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I Could Watch Final Fantasy XIV’s New Big-Headed Cactuars Trying To Pose All Day

With their distinctive cactus appearance and signature pose, Cactuars are one of Final Fantasy’s most iconic creatures. The top-heavy Gigantender, introduced in Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion, is doing the best it can to live up to that legacy, bless its giant plant heart. Cactuar are called Sabotenders in Final Fantasy XIV, using the Japanese…

The Switch version of Layton’s Mystery Journey, the 2017 3DS and mobile installment of the Professor Layton series of puzzle games, will be released in North America on November 8. It’s called Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy – Deluxe Edition and appears to be the same expanded version released in Japan last…

Fighting Game Tournament Has Too Much Actual Fighting

Community Effort Orlando has grown to become one of the biggest fighting game tournaments in the world, putting it just below the Evolution Championship Series in terms of both size and importance. The event’s 13 different fighting games were exciting to watch, but in a few cases, the excitement got to be a bit much.…

Stop Calling Games ‘Metroidvania’

Let’s talk about one of my least favorite words in the video game lexicon: metroidvania. A portmanteau combining the video game titles Metroid and Castlevania, it takes two made-up video game titles that are pretty cool and evocative on their own and inelegantly mashes them into something worse. And now, that word is one we…

Photographer Captures The Hidden Beauty Inside Stripped Down Gaming Consoles

What do the guts a Game Boy look like? In a new art series called Assembly Required, photographer Richard Parry takes apart old video game consoles to document all of their internal components, revealing the mesmerizing machinery inside their familiar plastic shells. Parry, an electrician by trade, started with the original Game Boy, the finished…

Cuphead Developers Delay DLC, Cite Desire To Make Games In A Healthier Way

Fans of tough-as-nails animated shoot-’em-up Cuphead have been waiting since 2018 for Delicious Last Course, a DLC expansion with a whiff of finality about it. Unfortunately, they’re going to have to wait a little longer, because it’s been delayed to 2020. The developers offered a commitment to quality and a focus on sustainable development practices…

The Division 2 Is Testing Some Much-Requested Features

There’s going to be a lot less to complain about regarding The Division 2 if a batch of features going live in a test build this week make it into the proper game later this month. Ubisoft’s impressive but contentious shooter appears to be getting flashlights (much requested!), badly needed buffs for gadget skills, and…

Seeing A Video Game Instruction Manual In 2019 Makes Me So Happy

No matter how good or bad sexy pinball game Senran Kagura Peach Ball turns out, I will always remember it for the kindness of providing me a tiny manual in these days of physical video game instruction scarcity. My love of video game manuals is well-documented. Years ago, during the launch of the Wii U,…

Shenmue III Developers Offer Refunds To Kickstarter Backers Angry About Epic Store Exclusivity

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Fans are upset that an upcoming new game is an Epic Games Store exclusive, and the developers have to react. This time it’s Shenmue III, whose creators said today that any Kickstarter backers displeased with the state of things will be able to get a refund. Last…

Super Mario Maker 2 Creation Tips From A Nintendo Icon And A Level Design Guru

Need advice for Super Mario Maker 2? The game’s producer Takashi Tezuka has five helpful tips, and Chris Totten, the author of An Architectural Approach to Level Design, has ten more. Here are Tezuka’s tips, straight from the guy who produced Super Mario Maker 2 as well as had a hand in so many iconic…

Mordhau’s Developers Are On Some Bullshit [Update]

Mordhau is a very good medieval brawler, but it’s also attracted its fair share of assholes since release. That’s nothing out of the ordinary, a lot of games do, but Mordhau’s problem is that it’s not just retaining them, but catering to their assholey whims. As PC Gamer report in this story about the game’s…

Black Ops 4’s Blackout Mode Is Starting To Feel Pay-To-Win

New DLC weapons added to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 have its Blackout battle royale mode feeling a little bit more like a pay-to-win game. I really like Blackout, Black Ops 4‘s answer to Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite. The gameplay is so smooth that I’ve had trouble diving back into PUBG and H1Z1,…

Days Gone Gets A Tough But Satisfying Horde Mode

Over the weekend, Days Gone delivered the first of its 12 promised free challenges released weekly for the summer. First up: a horde challenge called “Surrounded” that puts players in the middle of a small run-down town, surrounds them with Freakers, and challenges them to survive for as long as they can. It’s hard as…

Geralt Is Still The Least Cool-Looking Part Of The Netflix Witcher Show

The Netflix Witcher TV show is still in production, and the showrunners have now released images of Yennefer and Ciri, as well as some more shots of Henry Cavill in costume as Geralt. Yennefer and Ciri look amazing, so I’m wondering why they bought Cavill’s wig at Party City. Although I’m planning on playing The…

The Trump administration announced over the weekend it would delay $300 billion in new tariffs on Chinese imports, including video game consoles, following a tentative agreement reached with China’s President at the G20 Summit. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo came out against the new tariffs in a joint letter earlier this month.

Super Mario Maker 2 Recreated In LittleBigPlanet 3 Looks Stunning

Someone has been hard at work making a faithful adaptation of Super Mario Maker 2 inside LittleBigPlanet 3, and the results look so good you can hardly tell the difference. As documented in a video by the YouTube channel GameXplain, the “Super Mario Maker 2 2019” world was created by a player who goes by…

The Coolest-Looking Fighter In Samurai Shodown Is Unfortunately Shit

Since its inception in 1993, the Samurai Shodown franchise has had its share of standout characters, like a child-eating demon, a quick-draw swordsman with tuberculosis, and a weird little dude named Nicotine Caffeine. For me, the coolest guy in the series is Kyoshiro Senryo, and although he managed to make the cut in last week’s…

The Best Speedruns From SGDQ 2019

You have not truly lived until you’ve watched speedrunner MitchFlowerPower play through Grand Poo World 2, one of the most brilliant and devious takes on Super Mario World I’ve ever seen. Mitch’s genius platforming was just one highlight of this year’s excellent Summer Games Done Quick marathon. Summer Games Done Quick 2019, a week-long speedrunning…

Super Mario Maker 2 time! Paul is streaming the game right now over on Twitch.Join us in chat as we attempt some truly weird levels. And, as always, subscribe to us on Twitch for more streams as they happen.

Hatsune Miku is coming to the Nintendo Switch. Sega has announced Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Mega39’s, launching in Japan in early 2020. It’s a new rhythm game (viaGematsu) featuring 101 songs, 300 costumes and new game modes built specifically for the Switch. Miku’s even been given a bit of an anime makeover. So happy.