Tag: video games

10 Best Retro Game Consoles (2024): Evercade, Polymega, Analogue Pocket, and Controllers
Technology

10 Best Retro Game Consoles (2024): Evercade, Polymega, Analogue Pocket, and Controllers

It’s a shame that two of the best retro gaming consoles in recent years, the NES Classic Mini and the SNES Classic Mini, have been discontinued. Both feature great designs with a miniaturized look that’s true to the originals, silky performance, and strong game lineups of Nintendo’s greatest hits. You can still buy them online (usually from third-party resellers), but prices are seriously inflated. The SNES Classic Mini, for example, was $80 at launch, but a reseller has it for more than $300 on Amazon right now. You might have better luck buying one used.Nintendo fans keen on some classic gaming action might be better served by snagging a Switch and buying a Nintendo Switch Online membership ($20 for a year) to access more than 100 NES and SNES titles (here’s the full list). Add the Expa...
‘Fallout’ Nails Video Game Adaptations by Making the Apocalypse Fun
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‘Fallout’ Nails Video Game Adaptations by Making the Apocalypse Fun

Nolan tasked Fallout showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet with threading that particular needle. The pair chose to center the series around three protagonists, played by Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Aaron Clifton Moten, all of whom enter the story at a turning point in their lives. As a cowboy movie star turned ghoul, Goggins’ character is cold and lawless, a set of emotions you have to imagine stems from the loss he’s felt in the 219 years since the first bombs fell. Moten is Maximus, a former orphan who joins up with the paramilitary tech protectors in the Brotherhood of Steel and stumbles his way into a chance at greatness. Purnell is Lucy MacLean, a naive Vault Dweller who sets off into the Wasteland in pursuit of her kidnapped father (Kyle MacLachlan).“All of th...
13 Best Mobile Game Controllers (2024): iPhone or Android
Technology

13 Best Mobile Game Controllers (2024): iPhone or Android

There are several other mobile controllers we tested that just missed out on a place above or failed to make the grade, plus a few that we are keen to test soon.Turtle Beach Atom Controller for $80: With a clever two-piece design, this controller folds away neatly, but feels insecure without a back. The clamps on each side are awkward, particularly with phones sporting large camera modules. I had trouble connecting, and dislike that the right side has to be turned on separately (press B and menu buttons). The right side connects wirelessly (2.4 GHz), but the controller connects to your phone via Bluetooth. It mostly worked fine for me, but when I played Jydge, the movement was inverted on the left stick. You get around 20 hours of battery life. It takes about two hours to charge. If porta...
14 Best PlayStation VR2 Games to Play Right Now (2024)
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14 Best PlayStation VR2 Games to Play Right Now (2024)

Six years after Sony released its first virtual reality headset, we finally got our hands on the PS VR2. If you can wrap your head around spending more for an accessory than for the console itself, the headset is worth the wait. Sony got rid of the external processor boxes, upped the resolution, and added features like HDR support and advanced eye tracking. It’s also really, really comfortable—almost comfortable enough to make you forget that it’s still wired.Now that you have the headset, what do you play? We’ve spent months working our way through some of the newest titles. Here are our top picks. Don’t see anything you like? We’re continuing to test games, and don’t forget to check out our guide to the Best PlayStation Accessories and the Best PlayStation Plus Games.Special offer for G...
A ‘House of the Dragon’ Star Made a Video Game to Grieve His Father
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A ‘House of the Dragon’ Star Made a Video Game to Grieve His Father

A decade ago, Abubakar Salim lost his father. That grief lives within him. An actor by trade, with credits in Raised by Wolves and House of the Dragon’s upcoming season, he searched for years for the right medium to work through the hurt. A film. A TV show. Nothing did it justice—until he tried to make a video game. “If you’re really depicting grief in a truthful and honest way, it is so open and chaotic that actually, you can kind of gamify it,” he says.Salim is the CEO and creative director of Surgent Studios, the developer behind the upcoming Metroidvania game Tales of Kenzera: Zau. The game, set to launch April 23, follows a young shaman, Zau, who has made a deal with the god of death to bring his father back to life in exchange for three great spirits. Its story is a reflection of co...
Brazilian Gamers Aren’t Waiting for Hollywood. They’re Building Their Own Cons
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Brazilian Gamers Aren’t Waiting for Hollywood. They’re Building Their Own Cons

