Search Results

When considering a new mouse and comparing specifications, one of the most common specifications that you’ll encounter is the DPI, or dots per linear inch, a common way to measure mouse sensitivity. It’s not always immediately clear how DPI can impact gaming mouse performance, and your experience using it. What is DPI? DPI stands for dots per inch, referring to how a computer mouse measures physical distance. The more technically accurate phrase is actually CPI, or counts per inch, as dots are not actually used as part of the process. However, DPI is the abbreviation you’re more likely to encounter when comparing options, so we’ll be using that going forward. DPI specifically refers to the measurement of the speed at which a mouse cursor moves on-screen, in relation to the distance a user is moving the mouse. For example, if you were to move your mouse an inch to the right with a low DPI, and then move your mouse an inch to the right with a higher DPI, the cursor on-screen would move further in the second example, despite the distance covered by the mouse’s sensor being the same. To be clear, DPI is a measurement of that physical relationship only, and is not representative of the mouse’s precision, or the accuracy of the sensor. The higher the DPI, the faster the cursor moves and the more sensitive it feels. Pretty simple, right? There's a little more to it. DPI and Sensitivity DPI and sensitivity are often correlated in our minds. For many users, increasing a mouse’s DPI appears to make the mouse more sensitive. However, these are different measurements. DPI is a product of the physical parameters of the mouse’s hardware. Sensitivity is usually dictated by software—usually an operating system like Windows. You can have low DPI and high sensitivity, and vice versa. For most purposes, cranking up the sensitivity on a low-DPI mouse isn’t an ideal solution. When the software sensitivity is asked to compensate for a low-DPI hardware, users may encounter herky-jerky performance when zoomed in on a target, or making detailed edits in a design program. Why High DPI? When researching computer mice you’ll sometimes find a higher DPI (often 10,000 and above) marketed as a desirable attribute. Though a higher DPI can potentially result in slightly lower accuracy, to the average user it will have a negligible impact. Having the option of using a higher DPI is usually worth it. For example, a higher DPI might come in handy if you’re working on a high-resolution display. Moving your mouse from one side to the other with a low DPI will take longer. If you’re making this movement many times a day, a higher DPI could save you time and effort, improve ergonomics, and meaningfully impact your workflow. However, if you’re doing something that requires higher accuracy—such as drawing in a design program with a mouse—a lower DPI might be a better fit as it allows for finer and more precise movement. DPI and Gaming DPI also has a substantial impact on PC gaming performance, which is why the DPI specification is often featured front-and-center on gaming mice product pages. When playing a first person shooter with high DPI settings, your targeting reticle will move across the screen faster, and requires smaller movements from your hand. This can be great for whipping around quickly, or dragging your sights from one side of your display to the other in less time. This can be hugely beneficial, especially in games where speed is important, or if you’re gaming on a higher resolution display. A high DPI is not always ideal in gaming, though. In some situations, a lower DPI might be preferable. In an RTS where meticulous unit selection is an important part of a strategy, or in a first person shooter when using a zoomed-in weapon. Having to move the mouse further results in better accuracy because you have more space in which to find the right place to click. With that said, how does someone choose between a high DPI or lower DPI mouse? Fortunately, you usually don’t have to choose. Best of Both Worlds Most modern mice, and especially gaming mice, allow you to change your DPI with the click of a button. Many have a physical button on the body of the mouse specifically for cycling through DPI profiles. Each setting has visual indicators so you can tell at a glance what your DPI settings are. There are distinct advantages to being able to switch DPI on the fly. For example, consider the popular Corsair M65 RGB ELITE gaming mouse, which has a fairly high maximum DPI of 18,000. With the press of a button you can cycle through DPI profiles until you find the right settings for you— from 18,000, down to 100 DPI, which is probably too low for most people. By cycling between the highest and lowest settings you can find the perfect DPI for however you are using your mouse in that moment. You can cycle through DPI settings in-game, which can be useful in first person shooters when switching weapons. Having a mouse with a higher DPI maximum limit is beneficial because it allows you to access a broader spectrum of settings. Is there an ideal DPI number? Not really. It depends on your preference, and what you’re using your mouse to do. The entire purpose of an adjustable DPI is to allow for the user to find the settings that work for them. There’s no one setting that works for everyone, which is why it’s great to have options. More to Learn Now that you have a sense of what DPI is, you can select a gaming mouse that has the features you’re looking for. There are other features to consider as well, such as your grip style, mouse weight, the switches in the mouse, as well as the mousepad you’re using to play, but learning about DPI is a great place to start.

