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I’ve written about the VTech Socrates before, in a piece on game consoles with fun names. In that piece, I mentioned that the educational console scared me, but didn’t say much beyond that. Here, then...
“Good day, my friends,” It’s the same familiar voice I’ve heard for almost a year now, always ready to present a new lesson on faraway places, fascinating people, and unfamiliar customs. The greeting...
Ever since it was introduced, Gambit has been a contentious game mode in Destiny 2. It’s essentially a race — the PVE/PVP hybrid playlist has players taking on enemies and collecting the...
In many modern games, achievements are like veins. They’re vital for circulation of blood, ideas, and life in a game’s body.
In the 90s, there was no Twitter, no Discord, no social media of any kind. What we did have were real-time chat rooms and programs. These were mostly text-based, with a few notable exceptions — and on...
No one would disagree that Final Fantasy XIV is now a hit with an inspirational story of coming back from the ashes of its 1.0 release. In the last nine years with a revamped base game and four...
Online games are unpredictable things. Most of the time, people are content to play within the guidelines, doing what the designers intended. But sometimes, they need a broader canvas on which to expr...
Outer Wilds is a game about exploring space in 22-minute intervals. There are five planets to explore, a number of space stations, moons, and more to discover. Most of them suck in the best p...
Confession time: I was a classic “good kid” for most of my early life. I didn’t drink until I was in my senior year of high school, and I didn’t touch drugs — even weed — until I was in college. Maybe...
Destiny 2 is a game filled with memorable and powerful foes. But amongst the wish-dragons, the time-traveling robots, the self- made gods, the most terrifying, the most enduring of all o...
Is there anything gamers love more than making a number go up? Well, sure — compelling narratives, engaging action, and mindbending puzzles, I guess. But numbers go up and give good brain chemicals, t...
Final Fantasy XIV capped off its long-running story arc in such stunning fashion with Endwalker. The expansion itself had countless moments that spoke to us in so many different ways, sh...
In the early 2000s, one of the greatest virtues any indie PC game could have was portability. Dial-up connections were still common, and the smaller a game’s file size, the easier it was to download a...
Massively undercutting the market board in Final Fantasy XIV is a lot the “Decisions Decisions” game in Jackbox Games’ Trivia Murder Party. In it, a pot of cash is placed in the center...
The Solar 3.0 changes in Destiny 2 have elevated a whole bunch of Exotics that were previously situational at best to S-tier choices. One of these is Sunbracers, which lets Warlocks...
I’m a bit unnerved by how well Final Fantasy XIV knows me. After writing an entire cast of men I make myself miserable over and one Y’shtola mommy joke later, I’m convinced someone at Square...
There will be a few spoilers for Elden Ring in the following piece.
During the preview phase of Soul Hackers 2, I wrote about how the first eight hours struggled to capture my attention. I saw potential in its world and characters but was left unimpressed by th...
I feel ancient lately. It’s ridiculous, really — I’m only in my mid-30s. But I feel the years piling up, the recollections heaped atop recollections, filtered through retrospectives and reimaginings....
For nearly as long as there have been video games, there have been Star Wars video games. Some of these, like the Super Star Wars games on the SNES, the Jedi...