In 2022, I interviewed journalist Mariana Ayrez, who opened my eyes to the relevance of Perifacon. She reiterated that “while other events promote pop culture and bring together artists and the public, they have a lot of incentive from private business players. Meanwhile, Perifacon delivers geek culture, love, and fun to all involved independent of their budget. Their main goal is accessibility.”Delgado believes that while Perifacon calls attention to social inequality, it also promotes artists from those marginalized communities and showcases their products to a public that wants them and can’t get them in any other way. Favela influence is everywhere in Brazilian art, culture, and sports.“The favela is the powerhouse that people already know. However, brands and enterprises are still af...
Video Games as Art | WIRED
Technology

Video Games as Art | WIRED

As I wandered through the exhibition Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art, my mind felt like it had been hit by several lightning strikes. This exhibition, currently at Chicago’s Wrightwood 659 gallery, showcases the work of 17 artists who have been working in digital spaces for decades, focusing on how the digital world has impacted our collective sense of identities, from race and gender to the surveillance state.But what struck me were the artists using video games in their work. For decades, debates have raged over the role of video games in society: Are they art? Are they dangerous? Meanwhile, artists have been using video games in their work. Some artists create actual video games; others record films within a video game, creating movies called machinima....
The Fight Tearing the Game Awards Apart
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The Fight Tearing the Game Awards Apart

Geoff Keighley had a lot to talk about. Onstage at this year’s Game Awards, the host, who is also the event’s creator and producer, took an in-person and online audience through hours of trailers, announcements, celebrity appearances, and awards. His event has become, almost by default, the biggest show in gaming. By the time the lights went down and gamemakers ambled their way to the bars of Los Angeles to celebrate, there was one thing many in the gaming community had wanted to hear Keighley say. On that point, though, he stayed silent.Many knew he would. Still, beginning November 24, dozens of participants in The Game Awards' emerging talent initiative, Future Class, had signed an open letter addressed to Keighley, Future Class director Emily Bouchoc, and the event’s planning team aski...
The Death of E3 Signals the End of Gaming’s Most Extravagant Era
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The Death of E3 Signals the End of Gaming’s Most Extravagant Era

E3 is finished, for good this time. The Entertainment Software Association confirmed today that the event will not be happening in 2024 or any time thereafter, bringing 28 years of the video game industry’s most prolific trade event to a sudden, unceremonious end.E3’s demise isn’t wholly unexpected. The annual event, a three-day pageant (with press conferences leading up to its showfloor opening a day or two before), was once the pinnacle of showcases for companies’ forthcoming titles and consoles. As platforms like Twitch grew more popular, however, gamemakers and publishers no longer needed to rely on a trade show to make a splash. With the show’s poor attendance at what would be its final in-person event in 2019, and the ESA’s troubles with reviving the show post-pandemic, the writing ...
‘Den of Wolves’ Will Be a Sci-Fi Heist—With a ‘Power Fantasy’ Soundtrack
Technology

‘Den of Wolves’ Will Be a Sci-Fi Heist—With a ‘Power Fantasy’ Soundtrack

Following two years of preproduction, game developer 10 Chambers finally announced its new heist game—Den of Wolves—Thursday during the 2023 Game Awards. Set in 2097 in a highly corrupt city located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it is, according to narrative director Simon Viklund, the kind of game “where you're supposed to feel like a badass.” For Viklund, who also serves as the game’s composer (he did the compositions for PayDay: The Heist and PayDay 2, too), that means “the music needs to, like, [grunt noise].”True to its name, Den of Wolves’ fictional city is a place where basically anything is legal as long as it is done in the pursuit of supercharged innovation and groundbreaking technology. Imagine PayDay meets Cyberpunk 2077 set in a metropolis that's a mixture of Venice and...