A passionless husk of a game — Diablo IV had a huge launch out of the gate just a few months ago, with Blizzard proudly touting it as their biggest release of all time, and big plans for a heavily monetized future. Now, it seems like a ghost town. The always-online nature of the game means that…

Less Loot, More Focus — Late last week, the free 2.0 update for Cyberpunk 2077 came out, and with it the game feels more “finished” than it has any of the other times that the internet has proudly proclaimed that it’s now finally ready to play. This patch has more than a simple list of…

The downfall of a once iconic design legacy? — Razer has done so much for the gaming mouse space. Heck, they helped create it in the first place many years ago with the Razer Boomslang, and the original DeathAdder hammered out a legacy that still influences performance and design choices to this day. Now in 2023, Razer seems to…

And I hope the sequel can lean into them — The release of Starfield killed my personal hype for The Outer Worlds 2 — even though Obsidian’s 2019 original is still one of my favorite games. Bethesda’s new game…

Razer’s bad little beefy boy — In 2020, Razer released the Viper Mini, and it was a huge hit both with the enthusiast mouse audience and with gamers looking to enter their vast hardware ecosystem on more of a budget. …

One more trip into the wasteland — I finished Starfield’s campaign over the weekend, and immediately dove into its fascinating New Game Plus mode. I also started a second character who I’m roleplaying as an evil chef. I want to talk more about all of those things — but later on, probably in the coming months. …

Open World? Spaceships? Random Generation? Loot Everywhere? Yes Please! — I was pretty darn excited for Diablo IV over the course of the last several years. Unfortunately, while the final game is a technical achievement as far as artwork, sound effects, and music go — the core game isn’t very fun to play. It’s designed more like a slow free-to-play…

And other important observations after 40 hours of playing — I love a good plastic door flap. When I was a kid, the local grocery store used these big hanging curtains of plastic to…

The wind is no longer howling — UPDATE 9/14/23: A number of days after this story went live, they finally fixed this in a patch. I would have written this update sooner, but I’ve been busy playing things like Starfield. The original article text follows, and I’m leaving it up for posterity. I still can’t believe that…