The world needs arcade-style football games, and Wild Card Football promises to fill the void left by the discontinuation of the NFL Blitz franchise a decade ago. The game is set to launch Oct. 10 and pre-orders come with four legendary offensive weapons unlocked: Dan Marino, Jerry Rice, Barry Sanders, and Walter Payton. Designed to for pickup and play action, Wild Card Football features extreme 7-on-7 action with plenty of bombastic style and energy. Most importantly, they secured the NFLPA license which means you can play with the likeness of real players from every era of pro football. Judging by the trailer, Wild Card Football brings the fast-paced violence and rule breaking that made Blitz so fun—plus on-field booby traps, obstacles, and other surprises. Players can unlock 150 “Wild Cards” skills like invisibility, momentary skills boosts, and other razzle-dazzle out of the cartoon violence playbook. The game is developed by Saber Interactive, the same studio that created the popular NBA Playgrounds series, so it's safe to expect the same brand of tight and responsive gameplay and humorous pop culture references. Note that you won’t see your favorite NFL team logos or names without an NFL license. But you will be able to build your dream franchise with the players you unlock while advancing through the game. Personally, I'm excited to pick Colin Kaepernick to throw down against Joe Burrow and Tom Brady in online head-to-head mode. Wild Card Football releases on Oct. 10, 2023, for PlayStation 4|5, Xbox Series X|S Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

The Banjo-Kazooie secrets are nothing new. But, this proves that the unreleased feature can be done! Once in a while, news focuses briefly on the past. Sometimes, you’ll get some legend trying to speedrun a classic for a new world record, or maybe just a new secret is found in some retro video game. Banjo-Kazooie is a 1998 Nintendo 64 game developed by Rare. It follows the adventures of a bear named Banjo, and Kazooie, his bird companion that rides along in Banjo’s backpack. After the success of Super Mario 64, a lot of games modeled themselves after the 3D adventure platformer. There was a quirk that original Nintendo 64 hardware could take advantage of called Stop N’ Swop. Stop N’ Swop required a player to very quickly swap over to a different physical game cartridge utilizing the very short-term memory left over in the console when it’s turned off. If it had been properly implemented in games, it would allow players to unlock extra content hidden in that game. Banjo-Kazooie, and its sequel Banjo-Tooie, were both planned to use this feature. Rare programmed in the extra content. But, the feature was ultimately scrapped due to fear of damaging the console or cartridges. They also had fears that later hardware would fix the quirk. That did eventually become true as later models only offered one full second of memory still loaded instead of multiple. Modder Skawo realized that, sure, the secrets have all been found. The feature had a version of it in the later Xbox 360 releases. But, it really hadn’t been properly done on the original Nintendo 64 hardware. In order for it to work, Skawo needed to make a modded The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time cartridge, play it for enough time for the memory to load in, and then swap it with the Banjo-Kazooie cart. Skawo shows all of the footage in the video, proving that it can be done. The Zelda cart even offers additional details and dialog on how this trick can work. It’s always great to see little details like this being found and being capable of working. Not only does it help with knowledge and preservation, but we could eventually see speedrunners doing “%any Stop N Swop” runs.

The Nostromo is also a new map for Dead By Daylight. A new teaser trailer for Dead By Daylight hit the internet this week. It appears that the Alien from, well, Alien, is coming to the game next. The Xenomorph (as they’re generally called outside of video games) briefly appears in the teaser. Prior to that, it shows off the infamous Nostromo ship from the first Alien movie. At the end of the trailer, the Alien screams and jump-scares at the screen. There could be a more stealthy aspect to this villain when it releases. Most villains, controlled by other players, wander around and hunt down the protagonists. But, they’re generally out and about, easy to find if you’re looking. Villains that have shown up in Dead By Daylight include Ghost Face, Michael Myers, and Leatherface. They’re all about showiness and being in your face, sometimes with a chainsaw. Freddy Krueger, on the other hand, added mechanics like the dream world, to change how you played. The Alien movie had a sense of the unknown that came with it. The dread of knowing something was there that you can’t see easily became a hard-to-miss motif throughout the early movies. Dead By Daylight could take this approach. But, the teaser doesn’t spoil anything about gameplay or additional details. The most recent DLC for Dead by Daylight was Nicolas Cage. Not a character he’s played in the past. Just Nic himself. If there’s any currently available DLC to buy, it’s obviously Nic Cage. As this will be the 34th DLC for Dead By Daylight, the crossovers get pretty wild. Nowadays, you can play as Ash Williams from the Evil Dead films, team up with Bill from Left 4 Dead and Jill Valentine from Resident Evil to face off against the Demogorgon from Stranger Things. Basically, Dead by Daylight is the Super Smash Bros Ultimate of horror. Everyone is here. The Alien DLC for Dead By Daylight doesn’t currently have a release date. But, based on the previous DLC released, expect it pretty soon.

