Author: Blake Hester

Blake Hester is a freelance writer and unashamed Sonic apologist. To read more of his work, check out his website: blakehester.rocks.
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Let’s talk about all the animals in the Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer

We all sat around in hushed anticipation, our hearts racing for our first glimpse at Rockstar Games’s official foray into the current generation of consoles. We could hardly wait, our noses nearly touching our screens we leaned in so close, as if to not miss a single polygon. And then it started, and for one minute and eight seconds, we got our first look at Red Dead Redemption 2.  Which is all well and good, sure. But did you fucking see all those animals?! Let’s talk about that. At merely seven seconds we see our first horse, the Cadillac of the…
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Red Dead Redemption 2 is real and definitely has cowboys

If you were listening, you could hear most of the internet gasp at the exact same moment. After two days of obvious teases, Rockstar Games has officially announced the long-rumored sequel to Red Dead Redemption (2010). And it’s called Red Dead Redemption 2. Who’d have thought? All we know about Red Dead Redemption 2 at this point is that it’ll be coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in fall 2017, that it’ll have multiplayer, and feature some swag-looking cowboys. Oh, we also know that we should find out a little more about it tomorrow, October 20th, as the debut trailer drops then. Everything…
Thumper
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Surprise! Thumper is out now and it’s fast as hell

Originally scheduled to release on October 13, it appears the team at Drool decided to say, “To Hell with schedules,” and release Thumper a few days early for PlayStation VR, PlayStation 4, itch.io and Steam. For the uninitiated, Thumper is an insane “rhythm violence” game that puts players in control of a chrome beetle, firing down its track at breakneck speeds, all the while fighting metal leviathans blocking its way. It’s bright, intense, and kind of hard to stare at, looking less like a game and more like a Hajime Sorayama painting from a neon Hell. “can’t even describe it to someone else” When…
Mafia III
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Mafia III is a big “f*ck you” to its predecessors

There’s an attractive quality to the crime stories of the first two Mafia games. Two protagonists down on their luck—Tommy Angelo in the first and Vito Scaletta in the second—find success through a life of crime, wanting nothing more than to rise through the ranks, to be wealthy, to be a “Made Man.” Mafia III doesn’t care for that. Were it a different Mafia game, you may look at Mafia III’s Sal Marcano as a father figure, assisting your transition to the Italian mafia. Sal’s son, Georgi Marcano, might be your best friend, your confidant. In a different Mafia game, you’d be…
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Slayer Shock is the videogame equivalent of a vampire B-movie

Slayer Shock is an effort to make a tense, smart vampire survival game, but it ends up feeling more like a B-movie version of a classic genre. It’s not offensively bad or anything like that—it has a worse fate. It is bland. In the wake of a vampire epidemic, Slayer Shock tasks you with wandering a procedural Nebraskan town, completing tasks such as going on patrol or killing elders. As you walk around exorcising vampires, you can collect “vampire dust” that can be exchanged for weapons or abilities. You can sneak through tall grass, surprising enemies or come at them head-on and…
News

The Outlast 2 demo made me scream in front of my dad

Red Barrels Studio decided to suddenly release a demo for its upcoming survival-horror game Outlast 2 yesterday. It’s available now, for free, via Steam and the Xbox One and PlayStation Stores. And it’s scary as shit. Outlast 2—as you might have guessed by the name—is the sequel to the relatively successful Outlast (2013). It puts you in the role of Blake Langermann, a cameraman who, after wrecking with his wife Lynn in the Arizona desert, finds himself frantically evading a twisted religious cult. This sequel is set in the same universe as the first game, and still keeps its found footage-style of presentation (i.e. you’re…
News

Guts and Glory is trying to kill you and your family

If you mixed MTV’s Jackass series with Bob Guccione’s Caligula (1980) film, and sprinkled a healthy dose of Super Meat Boy (2010) on top, there’s a good chance the result may be developer HakJak’s upcoming game Guts and Glory. Recently launched on Kickstarter, Guts and Glory asks its players to do one thing: race to the finish line while “everything tries to kill you.” Giving you control of such characters as a father bicycling with his toddler or a family out in a car, traps such as guns, saws, ramps, and run-of-the-mill crashes stand in the way of success. If it…
Cyberpunk 2077
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Cyberpunk 2077 may feature a “huge living city,” seamless multiplayer

Grants submitted by CD Projekt S.A., the head company of developer CD Projekt Red and GOG.com, have surfaced online, giving some insight into the prospective scope of its upcoming game, Cyberpunk 2077. That’s the next game from the people who made The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, if you didn’t know, aka Kill Screen‘s game of the year 2015. Submitted to the GameINN program (translation via Gamepressure), CD Projekt has requested funding to create something it calls “City Creation.” According to Gamepressure’s translation, City Creation will be a complex technology that will create a “huge living city, playable in real time, [where the…
News

New game lets you throw paper planes to people around the world

Today, I sat alone in my house on my phone, catching, stamping, and releasing virtual paper airplanes with over 150,000 people from all over the world. I was alone, but I felt part of such a large, positive community. Created by Active Theory in celebration of Peace Day at Google’s I/O 2016 conference, Paper Planes is a mobile and desktop-based browser game that allows its users to catch and throw paper airplanes that have “traveled” all over the world. Once caught, you are invited to leave a stamp on the plane with your location and usually a cutesy cartoon character,…