Gaming Tier List
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Shane Stone

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Ten Best Inexpensive Steam Games, 2024

Guides
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The gaming landscape, now more than ever with the modern proliferation of indie games, has shown that great games can come in all sizes. There are low quality AAA games that cost millions of dollars to make, and there are fantastic games from one-man studios that were crowdfunded, and some not even that. Further, while all of us wish we had the kind of money in real life as we tend to end up with in our favorite video games, that’s not always the case. And even for those who do, there is no income limit where you are required to stop being careful with how you spend your money. So, why pay a lot for a bad experience when you can pay a little for a great one? For someone with a computer, there is a vast, wide sea of Steam games that are both high quality and wallet-friendly.…

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Anthem: Which Javelin Should You Play?

Guides
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Ah, yes: that classic moment in games when you have to make that first important decision for your character, affecting how you’re going to play the game from there. Decisions can be stressful if you’re not sure which way to go — we’ve all had that existential crisis choosing between two flavors of ice cream (what, you haven’t? No, you have, everyone has. Me having a personal crisis over ice cream is normal, okay?). In Bioware’s Anthem, the first important choice you have to make is which Javelin you will choose to play as. Don’t worry — you’ll be able to suit up and play as all the Javelins by the time you reach the end of the game. But once you choose your first one, you’re going to be locked into it for a fair bit of time as you progress, so you’ll want to make the choice that’s…

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5 Game Series That Must be Revived

Editorials

Death is a natural part of life. Life giveth, life taketh, and life messeth with you a little bit along the way. It’s always sad when a game series forever concludes, but all good things must come to an end. But what about those series that never received a definitive end where the protagonist walks into the sunset as the main theme starts to play? I mean, that’s how my life is going to end (I have rehearsed it repeatedly), but there are many series of games that received no such luck. Today, let’s take a look at what games should’ve gotten another in their series, or should make a return, or simply added truth to the saying that the good always die young. Or, worse yet, are frozen in suspended animation until their publisher decides to use them ever again — truly, an even more twisted fate. 5. F-Zero…

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Nintendo Direct 12/13 Recap and Reactions

Opinionated News
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After a long wait since last fall, the first Nintendo Direct of 2019 has emerged from the always enigmatic Nintendo curtains. It’s always fun to speculate beforehand which titles we will get updates on and what the new announcements will be. Franchises that got big attention included Dragon Quest and Fire Emblem, but there’s a lot more that was shown, along with a few surprises in store, and here’s everything you need to know. Mario Maker, Bloodstained, and When’s Marvel? So we start off with Super Mario Maker, the familiar Wii U game where players can create Mario levels of their own, being ported to the Switch like other titles ha– wait, this is no port, it’s Super Mario Maker 2, a new game! They could have just ported the first game, so are we leaving the Wii U port town, at last? The game’s new features don’t seem to…

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Could Sora and Goku Join ‘Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’?

Editorials
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A new Nintendo Direct is scheduled as of tomorrow, February 13th. Many upcoming games, both announced and unannounced, have the potential to be covered and revealed, including Animal Crossing, the mainline Pokemon game for the Switch, and the recently released hit Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The first of Ultimate’s DLC characters, Joker from Persona 5, has been announced already. Due to be included in the game this month, he will likely be featured in this month’s Direct. But a new, yet unannounced character may emerge as well. It’s always exciting to see who will be drafted next into the Smash roster, and with four more DLC characters coming after Joker, it could be a motley crew indeed. Although Smash Bros. characters are often incredibly difficult to predict beforehand due to their unpredictability, some make more sense than others. And while who knows which character will be revealed next, there are some that could be…

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Guide: How to Train the Best Pokemon in 2023

Guides
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“I want to be the very best, like no one ever was.” A line every Pokemon fan is familiar with from the original show’s first song lyrics. In order to be the best, though, you need the most powerful Pokemon. As much as weaker Pokemon may be our favorites, sometimes they just don’t cut it. A constant recurring theme in Pokemon that it’s not how strong the Pokemon is, but how much their trainer cares about them, that wins a battle. As any Magikarp can attest, that’s not entirely true, but from a different perspective, it’s not entirely wrong either… Even the Pokemon most famous for being powerful can be outshined by weaker species of Pokemon by the way that they are raised. In that sense, putting more care into how you raise your Pokemon really does matter compared to just going by how strong a Pokemon inherently is. So…

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Piranha Plant and Laying the Seeds for the Future of Super Smash Bros.

Opinionated News
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Indeed: as of this week, the game’s first DLC fighter, Piranha Plant, has gone live. Since its inception in 1996 on the Nintendo 64, the Super Smash Bros. series’ biggest draw — its hook that no other games can swing — is that it is the ultimate crossover (sorry, Marvel) of Nintendo characters. In no other game can stealth operative Solid Snake be slapped around by a sentient pink puffball. That description could even be referring to multiple characters, which shows how diverse the Smash fighter roster really is. Now, we’ve gone into ultra instinct diverse with the addition of Piranha Plant as the first of the DLC characters. Nobody expected this. Piranha Plant didn’t even expect to be included — it always shrubbed it off as some warped kind of pipe dream. But here we are, as its vines are being unleashed in Smash the world over. There is…

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Prediction: VR is a Hop, Skip, and a Killer App Away From Changing the Game

Uncategorized
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Throughout the history of gaming, there have been a select few technological turning points that changed the direction of video games forever. You could say they include: the introduction of arcades, the arrival of home consoles (and subsequently, the death of arcades), and the leap from 2D to 3D graphics. These advances changed the landscape of games and decided the next playing field that they would exist on. After 3D graphics, though, what is leap is left? Have they all been leapt over, or is there yet another one that will change the direction of gaming like its predecessors before? Well, to better understand the scope of things thus far, we can divide advances in gaming technology into two categories: revolutionary and refining. “Revolutionary” includes the aforementioned leaps that we just talked about; the ones that introduce a whole new level of play. “Refining” refers to the steps taken along…

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World of Warcraft: Classic – A Look Back and a Look Ahead

Editorials
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A molten Dwarven fortress atop cold, snowy mountains; a jungle of merciless danger and adventure; and people of all types to be found in every corner of the world, partaking in a cultural phenomenon unlike any other. In 2004, this was some of what awaited those who entered Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, a game that changed the landscape of online role-playing games forever. Since its launch as an immediate hit and cementing its spot in popular nomenclature, the game’s content has only grown in scope. What started as an ambitious project into unknown territory has become a perennial king of the industry that set the example for others for years to come. Now, fresh off the heels of WoW’s latest content expansion, Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard is preparing a new kind of journey — this summer, players will get to go back to where it all began in World of Warcraft:…

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Three Ways That Pokemon Needs to Change

Editorials
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Pokemon is a series that is loyal to its traditions, perhaps like no other — if you get a mainline Pokemon game, you know exactly what you’re getting. In a world where a franchise might take a sudden, confusing shift into a direction that you don’t gel with, staying true to the formula can be seen as trustworthy and a good thing. On the opposite end, it’s also possible for a franchise to play it too safe and things could start to get stale. While Pokemon is definitely still enjoyable, it’s a peculiar series of games in that it’s kept up with the times in some ways, but in others is very archaic and has hardly progressed. I get it: why mess with the formula of one of your biggest cash cows? But in 2019, much of its features feel like anachronisms from the past and are outdated. In some…

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