That’s a really weird BINGO that I just got and can’t explain. Anyone my age remembers the movie Holes. You know the movie, with Shia LeBeouf as Stanley Yelnats IV. Well, the other main kid in that movie, Zero, is making headlines this week. Khleo Thomas, best known as Hector “Zero” Zeroni in the film adaptation of Holes, won a Mortal Kombat 11 tournament at DreamCon. While that’s generally pretty mundane to hear, what he was wearing is what caught everyone’s attention. At DreamCon, hosted in Austin, TX over the past weekend, as well as basically any convention out there, cosplay is pretty normal to see. Thomas, while kicking everyone’s asses in MK11, was wearing a full Powerline costume. Powerline, for those that are uncultured, is the musical artist from 1993’s A Goofy Movie. He’s an anthropomorphized dog person, like Goofy and Max from the same movie, that takes from iconic singers like Prince and Michael Jackson. If you have not seen this movie, it’s on Disney+ and it’s one of the most “stand out” Disney animated movies of all time. Holes, for those that are also uncultured, is a fantastic 2003 movie about a kid discovering his family’s past. Shia’s Stanley meets Thomas’ Zero at the juvenile prison camp that the majority of the movie takes place in and befriends him. Thomas, according to an email exchange with Kotaku, won the tournament using his main, Sub-Zero. He’s been using Sub-Zero since he originally played Mortal Kombat 2 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Alaskan-born actor may be making the headline here for this ridiculous BINGO card. But, he’s actually a pretty popular streamer on YouTube, Twitch, and Tiktok as well. He’s even been in a video game before. While not prominent, he was credited as the voice of Kai Donaldson, the Nike Rep in NBS 2K19. While it isn’t a lot, it counts! In any case, congratulations to Khleo on winning the tournament at DreamCon! All I know is that I’m going to be listening to “I 2 I” and “Stand Out” in my head all day today whether I want to or not.

Reports suggest that the next Nintendo Switch could be in the second half of 2024 This past week, we reported on a known Nintendo partner that is making chips for a new video game console in 2024. We just didn’t have clarification if the chips were actually for a Nintendo product or not. I mean, we all knew that Nintendo was obviously going to work on their next generation of consoles at some point. Considering that the Nintendo Switch is now 6 years old (no, seriously, stop it), it’s about time for a new lineup with more features and power. VGC has the scoop this time, having multiple resources to confirm. The Nintendo Switch successor is definitely probably allegedly coming during the second half of 2024, according to the rumor. Eurogamer confirms this rumor lines up with their own findings as well. According to the sources, developer kits for the upcoming console have been sent out to multiple partners and developers. As far as what’s reported, the new console will have similar flavors to the current Nintendo Switch. It’ll be portable, have an LCD screen, and run cartridges. It’s currently unclear if the cartridge slot will be backward compatible with the current Switch. However, it’s highly likely. Prior to the complete change-over back to cartridges this past generation, backward compatibility was pretty common in Nintendo consoles during the 2000s. The Wii U was compatible with Wii games and Wii consoles could play GameCube games. Additionally, back in June, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa spoke about the eventual transition that consumers will have to deal with. He said he wanted to ease that move “smoothly”. It was in relation to Nintendo accounts. Prior consoles all had different accounts that connected to each other. Nintendo seems to be looking to unify everything going forward, just like its competitors at Microsoft and Sony. Not only is the Switch 2 clearly on their mind, but also how the future console could handle older transactions. Your account is used for your avatar and details, obviously but also for your digital store purchases. If you bought a game digitally, it shows up. This “smooth transition” mentioned by Furukawa could be alluding that Switch games may work on its successor. Take everything, obviously, with a grain of salt until there is any official confirmation.

You have to think that John Madden rolls in his grave every time a virtual Patrick Mahomes rolls to his left and delivers a 99-yard strike off his back foot thanks to a $200 boost purchased in Madden Ultimate Team. Football simulation seekers and older fans accustomed tp more realistic gridiron features have wanted more from Madden now for some time, and EA has declared Madden NFL 24 a make-or-break effort for the franchise. Here are 24 much-loved features from previous iterations of the game that would be welcomed in the next installment. Mini-Camp Mode Getting Derrick Henry into space against weak side linebackers without pads on concocts the perfect blend of evil and entertainment. Tracking deep balls with Tyreek Hill rapidly and randomly hurled from a JUGS Machine sounds like a grand time! Historic Teams Ever wonder if the 1985 Bears’ defense would transfer its dominance to today’s aerial playstyle? EA begs for money while gamers beg the question. Ultimate Team locks historical players behind a paywall, leaving zero free teams from the past available for play anymore. Created Teams Madden deprives current players of the ability to not just have historical teams, but create user-generated teams that stick outside of franchise mode as well. Custom logos, uniforms, roster builds, and cities combined into a staple of previous Maddens. The feature left several years ago and took a strong replayability hook with it. Quarterback vision Doesn’t it seem goofy that Zack Willson reads the cougars — I mean cornerbacks — as clearly as Patrick Mahomes? Madden 2006’s quarterback cones addressed the flaw. The area of play quarterbacks viewed unobstructed depended upon individual awareness ratings. Peyton Manning enjoyed a clear view, whereas JP Losman morphed into JP Lossman. The vision cone distinguishes the good from the great and factors into forming new strategies to win other than spamming aerial attacks to a favorite target. Madden Cards Madden cards thrilled parties back when performance presided over profitability. Unlimited passing range for one play answered the