Jason Faulkner

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is a return to form for the MechWarrior series. The last time we saw the franchise focus on single-player and co-op was way back in 2002 with MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries, 18 years ago. Mech sims are only released once in a blue moon, and I hoped that MechWarrior 5 would be the evolution the genre needs to please long-time fans and attract a new audience. Oddly enough, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, while being a completely serviceable and entertaining mech sim, feels like

Disco Elysium continues to stick with me after I’ve finished it. It’s one of the best things I’ve played this year, maybe ever, which is ironic because there’s not much that’s innovative about its core mechanics. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, too many games harp on innovation without actually offering a solid play experience. Instead of offering visual spectacle, or branding some system as the next big thing in gaming, Disco Elysium’s excellence comes from its writing, and the way it applies

The upcoming Jurassic World Evolution: Return to Jurassic Park DLC takes players, well, back to Jurassic Park. Seven new story missions have you returning to Isla Nublar just after the events of the first movie, and you’ll also visit Isla Sorna from The Lost World: Jurassic Park for good measure. Jurassic World Evolution Executive Producer Rich Newbold took me through a walkthrough of Return to Jurassic Park highlighted the vast changes and additions that come with the DLC. He played through th

The SCUF Vantage 2 is the latest premium controller for the PS4 to hit the market. While Xbox One fans have had the chance to choose between the standard and Elite (now Elite 2) controllers for some time, the only first-party controller available for the PS4 is the DualShock 4. Fortunately, SCUF’s Vantage line matches up pretty well to the Xbox Elite controller. I reviewed the original SCUF Vantage last year, and came away impressed. Though it had some shortcomings, namely build quality, it off

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since The Force Unleashed 2, the last single-player centric Star Wars game, released. Besides the two frequently-panned Battlefront games, since EA got the exclusive license to produce Star Wars games in 2013, all we’ve gotten are mediocre-to-poor mobile titles. I was skeptical of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, not because of its developer, Respawn Entertainment, but because the publisher, EA, has failed to leverage the license in any meaningful way.

Google Stadia is the latest service to enter the game streaming market. So far, only PlayStation Now has had the chops to persevere when it comes to game streaming. Services like OnLive came and went, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now is living in eternal beta. If Stadia can get it right, it could be the first multi-platform game streaming service to succeed. After spending almost a week with Google Stadia, via the Founder’s Edition, I can say there are many things the service gets right. The core techn

Death Stranding is an anomaly in the video game industry. With AAA studios firmly entrenched, we seldom get to see a brand new studio like Kojima Productions get a blockbuster budget, A-list celebrity casting, and the backing of Sony for their first title. Of course, Hideo Kojima isn’t just any developer. He’s been involved in developing some of the most-lauded games in history throughout his 34-year career and is one of the most recognizable personalities in our industry. Death Stranding marks

If you’ve stuck to retail parts for your PC, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of SK Hynix (official website). However, the company is a powerhouse when it comes to OEM Solid State Drives for laptops and pre-built desktops. Until now, consumers couldn’t get their hands on these SSDs individually packaged, but now SK Hynix is entering the retail market with the Gold S31. The SK Hynix Gold S31 isn’t a powerhouse or revolutionary. It doesn’t have to be. SATA SSDs are at a point where the rea

I spend all day typing, and when I’m not writing, I’m usually playing a game on PC to write about. Since I make my living by typing, I’m particular in what I want out of a keyboard. Many keyboards just don’t make the cut. They’re too big, uncomfortable to use for long periods of time, or can’t withstand the demands of almost constant use. This is especially true of compact products. Many 65% layout keyboards are designed for light use with a tablet and don’t have the quality or comfort I’m look

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening wouldn’t have been my first choice to receive a Switch remake. It’s not that I’m not nostalgic for it. I played through it several times in my youth, first with the monochrome original and later with the Link’s Awakening DX remaster for the Game Boy Color. Regardless of how fondly I remembered my time playing the game, I had forgotten just how charming it is until I played the remake on Switch. I enjoyed my journey through a remade Koholint Island, and I fe

