Uncategorized

Big Games Turned Into Little Models

16bitModelsis an exhibition where artists take classic video games and build incredible little real-world dioramas out of them. It was first held last year, but a second instalment went down last week at Kotobukiya’s Akihabara store in Tokyo. Here’s a selection of shots taken of exhibits done for games like Mega Man, Mario, Donkey Kong…

Holdfast: Nations At War is an upcoming multiplayer shooter set during the Napoleonic Wars. It takes place both on land and at sea. It’ll be out in Early Access soon.

In the latest episode of Toco Toco TV, a fantastic web series that goes behind the scenes with Japanese artists, the team visits EDITMODE, aka King of Games, a t-shirt company based in Kyoto that has been making official Nintendo gear for 15 years.

The Mother Of All Nintendo Switch Cases

There are very good actual Nintendo Switch cases on the market, but sometimes the best solution to moving your console around can come from unofficial avenues. In this case, a Pelican…case, the rugged storage boxes that everyone from photographers to tradespeople use to keep their gear safe from bears, bombs and bus crashes. Kamikawa4works for…

Final Fantasy VII’s Cast, Revised

Here’s comic artist Nikolas Draper-Ivey’s take on the main cast of Final Fantasy VII Re-imagining this game is nothing new, but Draper-Ivey’s designs here don’t go changing anyone’s outfit. Instead, by altering the race of each character, they show that everything iconic about this cast has to do with their original designs, haircuts and weapons,…

Mighty Mouse Is Everything The UFC Used To Be

Over the weekend, we were treated to a UFC event light on pretense and heavy on action. The best fought the best, or at least the best available. Hardly anybody beefed. Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson fought a perfect fight. Refreshing as the event was, however, it felt like an island surrounded by bullshit-strewn waters. I…

The Magicians Book One: A cynical fantasy that gets better toward the end.  What it is: The first of Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, probably best described as “Harry Potter, except with assholes.” Now also a Syfy TV series that I will probably never watch. Well, at least not until I finish the books. What I’ve read:…

Star Wars Battlefront II Is Written By Spec Ops: The Line‘s Writer And An Ex-IGN Reporter

Star Wars Battlefront II, which was officially announced last weekend, will give fans what they’ve wanted for two years now: Mitch Dyer. Also, a single-player campaign. To write this next Battlefront (not to be confused with the other Star Wars Battlefront II), EA hired Walt Williams, best known for his work writing the critically lauded…

24 Years Later, The Sonic The Hedgehog Cartoon Is Still Charming

Between a catalog of killer games on the Genesis and the Archie Comic series, Sonic the Hedgehog was a fixture of my childhood. At the height of Sonic mania, there was a handful of cartoon shows. My favorite was based on the comics and is now affectionately called Sonic SatAM. But is it as good…

Quiz: Which Inscrutable Nintendo Business Decision Are You?

Last week, Nintendo discontinued the NES Classic, for some reason. This is far from the first questionable business decision they’ve made and it definitely won’t be the last. Find out which one of these decisions you are in this quiz.

Horizon Zero Dawn Uses All Sorts Of Clever Tricks To Look So Good

Every time you move the camera in Horizon Zero Dawn, the game is doing all sorts of under-the-hood calculations, loading and unloading chunks of world to ensure that it all runs properly. And that’s not even counting the robot dinosaurs. In a new 45-minute documentary produced by the Dutch organization VPRO, the developers at Guerrilla…

Here Is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson Dressed Up As Pikachu

Yesterday, on Easter, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson chased his daughter around the house wearing a Pikachu costume. And how did you celebrate? Eggs? The 6’5″, 260-pound wrestler was playing his daughter’s favorite game, “I run away and you chase me Pikachu,” according to The Rock’s Instagram. Adorably, his daughter pronounces “Pikachu” like “Peekyu.” “The Rock”…

EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II may not have a season pass, at least not one that relegates new maps to people who pay extra. “We don’t have a season pass,” the game’s creative director told Mashable. “We don’t want to segment our community.” Mashable says EA asked them to not report that, suggesting it was premature.

Robert Yang Wants To Make VR ‘Obscenely Gay’

Robert Yang’s games have been seen by millions of people, but sometimes he’d rather they hadn’t. Yang is well known in indie game development circles as a creator of games that explore the wide world of gay sex and its consequences with an unflinching artistic vision. Hurt Me Plenty is about consensual spanking and power…

Player Shoves Zelda: Breath Of The Wild NPC All Over The Map

Breath of the Wild has a lot of NPCs. When YouTuber Nesis found out you could shove them, they decided to try pushing the minstrel bird Kass for a very long time. It turns out you don’t need to be aboard an United Airlines flight to get the crap knocked out of you in Hyrule.…

Let’s Talk About Our Favorite Spring Games

Some games capture the spirit of this verdant time of year in a way that can’t be matched. The April blossoms, holiday weekend, and unusually warm weather has me thinking of some of my favorite spring time games. The winter should be the best time to sit inside glued to an LCD screen, but I’ve…

Blizzard Takes Game Servers Offline To Fix Login Issues [Update]

If you woke up this morning hoping to log some hours with Overwatch (or Hearthstone, or Heroes of the Storm), you probably had issues trying to login to Blizzard’s game client. Five hours later, Blizzard is still working on fixing the problem. [Update 12:59AM] Blizzard says the problems have been resolved Original story follows. The issues…

The Rick And Morty Mods For GTA V Are Way Too Real 

The mods transform Grand Theft Auto V into a bloodbath of surreal, familial dysfunction. Like the “Look Who’s Purging Now” episode from season 2, but way more fucked up. Every day without more Rick and Morty is a wasted day in my opinion. More episodes, more games, I want it all. Mods too! At least…

A Look Back At Fez‘s Unsolvable “Black Monolith” Puzzle 

Vibrantly-pixelated indie darling Fez turned five years old this week, so it’s the perfect time to celebrate the game’s strangest puzzle and the community of players who devoted themselves to solving it. Released in April of 2012 on Xbox Live Arcade, Fez seemed like a retro-throwback from an alternate reality; the kind of made-up game…

Star Citizen 3.0 Update Coming In June, Will Add Moons You Can Land On

The giant space-sim is getting its next big update on June 29 which will include, among a litany of other stuff, the ability for players to take their ships out into space and dock on of a handful of moons. The addition of this new “Planetary Tech” will help expand what players can do in…