virtual prayers for an unforgettable Hail Mary. Fumblitis increased fumble chances by up to 75%. Extra Credit even awarded bonus points for sacks and turnovers. Madden offered chances to wager them against friends so games meant more than bragging rights and belly laughs. Tournament Mode Speaking of features fit for wholesome parties, previous Maddens embraced in-house tournaments through quickly customizable brackets. “March Madness” stops with the NCAA nowadays. The NBA 2K series realizes few want to perform this tedious task by hand. Fluid running animations Developers revamped running mechanics to factor in weight and momentum. The realistic push carried the unintended consequences of running animations that don’t always register with the ground properly. Madden 23 Glitches gift many touchdowns from zombified runners contorting through downed contact. Custom Formations Kevin Stefanski’s Philadelphia Eagles innovated quarterback sneak possibilities in 2023, so why can’t players create something new within gridiron guidelines? Madden 2003 nods its head in agreement, but sequels left player-driven playbooks in the past. User-Created Fans Madden 2005 permitted players to make fans with different skin colors, body shapes, props, jerseys, and face paint. Not having to trek to the garage to make fans in 2023 brings cheer. Playing Every Position in Superstar Mode Repressed athletes yearn to translate overweight girth into overpowered gaming as loyal linemen clearing pesky peasants in “King Henry”s ‘Titanic’ path. Gamers not tall for ball might wish to vicariously live through Justin Tucker’s laser-like leg action. Madden denies a full positional plate Madden 2006 and outside of special teams Madden 2007 allowed. Today’s Face of the Franchise menu offers the choice of quarterback, wide receiver, halfback, linebacker, and cornerback. Choosing Created Player’s Parents Superstar Mode sprinted to superstardom if gamers chose a Hall of Fame father and an Olympic mother. Becoming the son of a plumber paid homage to Dusty Rhodes. Hard times fall upon maximizing fun in today’s stripped Face of the Franchise remodel. Starring in Movies No game turns Tom Brady into Tom Cruise. Regardless, Madden 2006 lovers can’t handle the truth about not being able to make movies in Madden anymore. Superstar Mode casted players in roles depending on the created player’s league visibility and agent. Superstardom afforded blockbuster opportunities, while newcomers attempted low-budget indies. A mini-game prompted players to read the script and try to deliver the right lines quickly and accurately to land a role. Nowadays, it’s light effort, no cameras, action! Situation Mode/Madden Moments Want the Falcons to fly on the right side of 28-3 history? Think a user-controlled Marshawn Lynch seals the Super deal by keeping the ball on the ground? EA advises dreamers to think again. Old Maddens and even NFL Quarterback Club 1997 championed situational football, but it’s gone in 2023. Franchise Mode Radio Show Former ESPN Radio personality Tony Bruno hosted a radio show covering league happenings, roasting poor play, and conducting real-life interview segments in franchise mode. The well-received feature meshes perfectly with today’s podcast popularity. ChatGPT boosts scripting possibilities. Team Newspapers Every team used to have unique newspapers highlighting stellar player performances, game results, and league wide trades/statistical leaders. Constant 24/7 consumption killed the newspaper model, but reviving team publications would be a great detail for player immersion. Player Holdouts It’d be dreamy if every franchise player rejoiced with his team every year. Reality dictates that a lack of money, powerful production opportunities, and/or respect causes nightmarish trouble in paradise. Older Maddens attached dynamic morales and contract holdouts to mirror real-life riffs. Advanced Scouting Wannabe general managers watched AI performances in the Senior Bowl and scouted entire draft classes for player comparisons, intangibles, and personality traits. Bidding wars won the services of top scouts. If it’s good enough for PS2 hardware, the PS5 should be able to handle the heavily immersive and realistic worldbuilding. On-Field Referees Few players care to see yellow laundry sully a skillful battle. Returning the people who throw them to viewers’ behest every Sunday adds a basic level of legitimacy missing in Madden since 2019. Fighting for Fumbles Officials, players, and fans recognize the grimy nature of fumble piles that produce equal amounts of dirtiness and excitement. Madden 10 facilitated human dog fights by introducing button mashes in tug-of-war fashion to recover fumbles. Today’s pixelated pigskin bounces as cleanly as a pampered poodle. Helmets Flying After Hits Despite Roger Goodell’s best efforts, hard hits resulting in dislodged helmets still happen. Many sent helmets into digital orbit, especially in Madden 2005 with the hit stick and defensive emphasis. Today’s safety emphasis values technique over thwacking. However, Madden 24 is just a video game and would be a better one if big hits left a realistic imprint. Prominent Rock Music Nothing screams intense experiences like the torrid drum intro of Painkiller, followed by a screeching riff and Rob Halford’s soaring vocals intersecting Banshee and Banal Boulevard. Ozzy Osbourne, Foo Fighters, Avenged Sevenfold, and a host of other popular rock acts lent a helping hand to the game’s decibel dial. Today’s rap-centric soundtrack fails to synchronize with the rush of creating 300-pound defensive linemen’s hit stick highlights. Broken Records Madden curated a thorough record book for years, kept new benchmarks, and alerted players when one was broken in a game ie: passing yards. The feature adds a simple incentive to experiment with different strategies and adds meaning to mundane modes. EA Sports Player Promos “It’s in the game!” Not anymore, but we’d love the nostalgic EA Sports promos from popular players to nestle in our ears again. Ensure that Russell Wilson stays home, though! Bill Belichick We save the best coach for last. Admittedly, this one isn’t EA’s fault. Infamously introverted icon Bill Belichick hasn’t been a member of the NFL Coaches’ Association since 2005. Maybe a new year translates into a new Bill and we’ll see the familiar hoodie and scowl grace the game, filling a virtual void that makes the overall roster seem incomplete each year.

