Every year at Summer Game Fest, nestled in between the splashy blockbuster showcases, the Wholesome Direct provides a nice change of pace. It’s similarly packed with games – this year’s edition had more than 50 – but the vibe is more chill and, well, wholesome. As in years past, I’ve pulled out some of the […]
Benn Jordan may have initially gained notoriety for his music as Flashbulb and later, reviewing synths and effects pedals on YouTube under Benn and Gear. But about five years ago, Benn decided to take his YouTube channel in a different direction. He didn’t stop covering music gear overnight, but as time progressed, his channel became […]
Back in 2015, the two-person studio Metanet released N++, a brutally hard 2D platformer that was a decade in the making, building off of previous releases dating back to the freeware Flash title N. At the time, cofounder Raigan Burns issued some famous last words: “We hope it’s not another 10 years before we come […]
Who’s afraid of the next GTA? Based on the last few days of Summer Game Fest, just about everyone. Grand Theft Auto VI hasn’t been present at any of the keynote events, but its presence was felt every time a release date was announced. The month of November, when GTA VI launches, is virtually empty. […]
Chronologically, Control Resonant is a sequel to 2019’s Control. But in most other ways, the games aren’t directly connected. To developer Remedy, they’re more like two sides of the same coin. When Resonant was first revealed last year, creative director Mikael Kasurinen said you can play the games in any order. The world of Control […]
Even if you’ve done nothing wrong, it’s never a good idea to hand your phone to the cops. But international travelers at American airports often have no choice – even if they’re US citizens. When Minnesota labor organizer Janette Zahia Corcelius returned home from a three-week trip to Europe in late April, she was detained […]
In between beef tallow fries, raw milk, and vaccine denialism, Make America Healthy Again figureheads have set their sights on another slice of life: our clothing. “The MAHA movement doesn’t stop with what we EAT – It’s also about what we WEAR,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a post on X in late […]
Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone’s whereabouts. This week, I’m investigating where it might have been built – and why it definitely wasn’t the US. Almost a year after its announcement, the Trump phone has “launched.” A […]
The MacBook Neo is Apple’s cheapest laptop, its most colorful, and its easiest to repair in years. That means owners can buy replacement parts in all four of its available colors and swap them in on their own. So that got us thinking: What if we bought a Neo just to see how funky we […]
Amazon’s gaming strategy has never really been clear. It’s been very active in the space: acquiring Twitch, launching its Luna cloud gaming service nearly six years ago, investing heavily in MMOs during the peak of live-service wave, and having access to a huge slate of franchises through Prime Video and the MGM Studios library. Late […]