Ethan Gach

Mario Kart Tour’s Winter Update Is A Bust

Mario Kart Tour’s big winter update went live yesterday and it feels underwhelming, making me question whether or not it’s really worth it to keep subscribing to the game’s $5 monthly subscription. The game’s Winter Tour is meant to be a festive bit of seasonal fun to close out the year. It sports Mario in…

Two days after launch, Google says Stadia access codes have finally been sent out to everyone who pre-ordered the service in June It’s now working on sending out codes to everyone who pre-ordered in July, and after that everyone else.

The strategy RPG series Langrisser is finally returning on March 10 in the form of remasters of Langrisser I and II for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC The first game was previously the only one in the series to ever come West back in 1991 for the Sega Genesis.

A Day Of Trying To Stream Xbox One Games While On The Go

When Microsoft’s video game streaming service, Project xCloud, began its beta last month, there were only four games available to test. Now there are over 50. I spent a day taking the service on the road with me to see how it’s working. Currently, the service streams games from Microsoft’s servers to a smartphone or…

Borderlands 3 is getting a casino heist on December 19. Called Moxxi’s Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, the update is the first of four story expansions included in the game’s season pass. Meanwhile, the game’s first new endgame activity Takedown at Maliwan’s Blacksite will go live tomorrow. 

Some People Who Pre-Ordered Stadia Say They Still Can’t Access It [Update]

In June, Google made an enticing offer for its new streaming service, Stadia—anyone who pre-ordered the Founder’s Edition would be able to lock in the usernames of their choice before anyone else could. Now, however, some people who pre-ordered the service say they haven’t even gotten in. Instead, they still find themselves waiting for an…

Activision Blizzard’s CEO Doesn’t Think Its Games Should Be Political

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick doesn’t think his companies’ games should be used as platforms for sharing political views. He said as much an interview appearance on CNBC earlier today “We’re not the operator of the world’s town halls,” Kotick, who in 2017 made 28.6 million running the video game company behind Call of Duty…

Warframe’s The Old Blood update went live today for PS4 and Xbox One Released a few weeks ago on PC, it adds a new body horror-inspired Warframe whose torso is a giant mount as well as a new villain and changes to the melee system. The Switch version shouldn’t be far behind. 

I still hate Jack, Gears of War’s Pixar-like companion drone, but after hearing the inspiration behind him I appreciate why he exists. Gears 5 director Rod Fergusson said at a recent game conference that Jack was meant to give non-Gears players an approachable cooperative role similar to Mario Galaxy’s co-star mode.

The Outer Worlds Gets A Bigger Text Mode

The Outer Worlds received an all important new feature in today’s patch: a bigger text mode. Finally, no more squinting at my TV from six feet away. The option to shift to the larger print can be found in the settings menu. There’s no slider so you can only toggle it on or off, but…

Say No! More is a colorful-looking office sim about telling your bosses to shove it that got announced earlier today It’s coming to iOS, PC and Switch sometime in 2020 and looks like a delightfully cathartic way to blow off some steam. 

How To Kill Jedi: Fallen Order‘s Oggdo Bogdo More Easily

The key to beating one of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s earliest optional boss fights is to start it off with a jump attack. If that attack connects successfully, you’re golden. If not, you’re in for a world of pain. Oggdo Bogdo is a giant black alien toad on the first planet you go to…

I Didn’t Realize How Much I Love Suspending Games Until The Outer Worlds Took That Away

The Outer Worlds begins with your character coming out of cryo-sleep. They’ve been out of commission for years as their colony ship traveled across the galaxy, but once awakened they’re able to pick up right where they left off. I’ve come to take it for granted this console generation that my games can do this…

Pokémon Sword And Shield Are Making Some TVs Shut Off [Update]

Over the weekend, some players sat down to play Pokémon Sword and Shield on their Roku TVs, only to have them get stuck frozen on the startup screen before rebooting. Roku said it’s currently working to fix the problem. “We are aware of an issue when using Nintendo Switch and the latest Pokémon game impacting…

Untitled Goose Game As A PS1 Game Is Perfect

Indie developer Narayana Walters decided the titular fowl from Untitled Goose Game wasn’t menacing enough and so decided to recast the anti-hero in the lo-fi hell of a PlayStation 1 game. Untitled Goose Game is an animal circus full of clever little details and brilliant moments of spontaneous slapstick, but at bottom it’s about a…

Spamming Like In Death Stranding Makes You Feel Real Good

Death Stranding’s America is dotted with thousands, possibly even millions, of player-made structures that can make the post-apocalyptic expanse less dangerous and also less lonely⁠—perhaps even welcoming. These structures have a social media-inspired system that lets you click a “like” button on them. And I am determined to favorite them all as much as possible.…

Fallout 76, One Year Later

Bethesda launched Fallout 76 one year ago today, and almost everything that could go wrong did. And yet 12 months later it’s still around, still getting updates, and full of players who remain willing to pour their best and most creative energies into trying to make it an interesting and wondrous place. It’s been a…

A Ton Of Final Fantasy Games Are Coming To Xbox Game Pass

Final Fantasy VII through XV (excluding the two MMOs) will get added to Game Pass in the coming months, Microsoft announced today during the latest episode of Inside Xbox at this year’s XO19 fan event in London. That chunk of the series includes 10 games, many of which, like Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XII:…

Halo: Reach is coming to the Halo: Master Chief Collection on Xbox One and PC on December 3, Microsoft announced today. It’s the first of the collection’s games to come to PC, and the first Halo to make that journey in a very long time.

Age Of Empires II‘s Remaster Kicks Ass

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is a lot. It adds new campaigns, civilizations, revamped enemy AI, and 4K graphics, in case you’ve been waiting to see a flood of medieval warriors clash incomprehensibly with one another in crisp detail. Remastered and slightly reworked, one of the defining real-time strategy games of the turn of…