This is definitely going to go great The ESRB (short for Electronic Software Ratings Board) is the video game industry body that governs the age ratings for video games. Anytime you’ve seen “E For Everyone” or “M for Mature”, that was the ESRB rating. Their job is to present the reality of a game and give it a fair rating for parents (or whoever) to know the intended audience of a game. Does it have vulgar language? Is there cartoonish violence? The rating will tell you. So, the ESRB is currently working together with SuperAwesome (a subsidiary of Epic Games) and Yoti (a firm that handles verifications for ages and more) to make a 24-page proposal. This proposal will take the Children’s Online Privacy Act, known as COPPA, to another level. COPPA is well over two decades old at this point. The industry, as a whole, already complies with it. When you do age verification on a game or website, that’s COPPA, for instance. Anything that has to do with protecting kids in a game, it’s probably related back to the act as well. This new proposal would scan the faces of players of a game to determine their age using algorithms. Within the proposal, they assure that all images “are immediately, permanently deleted, and not used by Yoti for training purposes.” For those unaware, the ESRB is, itself, governed by an organization named the Entertainment Software Association. The ESA handles a lot. They’re the people that generally used to run E3, for instance. They also are the ones that accidentally doxxed over 2000 journalists back in 2019. Their press list for E3 2019 had such minimal security that it was easy to download. That list had every attending and non-attending press member that signed up for the event on it. It gave, in plain text, the journalist’s name, email, phone number, and address, to anyone that had it. Of course, it made its way into every internet troll’s hands out there. If you want to read through the ESRB’s proposal, all 24 pages are available through the FTC. Gamesindustry.biz did a much deeper dive into this as well to show its weaknesses. Based on prior endeavors, I’m sure this is going to go great.

We were looking at an interesting infographic about the most complained about games on Twitter for modern games. Looking at it closely, you can see the reasoning behind a lot of the ire. Some of the entries, like Halo Infinite or Angry Birds, come down to complaints with the developers more than the games themselves. Guidestrats But, there has to be other reasons behind it all. It got us thinking about all the reasons why games might be complained about. One glaring reason is them being frustrating to play. Then, we thought hard about what would be the most frustrating games of all time. Sure, some of these games are modern. But, there are a lot of games in the history of gaming that induce the kind of primal rage that could break a computer or console. Here are our top 10 most notoriously frustrating games of all time. They’re all doozies. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) Let’s start back in a simpler age, back when the Nintendo Entertainment System was the king of the market. It was also during the era where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were everywhere. This game, albeit trying to capitalize on the lighthearted cartoon where turtles love pizza and most of the bad guys were robot ninjas, held a dark secret. Looking at the box art for the game should have been our first clue. The turtles in the art weren’t your loveable scamps from Saturday morning. They were the gritty, violent, trained assassins from the comics. It should have been our first clue that this game wasn’t going to be easy. This game wasn’t for kids, even if it was marketed toward them. The game, back when it was released, was a commercial success. But, looking back at it, it’s hard to play. Levels can get downright brutal, if you’re off by a single pixel in your movement. This game naturally made this list. You can play it on the TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection right now, on every major console and PC. Good luck. Dark Souls FromSoftware knows how to make a game very well. They also know how to make you want to punch a wall. Coming hot off their already-difficult Armored Core games back in 2011, Dark Souls amps the difficulty to 11. Notoriously known for being both a well-made game, and one of the hardest games in the modern era, Dark Souls had to be on this list. While the entire series of Dark Souls games is difficult, it spawned its own genre of games, known as “Soulsbourne” type games. It shares the name with Bloodborne, another game made by FromSoftware. This genre included games like Elden Ring, made also by, you guessed it, FromSoftware. There might be a connection here. Dark Souls has become the standard of “difficult games”, becoming the generic term for it. If something is difficult to do, someone may say that it’s “the Dark souls of” whatever genre they’re talking about. You can play the remake of the original Dark Souls on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Cuphead Cuphead is the Dark Souls of platformer games. There is no denying it. This charming platformer game brings the aesthetic of 1930s and 40s cartoons into a rich, glorious game. It’s beautifully made and is a fan favorite among modern gamers that pays homage to classic Disney and Looney Tunes. Why’s it on the list? If you’ve played it, you already know that answer. It’s hard. Like, stupidly hard. Cuss at your screen until you’re blue in the face hard. The game gives you three difficulties: Simple, Regular, and Expert. Players can unlock Expert after beating the game once on either available difficulty. Each difficulty level affects the amount of phases that bosses have. Simple, obviously, gives the least amount, and so on. Just because you remove as many phases as possible doesn’t make the game easy, though. The bosses are still incredibly difficult on any level. