How a Clip From Stray Got Me Banned From Twitter

I am currently on vacation. It’s been nice, I get to sleep in a lot, no one asks for my opinion on video game news (besides No. 3 Games Journalist Jeff Grubb), and I get to just play games rather than...

I Love the Poison Mist Incantation in Elden Ring

Ever since my esteemed colleague Collin MacGregor turned me onto the fact that poison mist could be used to cheese certain strong foes in Elden Ring, I’ve been positively hooked on the incant...

Star-Lord is Bisexual, So When Will Games and Movies Catch Up?

The following article will contain spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Players Are Building Their Own Fictional Worlds Inside Sports Simulators

FIFA and Madden are gaming behemoths, but in-depth simulators like Football Manager (FM), Franchise Hockey Manager, and Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) have niche appeal. <...

Let the Guardians of the Galaxy Say 'Fuck'

Who among us doesn’t like to drop the f-bomb into casual conversation? I get the sense someone in the writers room of Guardians of the Galaxy does, but probably didn’t have the greenlight by Ma...

Intimate Space: The State of Queerness in Mass Effect

In Mass Effect’s vision of the far-flung future, humanity has integrated into a galactic society. Long gone are the otherings and dissension of modern-day Earth, as humans take their place in t...

Fallout 4 Has Aged Like a Ghoul in 2021

This weekend I did the unthinkable. I beat the main story quest in a Bethesda game. Specifically I finished Fallout 4 — the studio’s last single-player stab at the sci-fi series from 2015. It...

Inside PlayMagic, the Studio Behind the Disastrous XIII Remake

On November 13th 2020, publisher Microids and developer PlayMagic put out a statement apologizing for their recent remake of XIII. Fans had been eagerly anticipating the remake of Ubisof...

The Growing Community of FFXIV Roleplaying Venues

It’s 2:45 a.m. on a Monday morning, and I’m performing my weekly ritual: playing five different arrangements of “Despacito” in a row at closing time in a Final Fantasy XIV roleplaying bar. It’s...

Bringing NEO: The World Ends With You’s Stylish World to Life in the West

Localizing a video game is a monumental task under the best of circumstances, but there’s an additional layer of pressure when working on a sequel with a devoted fanbase that has held out hope for ove...

FFXIV Fans Make Some Weird, Wonderful Shit When There's Nothing Else to Do

If there were a Farmers’ Almanac for MMORPGs, it would have warned Final Fantasy XIV players of a long, hot summer this year. “Content drought’s here again,” we say, shading our...

How Boss Fight Books Changed Video Game Literature for the Better

The idea for Boss Fight Books came to founder Gabe Durham in 2013. He was “hungry for the next thing professionally,” he tells me from Los Angeles, where the publishing house is based. He’d been writi...

The Trials and Tribulations of Localizing Sega's Lost Judgment

When Judgment released in 2018, a lot of long-time fans of RGG Studio were surprised that the western localization had an English dub for the first time since the 2005 PlayStation 2 rele...

Women's Basketball Is Growing, And Its Leadership Is Finally Acknowledging That

Every week in her Good Form column, Natalie Weiner explores the ways in which the sports world’s structural inequalities and injustices illuminate those outside it — and the ways in which th...

The 8 Best Microsoft Flight Simulator Third Party Planes (May 2022)

You may have looked at our official list of all the planes in Microsoft Flight Simulator and been left wondering what the best third party planes are. There’s a hell of a lot of options and q...

I Went Clubbing and Saw a Live Performance in FFXIV, It Was Dope as Hell

A couple weekends ago, I went clubbing…in Final Fantasy XIV. The Allure Lounge, a free company house that holds in-game parties and performances, was open two nights for their Vegas-themed week...

An Ode to Ashley Williams from Mass Effect

The following will contain spoilers for Mass Effect and its sequels. Reader discretion is advised.

Dragon Ball: The Breakers Developers Are Candid About Their Obvious Influences

Last month, Bandai Namco announced the latest Dragon Ball game in their generally fighting-heavy portfolio for the series. Eschewing the usual genre choices this time around, The Bre...

Shepard on Shepard: Mass Effect's Mark Meer on His Journey in N7 Armor

With the Mass Effect series in a state of revitalized fandom thanks to the Legendary Edition remasters, and the future in an uncertain limbo, seemingly hinting at some kind of return to...

Which Yakuza Title Should You Start With?

The Yakuza series is at this point one of Sega’s shining stars in the Japanese company’s portfolio. The long-running series first began in 2005 and has continued over the years across mu...