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Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.
  • Transistor Review
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    • PC
    Transistor Review

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    With Bastion,Supergiant Games proved it doesn't just know how to make a game, but how to think about them. Games tell stories with cutscenes and dialogue because "that's how it's done." New Game+ is a trope because "games just have those now."Reactive narration, story justifications for design tropes: it was clear Supergiant put a great deal of time into thinking about how to make something different with Bastion on top of what was otherwise a fairly standard action-RPG. Oh, and it had fantastic music.Transistor doesn't play to Bastion's strengths - that's one way to put it. You might also say "Transistor doesn't try to copy past glory and past success." You'd probably be right.Instead it's content with being a pretty good cyberpunk-noir-fantasy-mystery-romance-action/turn-based-RPG with great art and zero handholding. If you're into that sort of thing.Oh, and it has fantastic music.
  • Return of the Obra Dinn is the 1800s Mystery from the Maker of Papers, Please
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    • PC
    Return of the Obra Dinn is the 1800s Mystery from the Maker of Papers, Please

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    Return of the Obra Dinn sounds nothing like Papers, Please. Lucas Pope's empathetic masterpiece about immigration and war-torn countries was told from the perspective of a customs officer. Obra Dinn, by contrast, is a "3D first-person mystery game" with a 1-bit art style set in 1808.You are cast in a similarly menial position as Pope's previous game. You're the insurance adjustor for the East India Company's London Office. The company wants you to unravel the secrets behind the titular Obra ("pronounced like 'Cobra' without the C") Dinn, a merchant ship that disappeared on its way to the Orient and reappeared years later with no visible crew.
  • $250,000 up for Grabs in Hearthstone World Championship
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    • PC
    $250,000 up for Grabs in Hearthstone World Championship

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    eSports is so very in right now. Clearly all the Dota 2 kids are into it. This year's International (the game's largest annual tournament) has raised nearly $6.5 million for the prize pool from in-game player purchases. That makes it the biggest eSports prize pool of all-time by a wide margin, and with months of fundraising left before the finals.The Hearthstone World Championship's $250,000 seems like small potatoes by comparison, but remember that whoever wins the $100,000 first place prize doesn't have to split it five ways.That winner will be one of 16 finalists selected from four qualifier hubs around the world. 130 players each from the Americas, Europe, China, and Taiwan/Korea will be whittled down to just 16 finalists.
  • Get Virtual Reality on the Go (Maybe) with Vrizzmo
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    • Android
    • iOS
    Get Virtual Reality on the Go (Maybe) with Vrizzmo

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    Head-mounted displays are the future of gaming! Maybe. I don't know. Anyway, the Oculus Rift is $350 which, last I checked, is more than $65.That's about how much De JET Work's Vrizzmo harness (what a name) will cost. Basically, it's a rubber strap you place your phone in and wear around your head. Specially designed games will show two slightly different images to each of your eyes and provide a stereoscopic 3D effect. Your phone's gyroscope handles the head-tracking.The devs at Oculus Rift have been very outspoken about how miniaturized, low-cost computer parts made their product a reality. The Rift itself is made primarily out of smartphone components, so it's not a massive stretch to think a phone could handle the processing load.It's a cool idea, in theory, but there are some problems.
  • It’s Official: Zenimax Media Sues Oculus Rift
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    • PC
    It’s Official: Zenimax Media Sues Oculus Rift

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    Zenimax Media, the massive company that owns id Software and Bethesda Softworks, has finally made their dispute against Oculus Rift official.The company is suing the virtual reality manufacturer for... Well, a lot of things, really. The gist of the situation is that Zenimax claims Oculus stole technology pertaining to virtual reality that make the Oculus Rift headset possible. This was allegedly done with the help of John Carmack, co-creator of id and franchises like Doom and Quake, and a half-dozen other Zenimax employees.According to Zenimax, Carmack and the other employees developed VR technology under Zenimax contract. After passing off this technology to Oculus they joined the tech start-up (Carmack is Oculus' Chief Technology Officer) and continued to support the technology they had already developed.
  • The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 3 – In Harm’s Way Review
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    • PC
    The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 3 – In Harm’s Way Review

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    My biggest issue with The Walking Dead Season Two premiere was how similar it felt to the first season's opener. Clementine started with a companion of sorts, encounters an emergency, meets some people, and then chooses to let one live or die. It had elements that set it apart from Lee Everett's original story, but it largely seemed like Clementine was literally, not just figuratively, mimicking his legacy.Now, between the second and third installments of season two, things have definitely diverged.My description of the first episode mirrors the rest of the game's first season. There was wandering around, getting into bad situations, but not a definite plot. The meandering felt more dramatic and less dramatized. It was a story of survivors simply surviving. The "plot" was Lee and Clem's developing father/daughter relationship, not an external conflict.
  • But you can’t peel the stickers off: Play Rubik’s Cube on Google
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    • PC
    But you can’t peel the stickers off: Play Rubik’s Cube on Google

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    It's pretty clear the folks at Google have an appreciation for games. Their fully functional version of Pac-Man for the game's 30th anniversary garnered some attention. Searching for "do a barrel roll" will make your browser do just that, and the ever-present Konami Code interacts with a number of Google services, like Drive and the Google Play app.Today the company is celebrating a different kind of gaming. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, and in honor of that occasion you can play a fully interactive version of the puzzle block in your browser.The popular 80's fad doesn't predate video games (it was released in 1974, several years after Spacewar! and the Magnavox Odyssey) but it does hearken back to a simpler time. Though now, I suppose you might say Google has made it into a video game.
  • SUPERHOT Brings Capital Letters and Time-stopping Gunplay to Kickstarter
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    • PC
    SUPERHOT Brings Capital Letters and Time-stopping Gunplay to Kickstarter

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    SUPERHOT (one word, all caps you philistines) is an incredibly cool time-based first-person shooter that you can play in your browser. We've talked about it before, as a great game you can complete in less than 10 minutes.Now, there's a new version of SUPERHOT that will presumably take a bit longer than that. Or at least there will be. The developer launched a Kickstarter campaign to make a new, fully fleshed version of the game - complete with story, new weapons, and new enemies - with a reasonable goal of $100,000.They've already hit that benchmark and will probably reach their first, $120,000 stretch goal (better 3D animations) by the time you're reading this.