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to defeat them and if they have different phases of attacks. Needless to say, though, if you like difficult games, you need to play this one. It’s widely available on every major platform and PC. Ninja Gaiden for NES The Nintendo Entertainment System was notoriously known for pretty difficult games. The phrase “Nintendo Hard” was coined to explain that this was a common occurance. Ninja Gaiden is part of the reason. Players play as the ninja Ryu Hayabusa looking for revenge on those that murdered his father. Using weapons of a ninja, players go through the story in this 2D platformer designed with the intent to give you anxiety and rage. This was an era of games that players had to memorize, pixel by pixel, exactly what they needed to do in a game. While the game as a whole is frustrating (those damn birds), the difficulty kicks in during the last couple “Acts”. The bosses get harder. The precision is absolutely necessary. The thoughts of murder enter your head as you play. It’s a great time. This game can be found on the Nintendo Switch, as a direct download Arcade Archives: NINJA GAIDEN. Superman 64 Superman 64 had to make this list. If you know, you know. This game was meant to tie in with the Superman cartoon of the early 1990s. What it did was fail to capture a single aspect of what makes Superman the “Man of Steel”. This game is rough on the best of days. The graphics are blocky and stiff. The game plays like crap. It’s just all-around bad. The game went through development hell, being delayed until 1999. But, it needed a lot more time in the oven to bake. After 14 levels of gameplay, the game is basically impossible to beat without cheating. The game has flying levels, for instance, that require players to fly through rings in the sky. Seems normal, by gaming standards. But, the controls are so janky and the camera is so disruptive that it makes flying through the rings the same difficulty level as flying a real jet plane as a civilian. If you want a rage-inducing game, you may have found the king of them here. There is currently no way to legally play this outside of the Nintendo 64. We doubt there are plans for it. QWOP QWOP is a weird game. The original version was browser-based and a little niche. It slowly became the meme that it is today through sheer force of will. QWOP was made by the brilliant Bennett Foddy, which you will absolutely see on this list again. He makes games that make you want to scream into the void. QWOP tasks you with just moving your legs. You’re a track and field runner and you must make it to the end of the 100m dash. That’s it. Easy peasy, right? It made this list for a reason. You have to use the letters QW and OP on your keyboard to try to figure out how to move your thighs and calves. In theory, it should be a cakewalk. In reality, it’s one of the most frustrating experiences on this list. And that includes Superman 64. You can play this directly on Bennett Foddy’s site. Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy We told you this name would show up again. Bennett Foddy makes experimental games and is truly a great artist. Getting Over It feels like a spiritual successor to QWOP, if only in difficulty alone. When you fail, Foddy will enchant you with his optimism and good graces, as well as little anecdotes. And trust me, you will fail. You will hear what he has to say. The aesthetic changes drastically from the other game by Foddy. You are a man in a big pot, wielding a pickaxe. Unlike QWOP, you have no legs at all that you can use. You get by with your pickaxe. Climbing mountains and garbage, all the way up to outer space, if you can make it. The average player can’t. But, you can. We believe in you. Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy is available on all major platforms and PC. Super Meat Boy Super Meat Boy is one of the faces of indie platformers. It’s an instant classic about being a person made of meat, saving your girlfriend from an evil fetus. We never said indie games weren’t weird. One thing that Super Meat does have is difficulty. This fast-paced platformer requires players to make split second decisions and jumps, while the stage forces you to keep moving. You mess up, you start over. Many lists out there put this game in the short list for “most difficult games”. It deserves it. This isn’t a game that suffers from bad design or gameplay. But, it does require fast fingers and impeccable reaction times. Super Meat Boy can be found on Steam and various platforms over the years. Geometry Dash Geometry Dash is, to say the least, hard. Similar to Super Meat Boy above, it requires precision reaction times and a quick trigger finger. You play as a yellow box hopping over shapes and spikes. You avoid pitfalls and anything in your way. Platforms are very small and you’re constantly moving. This game is infuriating to play because it starts you over at the very beginning when you die. You will die a lot. You will see the beginning a lot. It’s easy to find on Google to play or on Steam, even if it came out in 2013. We gave it a try while writing this article and it’s still just as hard a decade later. Maybe our fingers are getting old. Battletoads Battletoads comes from the same era as Ninja Gaiden and TMNT, on the NES. It’s certified Nintendo Hard. Even casual gamers know the horrors of that Turbo Tunnel level. What if we said that that level was only the third level of the game out of twelve? You can’t get past the early parts of the game easily. Most people have never even seen the fourth level due to 1980s rage quitting. It’s ok. We owned the game too. It’s not easy. There is currently no way to legally play this outside of the NES. Speaking of frustration, it can be frustrating trying to sift through all of the news that comes out of games. If you missed any recent news, you can always check out our weekly roundup of This Week in Video Games. We compile the juiciest news just for you.

