Please, Don't Shoot the Engineers of Halo 3: ODST

In all likelihood, the first time you encounter an Engineer in Halo 3: ODST, it’ll be in the open world — in the dark, occupied streets of the futuristic African superci...

8 More of the Best (and Worst) Switch Ports on the Market

The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S are upon us, but with stock in short supply, many of us are left playing our PS4 copies of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The new (dystopian) future has arri...

Appreciating All the Little Details of Nessus in Destiny 2

Ever just stop and look at all the tiny details in a game? Someone had to put them there. Sure they may have been painted with brushes. Some of it may even be procedurally generated! But there’s so mu...

From X-Men to Iron Man: The Strange Tale of Genepool Software

You’ve probably never heard of Genepool Software, the developer of X2: Wolverine’s Revenge — a video game tie-in to the 2001 X-Men sequel. Based out of a Victorian manor house in th...

Horror Games Just Don't Scare Me Like Cyberpunk Does

The contours of genre are more guides than borders.

A Perpetual State of Undress: Tetsuya In the Naked Reviewed

In early July 2020, a brief respite from the despair and mundanity of pandemic life came in the form of a tweet from Daisuke Sasaki. The idiosyncratically but fervently supportive leader (?) of DDT Pr...

The Scenic Route: Exploring the Appeal of Bus and Train Simulators

When Flight Simulator 2021 was released, it was praised as an antidote to the doldrums of quarantine. The appeal of flying anywhere in the world was obvious, and sales quickly shot over two mil...

Sony's 'The Tomorrow Children' Was Ahead of Its Time

When people talk about their favorite PlayStation exclusives, the free-to-play game The Tomorrow Children doesn’t usually rank among them, buried under an avalanche of sad dad simulators and ci...

The Best Parts of Cyberpunk 2077 Slow Down to Deal With Death

Death in video games is not a new concept. It’s typical that we, as players, are directly responsible for death, or at least actively die in gruesome (and sometimes comical) ways. Killing is such an i...

The Best Part of Genshin Impact is Fucking with Timmie

Genshin Impact is a game about beating up enemies and rescuing digital girl- and boyfriends from a merciless gacha system. But surprisingly, for a lot of other players and myself, nothing’s s...

The Strange Allure of the Pacific Northwest

When you picture the Pacific Northwest — the area that consists of the northwestern corner of the United States and the southwestern part of Canada — there are likely a collection of postcard images t...

Dragon Age's Shifting Perspectives Keep Undermining its Personal Stories

Yesterday, Bioware finally acknowledged the next Dragon Age game in a way that went beyond tweets for the first time in literal years. The developer diary wasn’t much, but it was enough to send...

Every Hitman Level Is a Punchline and Agent 47 Is the Fist

I am a cameraman, wading my way through the crowds of Marrakesh. I’m on my way to an interview, between my GNN news crew and Claus Hugo Strandberg, an illustrious businessman hiding out in the Swiss e...

Hades Reminds Us That, Now More Than Ever, the World Needs Hunks

You’ve seen him. You’ve heard him. There’s a strong likelihood you’ve played as him. Prince Zagreus has been an unavoidable presence online ever since the game Hades was born (or, rebo...

Celebrate Daikatana's 20th Birthday With Its Weird Game Boy Color Port

20 years ago, John Romero’s Daikatana launched on PC and was immediately slammed by critics and players alike. The Guardian even lists it as one of “the 30 worst video games of all time.” But t...

Press A to Boldly Go: A History of Star Trek Video Games

Studios and developers have been creating Star Trek video games for nearly as long as there have been video games. Star Trek games date as far back as a 1971 text adventure written in BA...

My Next Life as a Villainess is as Perfect as its Bisexual Disaster Heroine

While Ascendance of a Bookworm has taken on the role of an isekai series with a well-realized fantasy world starring a heroine slowly working to bringing down the class system, My Next Lif...

The Gaming Community Where Players Take Their Time

“The game’s story is something I wouldn’t be surprised to find in a Hollywood movie,” writes Reddit user JohnO500 in a recent review. “I always look for this level of meticulous writing in games, and...

100 Free Animal Crossing: New Horizons Island Names

Choosing a name for your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make as a villager, second only to selecting an island in the first place. It’s not som...

Defining Dina from The Last of Us: Part II

Spoilers for The Last of Us Part II to follow.