There wasn't one particular reason why I put down Deck13's The Surge after a few sessions close to its 2017 launch: there were too many to count. As their sci-fi follow-up to Lords of the Fallen and their second foray into the "Souls" ...

My first experience with Stadia was playing Doom Eternal for half an hour or so last week at E3, and I can't think of a better game to showcase Google's game-streaming platform. It's fast, it's ferocious, and you know what? Stadia totally w...

I liked Ghost Recon Wildlands way more in theory than in execution, but with this year's follow-up, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, my mind is at ease. Ubisoft's E3 showing brought me around and, frankly, I'm as surprised as anyone by this turn of ...

There is no such thing as high-level Roller Champions because Roller Champions itself barely exists. Its introduction to the world came last week with an E3 announcement and a surprise technical alpha that was open to everyone. At...

The story of Psychonauts is one of the happiest underdog stories in recent memory. The original launched to critical acclaim in 2005 but underperformed so badly that plans for a sequel were scrapped fairly early on. The relative failure of ...

Ubisoft's approach to game design for the past decade can most succinctly be summed up as "more is better." More content, more open world, more everything. Sometimes it works out, like with Assassin's Creed Odyssey -- a game that felt ...

We've gone entirely too long without a new PC game that captures the magic of the original Zoo Tycoon, but with Planet Zoo this year, Frontier Developments is looking to set things right for neglected fans. It's a management sim in which yo...

The setting is anything but exciting. A labyrinthine office building, the sort of place where Karen from accounting navigates a maze of cubicles just to ask how your weekend was. She doesn't care. She's just looking to kill time before she ...

Nintendo's E3 Direct was full of a ton of surprises, but one of the more striking was the announcement of Empire of Sin. Feeling completely out of place for Nintendo's family-friendly image, the short teaser showed mobsters gunning down oth...

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair popped up unexpectedly a couple weeks ago, and we were able to get some hands-on time with it at E3 last week. It takes the lizard-and-bat duo from 2017's crowdfunded 3D platformer and flattens the actio...

NIS America wasn't at E3 proper this year. A few blocks away from the convention center, it set up shop in a Chinese restaurant where the smells emanating from the kitchen made my stomach grumble even though I had just eaten about a half-ho...

CJ got the early take on Final Fantasy VII Remake at E3 this year, and after having played through the same section he did, I can agree with most of his observations. But this is one of those big deals so we needed to dig deeper than just t...

At one point in the hands-off gameplay demo of Dying Light 2 at E3, the Techland employee making decisions for the packed room to see on-screen turned on some pumps at a dam, draining one section of the city and flooding another. That one c...

It pains me to say it, but Pokémon Sword and Shield didn't have a particularly good E3. On a micro scale, Nintendo brought a 15-minute-or-so demo in which players got to battle and lightly puzzle-solve their way through a Poké...

Sign me the heck up for video games that – like Carrion – let you wreak havoc on hapless humans as a monster. Whether it's an asymmetric multiplayer experience or a single-player power fantasy, I want in. The upcoming PC and con...

I'm not exactly well-versed in the Sniper Elite games, but I am familiar with the Nazi Zombie Army spin-off. Taking a lot of cues from Valve's Left 4 Dead, this diversion from sniping living Nazi soldiers added a more focused campaign to th...

I've watched two hours of Cyberpunk 2077 at this point -- a one-hour demo at E3 2018, and a one-hour demo at E3 2019. It's still impossibly cool. Here were our impressions from last year. Here's my takeaway this year: Keanu Reeves is j...

I'm not exactly well versed in the world of VR gaming. While I think the technology is cool and all, I feel it has more value in academics than gaming. You can certainly make interesting games around the technology, but there hasn't been mu...

Is there anything better than Luigi's scaredy-cat whimpers? Yeah, maybe – but not much! E3 2019 was my reminder that Luigi's Mansion is a good, wholesome, unlikely series worth supporting. This year, Nintendo's ghost-bustin' action-ad...

Three writers sat in a room in the Microsoft Theater, looking at one man in a room with his wife. She wants to have dessert, so he sets the table while she goes into the other room. The man starts eating without her. Presumably, the guy to ...

Sitting down next to my temporary sister in Bethesda's booth at E3, we shake hands. He takes control of Jess while I get to handle Soph. We're the twin daughters of legendary Nazi fighter B.J. Blazkowicz, and he's raised us right. Which is ...

All right, I may have messed up. When we called dibs last month, I was dazzled by the south Asian muscle woman Amara. And while I'm still going to put her poster up in my locker and draw hearts around it in pink permanent marker, I may have...

Konami isn't presently held in the highest regard by most people. After canceling Silent Hills, firing Kojima at the tail end of Metal Gear Solid V's production, adapting long-dormant franchises into pachinko machines, and releasing the s...

When the original Destroy All Humans! released, it was met with a favorable (but not spectacular) reception. So it may seem like doing a quick, cheap remaster could be viable, but you have to remember: that game came out in 2005. What was f...

I'll admit it: Doom Eternal is not the kind of game I typically play. Don't get me wrong; I play first-person shooters a ton. But I'm more used to the flavor of shooters that have you ducking behind cover to catch a breath and recover some ...