Remnant II was definitely one of my most anticipated game titles of the year. I put dozens of hours into Remnant: From the Ashes and its DLCs. That game wasn’t without its faults, but it was a lot of fun to play both solo and with friends. Remnant II fixes a lot of the complaints I had with the first game. However, there are weird design choices, minor frustrations, and a few bugs that hold it back from reaching greatness. The narrative behind Remnant II is a simple post-apocalypse survival story. You and a fellow survivor are taken to Ward 13 after a run-in with The Root, a fierce enemy that has taken over Earth. You're introduced to a few people in the camp (including some familiar faces from the first game and DLC), and the World Crystal, which has the power to stop The Root and teleport Ward 13 prisoners to salvation. Your character is equipped with a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a melee weapon. The primary and sidearm can modified to do a multitude of things like healing teammates, unleashing concussive blasts, or even blasting out a tentacle. Your character is also bolstered by an archetype classification that comes with more abilities and perks. I chose the Medic for my primary and then later upgraded as a Handler as my secondary when I was able. The latter gave me have a dog that I could sic on enemies (and who was just an all around good boy). And yes, you can pet the dog. I found the archetypes really easy to use enjoyed the freedom to change them at any time. What I don’t really care for is how the items for a lot of the archetypes are hidden away behind mountains of dialogue or within parts of a world that can kill you if you stay too long. These seemed like unnecessary hoops to jump through. I could also collect trait points, which are upgrades that can increase health, the size of an area of effect attack or healing aura, damage resistance, and other upgrades. Whereas in Remnant: From the Ashes, the trait points were capped at 300, here you can gain only 60. This limits the players abilities, which I don't understand why developers would do. It's great that weapons can be upgraded, but for some reason, armor cannot. My guess for the reason for this is so that players can focus on using a combination of trait points, rings, a necklace, and the relic mods. I liked this choice, as it saved resources for other things like weapon upgrades, consumables, and new archetypes. The developers did a really neat thing this time around with the world building in that it is quite unique for each player. For instance, my friend got to go to a lush jungle world called Yaesha as his first world; I on the other hand went into a cold, poisonous hell-world called N’Erud. When I arrived at Yaesha later in the game, I had different boss encounters, traversed different dungeons, and just experienced different layouts of the world in general. While I adore this aspect of the game, I also kind of hate that someone who might have never played the first game might get thrown into N’Erud and get the same RNG that I did, with tons of pesky bug enemies that seemed like they would never stop spawning, and bosses that were just frustrating to fight mainly because of their arenas. I could see a lot of people quitting at that point if they thought the entire game was like this particular planet. Players can choose to reroll their world progress and keep their current character progression, so if their first world is one they don’t want to do at that time, they can just reroll until they get one they might like without losing any of their gear, items, traits, or archetype levels. One world I had a lot of fun with was Losomn, or as my friends and I called it, “the Bloodborne world." It was filled with yelling villagers trying to stab, burn, slice, or shoot us amid the werewolves, executioners, and ceiling-clinging slimes challenging our progress. The combat in the game felt much smoother than in the first game, and movement felt really responsive and enjoyable overall. During combat the player has to manage a stamina gauge that drains during activities like running or rolling. Thankfully, in Remnant II they went the Elden Ring route and made it to where stamina doesn’t drain when you aren’t in combat. Wonderful. The map system reminded me a bit of Metroid Prime, where you could turn it up and down and see different levels of each area. It also tells if you have already been through a door before and labels all of the undiscovered portions in either red or purple. This really helped with being able to quickly find on the map where I should try and explore next. One drawback was that the performance on PC was pretty lackluster. I have over the recommended specs needed to run the game, but I still had to run it on Low settings with an upscaler enabled just to get a decently steady 60 frames per second. I still ran into frame dips, and I have never had these kinds of issues with any new title that I’ve played coming out recently. It just feels really unoptimized. I hope this gets patched very soon. Another issue I had was weird bugs like enemies spawning inside of a wall or in the ground and still being able to hit my character with projectiles or even melee attacks, but I had no way of getting rid of them. My friend also got stuck when trying to use a checkpoint where it told him that he couldn’t use the crystal because “enemies were nearby”, but we had cleared out every single enemy. He just had to jump off a cliff and let me resurrect him at the crystal to fix the bug. Some of the boss features seemed like they were created to frustrate the player more so than reward their skill. For instance, there is a boss fight involving a set of giant cubes that can instantly kill you if they don’t watch for the cubes’ patterns. I liked the concept, but the cubes were so overpowered that the player had nowhere to go many times. It’s just little things like this that feel a bit unfair. So while I really enjoyed my time with Remnant II (and I can’t wait to get all of the archetypes and have them all maxed out), I can say that it does have some rough edges that should be ironed out a bit. Some of them (like optimization) will probably be improved, but others (like the boss fights having some frustrating aspects) might not get addressed because some of those were issues in the first game too. I think that anyone who enjoyed Remnant: From the Ashes should really enjoy this and a lot of newcomers should too. However, if you hated the first game or found it too frustrating, Remnant II probably won’t win you over. Pros: ● Combat and world design feels much better than the first game ● Archetypes are much more fleshed out and add a lot more depth to the gameplay ● Dungeons and worlds being generated differently each time adds replay value ● Lots of fun with friends Cons: ● Some bosses can feel unfair by design ● Archetypes being hidden away feels unnecessary ● Players who found the first game frustrating might not enjoy this one either Score: 7/10 Reviewer played on PC. Remnant II is now available on PC, Playstation 5, and Xbox Series X|S