Destiny 2 Shadowkeep is Bungie’s first major release since fully taking over development and publishing duties from Activision. Some profound changes to Destiny 2 mirror this big business move. There’s a new expansion, a free-to-play release in the form of Destiny 2 New Light, and almost every system in the game has been tweaked. As it enters year 3, Destiny 2 seems more like a sequel than the same game when you compare it to how it was at launch. Separating Shadowkeep from the separate changes

Borderlands is all about guns, poop, and dick jokes, and you can look forward to a ton of all three of those things in Borderlands 3. Where many series seek to innovate, Borderlands 3 delivers more of the same for better or worse. At least this time around you can get off the tan hell that is Pandora and visit some other planets. I don’t mind a good loot shooter, but Borderlands 3 continues some design decisions that make the game incredibly frustrating to play. The gunplay is a bit tighter, an

We’ve got Souls-likes out of the ears these days, and few of them manage to do anything new or better than the genuine article. The Souls-like has turned into a single-player focused version of a battle royale, everyone is making them, but what are they really bringing to the table? That’s harsh of course, and games like Nioh and Sekiro put a spin on the Souls formula that makes them masterpieces all their own, but I have to say I’m skeptical whenever the term Souls-like rears its head. Code Ve

If you game on console, storage space is at a premium. Even high-end models like the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro only include 1 TB hard drives, and with some AAA games pushing 100 GB installs, external storage is something to look into if you want more than a handful of games on your system. The Seagate Game Drive for Xbox Gears 5 Special Edition released in the wake of the game’s launch (which is a hefty 60 GB) and comes in 2 TB and 5 TB variants to help allay your storage woes. Seagate sent over t

PlatinumGames has been on a roll since its inception a decade ago, and almost every title the studio has released has solid gold. This is a double-edged sword, as it puts each of its new releases under a microscope. After the fantastic Nier: Automata I was skeptical that PlatinumGames could reinvent its beat-em-up RPG formula to such positive results again, but Astral Chain proved me wrong. Although under examination Nier: Automata and Astral Chain have very similar gameplay at their core, the

Sega is the latest video game company to hop on the nostalgia train with a mini version of one of its classic consoles. The Sega Genesis Mini is a replica of the Genesis (or Mega Drive if you’re from anywhere other than the U.S.) Model 1 at 55% scale. The microconsole contains 42 classic Sega Genesis games and easily connects to any modern display via HDMI. The two controllers (which are thankfully full-size) that come with the Sega Genesis Mini are copies of the originals that came with the mod

These days a full expansion for a game is a rare thing. Most of the time if a game receives content updates, it’s as part of a season pass or some live service scheme. I’m so used to small bits trickled out at an irregular pace that I’m a bit taken aback (in a good way) by Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. Instead of just one new monster and some clothes or something lame like that, Capcom has elected to go old school and give us something more akin to Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction or The Witcher

If you were alive in 1999, you’ll almost undoubtedly remember The Blair Witch Project. It was a phenomenon, earning $250 million on a $60,000 budget, and spawned a whole genre of found footage horror movies. But, the franchise couldn’t quite find its footing. A sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, failed to find the popularity of its predecessor, and several video games, novels, and comics couldn’t make a splash. In 2016, a direct sequel to The Blair Witch Project, titled Blair Witch, was re

I’ve always been a DIY kind of guy, and every desktop PC I’ve owned, save the very first one (God rest its 400 MHz soul), I’ve built myself. When I was growing up, pre-builts were known for charging outrageous prices for cheap components and generally being a bad value. However, I have an open mind, so when CybertronPC offered to lend me one of their CLX Ra desktop’s for review, I wanted to see how far the world of pre-builts had come since the days of my youth. After spending a couple of month

Telling Lies is Sam Barlow’s follow up to the critically acclaimed Her Story. It takes the FMV format that proved to be such a success with the previous game and makes everything bigger and more complex. There’s a larger cast, more video, and a deeper mystery that has a lot more dots for you to connect. Even though the gameplay is similar to Her Story, Telling Lies manages to spin the mechanics in a way that requires a different approach. I’m not going to spoil any of the story of Telling Lies.