Who…

Fallout 4 Mod Lets You Have A Deathclaw Follower

Why settle for dumb old Dogmeat or sadly unromanceable Codsworth when you can roam the wasteland with a loyal deathclaw? It’s a question I ask myself every day. BOTLANNER’s “Creature Follower” mod lets you replace your follower with your choice from a handful of creature types. Here’s the description: “You can have either a deathclaw,…

Hey, It’s An Army Of Custom Doom Figures

Cacodemons, regular demons, imps, a Cyberdemon, Barons of Hell and a lonely Doomguy, all present. Artist ENulmer made some fantastic Doom props including almost all the classic monsters. Some of them, such as the Doomguy, are modified versions of other action figures, but most of the demons are hand sculpted and painted. They all look…

Luke Skywalker Sure Did Kill A Lot Of People

Darth Vader is nowhere near the young Jedi. Taking official numbers into account, MrSundayMovies carefully calculated how many people Luke killed in the original Star Wars trilogy. It’s a staggering 369,470. Dammit, Luke. And it’s just the original trilogy. Things like Timothy Zahn’s books are not even included. Does this mean… he’s really the bad…

I’m close to finishing off a horrifying level named after me, The Klepocalypse (90C3-0000-00DA-97AF). Watch me as I try to finally take it down, once and for all, on Twitch at (around) 10:30 p.m. ET. Previous attempts at this stage—and other tough levels—are part of my ongoing Mario Maker Mornings series. You can reach the…

Virtual Mt. Everest Will Let Anyone Climb It

You’ve (probably) never climbed Mt Everest. Icelandic studio Sólfar Studios want to help change that, without the hassle of having to risk death by extreme cold. Which is a very real risk, since nearly 300 climbers have been killed since 1922 trying to reach the summit. They’re workingon a model of the world’s tallest mountain…

Civilization Saved This Couple’s Money

When Alex Recker and his wife Marissa needed to get their household budget under control, they didn’t go to a financial planner. They went to a video game. Blogging about the difficulties the couple had keeping track of where their money was going every month, Recker tried a bunch of custom household budget services and…

Ronda Rousey Is Still Great

I’ve seen a lot of people contending that Ronda Rousey was “exposed” over the weekend—that Holly Holm’s kick-heard-‘round-the-world is proof that Rousey was never all that good in the first place. Those people are wrong. To recap for the 2.47 people who don’t know: former UFC women’s bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey, one of the most…

The Spiritual Successor to DJMax Doesn’t Screw Around

Fans of Korea’s DJMax series have certain expectations of their rhythm games. They want complexity. They crave challenge. Their music genre preference is all over the place. Superbeat: Xonic gives us exactly what we want. When DJMax development studio Pentavision merged with GameOn Studios a few years back, a group of folks left to create…

Here’s the Heroes of the Storm spotlight for Cho’Gall, the crazy-sounding new character that’s controlled by two people at the same time. Blizzard said they expect him to go live in HOTS sometime this week. My colleague Nathan Grayson and I are sure to start butting heads (literally!) once that happens.

How A League Of Legends Match Typically Falls Apart

A whole lot of ink has been spilt talking about talking about how “toxic” League of Legends is. Little to none of this coverage has actually tried to show what an in-game altercation actually looks, sounds, and feels like to those involved when a game goes to shit. I’m going to walk you through the…

Ronda Rousey Is No Match for Holly Holm in Modded Street Fighter, Either

The Street Fighter version of the Ronda Rousey/Holly Holm fight isn’t quite as bloody as the real thing. Still really quick, though. YouTuber Richie Branson—who previously modified Street Fighter characters to stand in for the former UFC women’s champ and Floyd Mayweatherin another video—has a quick clip that uses a modded Chun Li as a…

How Binding of Isaac Fans Ended Up Digging Holes in Santa Ana, California

Last time we checked on The Binding of Isaac community, a glitch caused people to believe the game’s missing content was part of a giant conspiracy. Instead, it was just a glitch. But in the last few days, culminating in a real-life search of Santa Cruz, California, fans did band together to solve a grand…