No, seriously. The Transformers games have gotta be here somewhere. Probably. Update 8/3/2023: Hasbro has issued an apology to Activision over alleging that they lost the games. “To clarify, comments that suggest Transformers games have been lost were made in error,” Hasbro’s official statement reads. "We apologise to Activision and regret any confusion – they’ve been great partners, and we look forward to future opportunities to work together.” Nothing in the statement says that it isn't necessarily true. But, they're sorry that they said the quiet part out loud. Maybe one day Microsoft will get those games onto Game Pass for Hasbro. Original Story: There have been quite a few Transformers games made over the years. Activision made a good handful back in the days of the Xbox 360. But, allegedly, Activision may have misplaced them. Hasbro’s team was doing an interview over on Transformers World about their new Game Edition lineup of toys and let out some frustrating news about the state of previous Transformers games. “Sadly,” the Hasbro team admitted, “apparently Activision’s not sure what hard drives they’re on in their building. When a company eats a company that eats a company things get lost, and that’s very frustrating.” There are multiple games that come to mind during this discussion. Transformers: Devastation, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark, and Transformers: War for Cybertron are all well-made games in digital format that have just been lost to time. Unfortunately, we also recently reported on the Video Game History Foundation’s recent study as well. 87% of older games are entirely unavailable nowadays. It appears that they may all just be in a storage box somewhere in Activision’s mom’s attic. The problem here is knowing that these games exist and haven’t been available for play for years. Xbox had already made them backwards compatible. But, you have to have the physical disk for that. They agreed with Transformer World that the games that the Gamer Edition toys were based on would have been great to re-release. But, they have hopes that they’ll eventually be playable again. Hasbro offered a solution, now that Microsoft is going full steam ahead on the purchase of Activision Blizzard. They should rummage through the archives and drop it on Xbox and PC Game Pass. “Hope is that now that the deal is moving forward with Microsoft and Xbox,” the Hasbro team thinks, “that they’ll go through all of the archives and every hard drive to find it all, because it’s an easy Game Pass add.” The Transformers Gamer Edition toys are currently available in participating stores. But, the games they’re based on? Maybe we’ll see them one day on Game Pass. Maybe we won’t. We’d make a joke about the entire story being “more than meets the eye”. But, this is just a case of lost media that everyone hopes will be found eventually. You can read all about Hasbro’s additional thoughts on video games, toys, and more over at their interview with Transformers World.

In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you can enjoy exploring through calm, beautifully cel-shaded environments with gentle, drifting music that seems to ride by on blissful gusts of wind. Until a terrifying shriek breaks the peaceful ambience, the sky quickly turns a haunting crimson, and an ungodly horror known as Gloom Hands zooms in your direction with surprising speed to choke the life force out of poor Link. No, this isn’t a crossover with Resident Evil, but an eerie new enemy that you’ll run into multiple times in your adventures through Hyrule. They’re tough, but they can be beaten if you’re prepared! As their name implies, Gloom Hands are made of the mysterious and evil substance known simply as Gloom. The arms move around in a pool of the nasty stuff, and coming into contact with it for more than a brief moment will cause one of your hearts to become cracked. If a hand grabs you, you’ll likely have one or more hearts become cracked before you can wiggle your control sticks enough to break free of their clutches. Thankfully, grabbing you is the only way Gloom Hands can attack, and healing cracked hearts is a cinch. As you venture through Hyrule, make sure you keep an eye out for Sundelions. These yellow flowers are most commonly found in the Sky Islands or on pieces that fell to the surface. When they’re cooked into a dish, they restore cracked hearts. If you don’t have any cracked heart-healing meals on you, the best thing to do when confronted by Gloom Hands is climb the nearest tree, building, steep hill, or anything tall. Those horrifying hands are quick, but easily stunned or confused when either a Dazzlefruit or Puffshroom is thrown into their midst. Once you manage to reach an elevated perch, you can then adopt one of two strategies: wait them out, or send them back to hell. If Gloom Hands can’t get at you, they’ll actually lose interest pretty quickly. Rather than venturing back to where they first saw you, however, they’ll simply despawn and leave behind some Dark Clumps which can be used for creating gloom-resistant dishes. If you choose to fight the hands, your best bet is to deal damage to all of them at once with Bomb Flowers. The reason for this is that the hands will quickly respawn if they don’t all go down together. Once they’re dead, a Phantom Ganon will appear. Yikes. It’s an intimidating foe, but more of what you’ll be used to. Simply block or dodge its attacks and get in some hits when you have an opening. The pool of gloom around its feet will actually shrink as it takes damage, but it’s a good idea not to stand too close for too long because that pool will come back. When it's defeated, you’ll receive a Gloom weapon and a Demon King’s Bow. Strong loot for killing the next batch of Gloom Hands!