I bought a PS5 about a year ago and the Series S a little more recently. It’s an incredible console for the size and price point. I’ll probably still do 90% of my gaming on the PS5, and I do generally like Playstation more, but the Series S is great for Microsoft’s backward compatible collection as well as exclusives…

While I don’t love the direction a lot of AAA games have gone in (everything is $$$/corporate marketing > gameplay, Battlefield being the prime example) I do love the state of Xbox and Playstation. I think people tend to overemphasize the differences between the two companies (not that there aren’t any, just that the…

It’s a shame that Insurgency: Sandstorm and Hell Let Loose aren’t doing better on console. These are games that are far more enjoyable than CoD or Battlefield, and developed by much smaller teams.

The bugs don’t bother me—they can be fixed. What bothers me is that at its core, it’s painfully obvious they developed a game that attempted to crib streamer-approved features from the Battle Royale genre rather than making a great Battlefield game.

I’m not as down on this game as most, but I do think that it needs a bit more map diversity—infantry gameplay is broken right now, and that’s a huge failure. Helicopters are too weak. In general, I think vehicle spawns should be more limited, but in return vehicles should be more lethal. I think that’s a better…

Glad they’re speaking out. Always bugs me when I see people on forums--especially RPGs--trying to racially classify fantasy races with human counterparts. Like... I’m Jewish. That doesn’t make a dwarf or elf. It makes me a human. I’m an Imperial in Elder Scrolls, thanks, not a bug-man.

The biggest challenge isn’t killing that bear. The biggest challenge is the agonizing decision between playing as an axe-wielding warrior, proud knight, or wise mage on your first playthrough.

I dunno how I feel about Infinite so far. I’m playing on Xbox and it’s not bad, but I’m also not left with the sense of awe that made Halo CE/2/3 (and even Reach) so popular in my childhood/college days. Going to try to spend a lot more time with it, but I keep bouncing back to Battlefield (which I own on PS5, and…

Thanks John. As a writer who never gets to write about video games, I was floored that you noticed these issues the way I did.

Do you think they’ll patch them soon? I’d pick this up (haven’t played any of these since i beat them all on PS2 other than Vice City, which I replayed... on iPad) but I’m really turned off by what I’m hearing about the resolution on PS5. I’m also a little frustrated remastered PS2 games need to even have a…

Inglorious Basterds works because it doesn’t pull punches or pretend it’s something it’s not, and it’s extremely self-aware. This game is the polar opposite, without any of the self-awareness. It’s crass and dumb, and it gets a lot wrong, even besides its clumsy handling of racism (and weirdly absent antisemitism).…

The old games might be pretty arcady compared to modern titles (I originally had 3, Vice City, and San Andreas on PS2, and at the time I thought they were some of the most immersive worlds ever created, but ended up replaying and beating Vice City on an iPad nearly a decade ago) but they still hold up and I think…

It’s hard to applaud anything super-wealthy people do, but this is actually an extremely rare effort. Although it’s a temporary decision, I’m sure, he’s making as much as I do now, and he doesn’t *have* to be, and honestly, good for him, that’s not an easy decision for anyone to make. Yes, he’s still really rich.…

Normally I’d say “you can’t compare these games” but in this case, you sort of can. Horizon and Halo Infinite are both somewhat similar open world designs. 

I don’t think Halo will ever be really great again, but it’s definitely nice to see a series I’ve been playing since 2001 get people excited, even if I fully expect that excitement to fizzle a month after launch. I’m not sure turning Halo campaigns into Far Cry-style open worlds will do much to improve the gameplay,…

He’s not dead, he’s nearly-dead.

I bought an excellent 1 TB M.2 drive for my PS5 and while it was expensive, it was cheaper than the proprietary Xbox drive. I have both consoles but tend only to use the Xbox for first party games like Gears and Forza and for the deep Game Pass backlog and backward compatibility. I tend to buy more next-gen games on…

It’s interesting that you disliked Halo CE so much but really enjoyed Reach, because one of the reasons I love Reach is that it borrows heavily from Halo CE.

I don’t think being lost is a bad thing in a game like CE. I think that sense of scale and confusion adds to a lot of the drama, especially in those later levels. I do understand there’s a fine line between artistic direction and needless frustration, but I think Halo CE still manages to pull it off. The Silent…

It’s funny, at the time a lot of people were so upset you spent half of Halo 2 with Arby, but in retrospect I found those missions far more interesting Than Chief’s. Halo 2 has my favorite music but Halo CE will always be the one I actually want to come back to. Reach is also great because it’s an original, complete,…