Breaking VR with the Half Life: Alyx Speedrunning Community

In many ways, the Half Life: Alyx speedrun is just like any other. For about half an hour, players race through the game, combining ordinary precision play with glitches that allow them to skip...

Ignore Doom 3 at Your Own Peril

In 2016 Doom was back with bright colors, cartoonish demons, gore, speed and violence. Players and critics alike hailed it as the long-awaited return of a series that lost its identity with its...

A Guide to the Rough Early Seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation

With the new series Star Trek: Picard now in full swing, it’s only natural that viewers might want to check out its predecessor, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Premiering in first-run s...

Lab Zero Workers, Skullgirls Players Detail Studio Owner's Toxic Behavior

Over the weekend of Aug. 21, 2020, several prominent staffers from game studio Lab Zero publicly departed over Twitter. Many posted statements explaining why they were leaving. Some of these notes ref...

Calculating the Odds of Getting Big Stats vs. Big Boobs in Dragalia Lost

It’s been a year and a half since Dragalia Lost clawed its way into our hearts. With yet-to-be-announced events in store for later this month, now’s the perfect time to pick up (o...

A Humble Proposal for the Next Season of Destiny 2

We’ve got about a month and a half left in Destiny 2‘s Season of the Dawn, and players are starting to look back at what we’ve gotten thus far and forward to what might come next. Person...

The Director of Scorn Explains What the Hell Is Going on in That Trailer

Scorn certainly made a splash at Microsoft’s Xbox Series X showcase this month. Or rather, it made a wet glopping sound as biomechanical knob extended from a wall and oozed what looked a lot...

The Metal Gear Solid Novelization is a Modern Classic

I’ve never played a Metal Gear Solid game. For years I thought the series was impenetrable, a shadowy and undecipherable opus hidden behind the mythic auteur of Hideo Kojima. By sheer cultural...

Gaming in the Time of Coronavirus Fuels the Social Aspect There All Along

You’re lying on a beach in the Northern Hemisphere. In a dream a cartoon dog named DJ KK is softly strumming the guitar and telling you that when you open your eyes. Soon you’ll awake to a new re...

Fans Rescued a Lost Dragon Age Game, The Last Court, Before It Faded

Just before Dragon Age: Inquisition arrived in 2014 (I know), developer BioWare heralded its arrival with The Last Court. The browser game followed the Marqui...

Bloodline Bullshit Ruins the Revolutionary Message of Star Wars

This piece contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Now’s your last chance to turn back!

Video Game Food Is Nourishment for These Hobby Free Times

If you’re a millennial, it’s a known fact that you’ve personally killed at least three industries, businesses, or hobbies. It’s nothing to do with the housing market ladder getting pulled up in front...

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Takes on a Changing Seattle

Homelessness in Seattle as nearly tripled since 2010. Thanks to skyrocketing rents driven by an influx of tech company employees, thousands of people have been priced out of the city and even forced o...

Fallout 76 Players Are Beating Each Other Up in a Nude Underground Fight Club

The crowd watches on as two warriors square up to fight in the makeshift ring. The ropes are built out of wooden fences and the mat is comprised of a collection of dirty mattresses stacked in rows. A...

History, Life, and Death in 'Disco Elysium'

Disco Elysium’s world is a corpse. The symptoms of its ongoing decomposition can be seen everywhere, creeping upon the shoulders of every character, reflected by the wild, fragmented exp...

How 'Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice' Made Video Game Horror Work

Most video games require an active player, an agent within the plot and mechanical framework of the simulated world. For horror, a genre built around instilling physical sensations of vulnerability an...

How Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II Made The Force Interesting

In the walled city of Iziz the caged beasts howl songs about their own matted fur into air that tastes like violence. Men stand alongside those cages, some dreaming of a home outside the walls. A nerv...

Nicolas Cage in a Post-Ironic Universe: On a Decade of Cagesploitation

Nicolas Cage is an actor forever associated in the popular imagination with his most outrageous scenes. In 2016’s Dog Eat Dog, for example, Cage sprays ketchup and mustard bottles on a shirtles...

The Quiet, Enduring Success of The Lord of the Rings Online

Lord of the Rings Online recently launched its seventh expansion to a complete lack of fanfare outside of its fanbase and a few hardcore MMO sites. As a franchise, The Lord of the Rings ...

How Sonic the Hedgehog Became a Hero For Kids With ADHD

Long before the Blockbuster empire dwindled down to a single location in Bend, Oregon, my local store was a bustling weekly destination. Throughout early grade school I frequented the video palace for...