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Overwatch‘s Mercy Is More Deadly Now, But She’s Still A Healer

Mercy is a Valkyrie now, and she’s not taking anybody’s crap. Yesterday, Blizzard revealed a surprising overhaul of Overwatch’s most straightforward healer, replacing her uber-powerful resurrection ult—which could potentially bring her whole team back from the brink—with “Valkyrie,” an ult that lets her soar around with a giant clip of super-powered bullets as well as…

Taylor Swift’s New Song Is Basically An Alternate Reality Game, And I Hate It

Taylor Swift’s new single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” feels like a shitty alternate reality game that you unravel to find out more lore. This tale begins in 2009, where rapper Kanye West was publicly very mean to Swift at MTV’s Video Music Awards. They publicly made up in 2015. West then included a…

A Very Realistic Video Game Simulation Of Mayweather vs McGregor

Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather and UFC megastar Conor McGregor are gonna “fight” tomorrow. Since it’s a boxing match, Mayweather will almost certainly beat McGregor bloody and then use McGregor’s hair to mop up his own bodily fluids. To alleviate that inevitable disappointment and test the two fighters’ true skills, I put on a series of…

Three Years Of Writing About Destiny

I’ve written more about Destiny than any other video game I’ve ever played. I’ve reviewed every expansion. I’ve written at length about raids and guns and competitive arenas. I’ve written about the community’s often tortured emotional relationship with the game, as well as my own. With Destiny 2 looming on the horizon, I decided to…

UFC Champ Jon Jones’ Steroid Scandal Causes Game Dev Jon Jones’ Twitter To Explode

Tuesday evening, it was announced that UFC light heavyweight champion and greatest fighter of all time candidate Jon Jones failed a drug test. Again. This pissed off legions of fans, a contingent of whom have been taking it out on a game developer named Jon Jones, who—just to be clear—is not a disgraced UFC champion.…

Thousands of People Say They’re Going To Run Like Naruto This Weekend

A minute watching a kid run can speak volumes about how much anime they consume. Are their arms thrust out behind them? Is their head down, their back bent over, their legs churning along a diagonal axis? And are they wearing a headband with a swirly metal thing? If so, that kid is running the…

An Unsettling Game Where You Convince AI To Let You Erase Them

Localhost is a disquieting adventure game where you interrogate some artificial intelligence, think about death and lie to your boss. In Localhost, you play as a network administrator on the first day of their job. You’re asked to go down to the shop and wipe some hard drives that have been corrupted, but in order…

The Internet Has A ‘Cringe’ Problem, And It Hurts Kids The Most 

Being vulnerable and honest on the internet is difficult enough for most of us, but for kids, living a life online can be hellish. Grown-ass adults love to bully naive kids online, and it happens all the time. In the latest episode of Fave This, a new podcast/YouTube show hosted by Gita Jackson and me,…

An Assassin’s Creed logo has been hiding in a Final Fantasy XV trailer since last October, hinting at the collaboration that Ubisoft and Square Enix announced yesterday. Ubisoft says there are also Final Fantasy easter eggs in the AC Origins announcement trailer and in this week’s Gamescom CGI trailer. Well done, video game publishers.

Developers Put Popular Horror Game On Pirate Bay For Players Who Can’t Afford It

On torrent site The Pirate Bay, typically the domain of illegal rips of media, one username among dozens uploading the horror game Darkwood stands out: the game’s publisher. Today, the Poland-based Acid Wizard Studio uploaded their own game for free with “no catch, no added pirate hats for characters,” their torrent description reads. A lot…

No Man’s Sky has been patched yet again. Patch 1.34 attempts to address an issue some players have where “large numbers of portal visits would be added to save files, greatly increasing the save size and impeding the ability to save the game.” The patch notes say this issue hasn’t been universally solved, but they…

Crypt Of The Necrodancer Developer Announces Sci-Fi City-Builder

Crypt of the Necrodancer developer Brace Yourself Games just announced its upcoming title, Industries of Titan. And it’s very different from what we’ve come to know the studio for. Industries of Titan will be an “industrial city building sim/strategy game, set on Saturn’s moon Titan,” according to the developer. Players can design industrial cities, which…

Reigns is getting a follow-up this year called Reigns: Her Majesty. We liked the original Tinder-esque kingdom-ruling game a lot.

Sandbox Lego building game or marketing tool? Why not both? In honor of the September 22 release of The Lego Ninjago Movie, Lego Worlds is adding a bunch of Ninjago characters and building sets as free DLC next month.

Japan Has Ice Cream Shaped Like Katana 

The city of Seki in Gifu Prefecture has long been famous for sword-making and high-quality kitchen cutlery. Now, as Togech points out, it’s becoming famous for ice cream katana. The basic idea was from a high school student, and according to Asahi Digital, the city’s youth made that a reality. A local Japanese confectionary chef…

Japan’s YouTuber Academy Teaches Kids How To Be Better YouTubers 

Earlier this year, insurance company Sony Life conducted a poll, asking junior high schoolers what they wanted to be when they grew up. For boys, the third most popular choice was YouTuber. Number one was IT engineer/programmer, while number two was game creator. For girls, YouTuber was the 10th most popular choice. That might explain…

Love Plus, the Konami games in which you talk to digital schoolgirls, is starting a “new project.” Slated for iOS and Android, it’s called Love Plus Every and will, of course, feature schoolgirls.

Shibuya at Night. Tokyo, Japan. By Jorge Mena. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Secret of Mana Remake Announced For PS4, Vita And Steam

Square Enix is remaking Secret of Mana. The beloved role-playing game will be released in North America on February 15, 2018. In August 1993, the game was originally released as Seiken Densetsu 2 in Japan on the Super Famicom (SNES), but sold outside Japan as Secret of Mana Earlier this summer, a Mana collection with…

Former Valve Writer Posts Possible Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Plot Summary

Former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw has posted a fictional letter on his site that sure reads like a possible plot summary for Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Laidlaw joined Valve in the 1990s, and announced his departure from the company in January 2016. In that time he worked on the story for Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2…