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Today we mourn the loss of another iconic and irreplaceable talent. James McCaffrey, actor and the voice of the titular character Max Payne in the beloved neo-noir shooter games, has passed away. He was 65.
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There are so many good reasons to play video games with your family. From just having a great time with invading relatives, to bonding with your children, it’s a boundary-breaking, age-gap traversing activity. Also, it’s an excellent way to fill up the aching stretch of endless Sundays in the back half of December. So…
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Mark Zuckerberg is worth over $100 billion. What does the world’s sixth-richest person do with all that money, besides lighting lots of it on fire to try to bring a Ready Player One-style metaverse to life? Apparently, he builds a sprawling mansion complex with a massive underground bunker that sounds like a cross…
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Though it didn’t snag the GOTY at this year’s Game Awards, there’s no doubting that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of 2023’s many gaming highlights. Featuring an intuitive and versatile crafting system, players are free to accomplish tasks in the open-world RPG in wild, unexpected ways. But in a…
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The Xbox One stumbled out of the gate when it launched back in 2013. But in the decade since, it’s become a bit easier to appreciate Microsoft’s ambitions and foresight with its third console. It combined a console, streaming device, and Blu-Ray player into the original all-in-one media player. But like Marty McFly…
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On the heels of The Game Awards, this week saw the launch of two expansions for fan-fave games: God of War Ragnarok and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. We also took a meaty deep dive into Analogue’s latest and greatest new retro console and did a year-three rundown on the state of the PS5.
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Does anyone else feel like the PS5 just came out, not that long ago? Well, there’s already an abundance of chatter about a potential mid-gen Pro version of Sony’s strangely designed console. And we’ve also got a Game Awards rundown for you too.
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It’s a quiet week for major releases, but a big week for savings and DLC from some of the biggest games in the land, like God of War Ragnarok and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
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Despite The Game Awards officially capping off the end of video game news for 2023, we’ve still got stories to share, from GTA 6 controversies to the inglorious end of E3. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.
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Activision Blizzard has been the subject of scrutiny for several years now, due to its widely criticized “Boys’ Club” corporate culture of sleazy shenanigans. And now, late on a Friday evening just before the holiday season begins in earnest, The Wall Street Journal reports the embattled gaming company announced on…
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It’s a bit of a sad day for The Last of Us fans…well, sort of. Last night the world learned that the highly anticipated yet stubbornly secretive multiplayer TLoU game isn’t going to happen. Despite plowing multiple years of development into the project, Naughty Dog announced it was pulling the plug. And now the…
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When I reviewed Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Indigo Disk DLC, I said I wished it expanded further on some of the specific characters who were central to the main game’s stellar ending. It turns out, The Indigo Disk has a secret ending that the game doesn’t really direct you to in a meaningful way. While I still stand…
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Recently, my wife and I went out to do some Christmas shopping. We also grabbed some lunch while we were out, brought dinner home, rented a movie, and bought a game to play the next day. It should have been a chill weekend, but it wasn’t. In 2023, thanks to greedy billionaires and giant, shitty companies, buying just…
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Video game companies have gotten very creative when it comes to punishing cheaters, from cutting their parachutes’ strings in Call of Duty to blowing them up in Grand Theft Auto Online. But Valve just set a new benchmark for trolling players: sending them permabans wrapped up like Christmas presents.
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Hideki Kamiya, the prolific action game director who co-founded the legendary developer PlatinumGames, surprised the industry when he left the studio behind on October 20 after nearly 20 years there. He said the decision was of his own accord, but questions about why still lingered. Now, Kamiya’s spoken out to share…
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The Blueberry Points grind is the worst part of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Indigo Disk DLC. To access most of the new features the expansion adds, you have to earn Blueberry Academy’s fake currency by doing menial open-world tasks. The game barely gives you any BP for each Blueberry Quest, and it just feels like a…
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A slick new VR headset, a “slim” console refresh, tons of flashy new accessories, and multiple exclusives, including the fastest selling PlayStation game ever, Spider-Man 2. The PlayStation 5 made big moves in 2023. So why does it feel like the console spent most of it resting on its laurels while flailing for a new…
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Streaming platform Twitch recently announced a change to its sexual content policies that allowed some forms of fictionalized nudity—such as digital characters, sculptures, or drawings—as long as it was properly labeled. But now, just a few days later, it’s rolling back these changes and has apologized to the…
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Next month, January of space-year 2024, sees the release of a whole new set of shiny Pokémon cards. Paldean Fates is a muddle of reprinted cards from 2023's sets and a ridiculous 100 new shinies. It will also features a brand-new shiny Charizard, which is going to cost all of the money. However, old fire-face is…
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Back in July of 2023—the month before Baldur’s Gate 3 finally released after spending years in early access—Larian Studios’ director of publishing Michael Douse said that the Dungeons & Dragons-based role-playing game has some 17,000 possible endings. “Wow,” you might be thinking, “that’s a lot of finales! How long…
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Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke believes the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG is a big game worth paying for. I have to agree. The Larian Studios founder says that’s why the game isn’t coming to Xbox Game Pass.
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It’s that time again: We’ve arrived at the weekend after another long series of cursed weekdays, and that, hopefully, means it’s time to get some gaming in.
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The Last of Us Online is dead. Naughty Dog announced today that the multiplayer spin-off of the hit series is no longer in development, citing concerns about managing ongoing content for a live-service game while still trying to produce the single-player blockbusters the PlayStation studio is famous for.
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Epic seems to have found the limit for cosmetic pricing. The company announced today that it is lowering the price of Fortnite’s recently added in-game cars from around $35 to around $23.
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Ubisoft’s The Crew, which was released in 2014 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, has been delisted without warning. Its servers will shut off next year, too. And because the game is an always-online experience, Ubisoft has confirmed that it will become unplayable once that happens.
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Curious about Alan Wake 2 but never played the first? Well if you’re a PC gamer, I’ve got some good news: Grab a copy of Alan Wake 2 on the Epic Games Store during its holiday sale and you’ll get a free copy of the 2021 remastered version of the first game.
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Will we ever be finished re-litigating the Star Wars sequel trilogy? From The Last Jedi on, the movies have been a black hole of discourse that is near-inescapable if you have even a casual interest in the franchise. 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker was such a rocky ending that it seems to have impeded Lucasfilm’s…
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Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s second DLC, The Indigo Disk, is a far less damning encapsulation of the base game than The Teal Mask expansion. The second half of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero embodies the best parts of Scarlet and Violet—even if it never quite matches its highest highs. It’s still the buggy, ugly…
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Final Fantasy XVI is a wonderful game with many flaws. One of the low-key biggest is a grimy, dark pink sky that eclipses the world near the end of the game. It can make completing every side-quest and monster hunt real depressing. Fortunately, players will get a much-needed vacation from the ugliness when the …