Top 10 Cracks in Walls That are Just BEGGING to be Shimmied Through

Posted on by B.D.

Throughout gaming history, one of the greatest struggles faced by developers has been the need to keep players engaged with their projects for as long as possible. This challenge has led to countless shortcuts, workarounds, and new mechanics designed to keep the game progressing smoothly through minimal interruptions and a greater feeling of immersion for modern titles. Because who would want something like a boring old atmospheric opening of a mysterious door, or a tone-setting loading screen to showcase the lesser appreciated details and lore of a game waiting to be deeply understood? No one. Or, at least not me. No, I tend to appreciate the art form more when we bring it to a snail’s pace, a dead halt, even a slight intermission, one might say.

Luckily, it seems that many of the greatest minds in modern gaming development tend to agree with me. Which has resulted in a huge increase in one of my favorite pastimes. Squeezing through as many gaps, cracks, and assorted chasms as I can find. There’s truly nothing like it, and now I get to share that feeling with you with these top 10 cracks in walls that are just BEGGING to be shimmied through.

#10 — Tomb Raider (2013)

To some, this is where it all began—or at least when they started noticing it. As an avid explorer, Lara Croft faces many challenges during her travels, making it a welcome treat when, every so often, she gets a chance to just chill. When she’s not getting shot with arrows or being torn apart by an actual fully grown bear, she gets to indulge in a nice shuffle through the nearest set of exposed pipings or even a good pair of boulders.

#9 — Silent Hill 2 Remake (2024)

It’s safe to say that Silent Hill is not the best town for most people, especially if you’re in need of a great amount of therapy. Newest resident James Sunderland gets to experience the best of both worlds, however, because what could be more therapeutic than rummaging around an unknowingly disgusting random hole in the wall. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to get my hand right up in there to discover all sorts of hidden treasures.

#8 — Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)

It’s comforting to know that even in a galaxy far far away, across multiple planets, in the depths of a collapsing Star Destroyer, or in the dwellings of an abandoned ancient village. There will always be…

A good place for squeezin’…

Through.

#7 — Amigara Fault (Junji Ito)

Junji Ito’s classic tale of horror in the mundane still holds the spot for—what many would say—to be the most significant use of a simple hole in any piece of media. Even beating out the black hole from Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and the hole left in my heart after watching Alien vs. Predator. And it’s easy to understand why. There’s just… there’s something about it. Every part of my being is telling me that I need to get up in that hole. My hole.

#6 — The Callisto Protocol

The most beautiful aspect of The Callisto Protocol is that almost the entirety of the game is spent squeezing through cracks, crawling through vents, and going up and down near hundreds of ladders. The one problem is that they interrupt all that fun to focus on the most boring protagonist of all time and whatever it was that he was going through. Something about shooting their arms off? Space religion? Who knows?

#5 — Final Fantasy XVI

Now to be completely honest, I haven’t played this entry in the franchise yet, but I am completely willing to commit to the first 15 releases in order to understand this decades-long tale that many have claimed to be one of the best video game franchises ever made. If only there were a way to just jump ahead so I could do my duty of wiggling and jiggling through these graphically magnificent gaps.

#4 — The Shawshank Redemption

It often comes as a shock to fans of this classic film when they learn that the pivotal climactic scene is often misunderstood. While most would believe that the warden and his accompanying guards would be upset with Andy Dufresne, it turns out that the writers intended the actor’s emotion to be closer to disappointment rather than anger. Andy didn’t give them a turn in the secret hole, in fact, he hid it from them. I know that if I were that warden, and I found out this way, I’d give him the chair.

#3 — Unreal Engine 5 Demo

Unreal Engine 5 is the latest and greatest in the evolution of game creation tools, and during its groundbreaking demo showcase all the way back in 2020, fans and developers alike got a glimpse into its impact on the foreseeable future of gaming. Cracks baby! We’re gonna be getting them in every game, every genre, everywhere. Whether it’s indie or AAAA. You’re gonna get ‘em, and you’re gonna love ‘em, because you’ll have no other choice.

#2 — God of War (2018)

God of War (2018) is considered by many to be as close as you can get to a perfect game. A masterclass in storytelling, game design, and character that will keep the bar raised for years to come. Which is why it is very disappointing that the joy of gap scootin’ is squandered by this little twirp you have to babysit throughout the entire experience. We get it, your mom just died, but can you please be quiet for two seconds! Not to mention Kratos being a huge grump at all times, like, lighten up buddy! If only there were a game that was just as good but without all the children, and maybe with a protagonist who was… idk, more of a little guy? Maybe someday.

#1 — Astro Bot

Oh my god…

RFK Jr. Admits to “Doing a Human Centipede Once” in Unprompted Confession

Posted on by Gabriel Stahr

WASHINGTON — RFK Jr. Shocked reporters attending a press conference on Saturday when in a completely unprompted diatribe he confessed to “Doing a human centipede once.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe the kind of things that have happened back at the lodge, ” said Kennedy, ignoring a question about healthcare reform. “There was even the time I was doing a human centipede once. So I was in the middle, and you’d think the worst part would be getting caca in the chompers but that’s happened a few times before. I was prepared for that.”

Reporters were caught in a state of stunned silence for a few moments as President-elect Trump’s appointee for the Department of Health continued to ramble about his reenactment of the 2009 film.

“When I think about making America healthy again, I think about the innovations brought forward by visionaries like Josef Heiter from The Human Centipede” said RFK, scratching his upper lip. “His operations still prove to be leagues safer than the horrible operations pushed by the woke left on America’s children.”

When asked for comment on RFK Jr.’s absurd confession, house representative Nancy Pelosi stated the following:

“I am shocked and appalled at the audacity of Trump’s choice for the Department of Health. No one making such unsafe and reckless decisions, whether for the public or for themselves, should have so much power over the health of the American people.”

At press time, Representative Pelosi cast her vote in favor of the “Replicate Human Centipede 3” Bill, which authorizes prisons to attach prisoners ass-to-mouth.

An Open Letter From America’s CEOs: This is Supposed to Happen to Schoolchildren, Not Us

Posted on by Johnny Amizich

Dear Parasites,

Due to the assassination of Brian “Working Class Hero” Thompson by the coward Luigi Mangione(allegedly) on December 4th, 2024 we, the owners of this country, felt compelled to address you all directly.

This act of unprovoked violence is the kind of thing you expect to hear has happened to a classroom full of children, not us. We, the people who actually make things happen and enrich your lives with the very products and services you take for granted. How dare one of you step out of line? When’s the last time you heard about a second grader creating something like the Cybertruck, ChatGPT, or Moana 2? How many children have had the wicked smart idea of destroying multiple complete films to reap the tax rewards? Has a kindergartener’s Welchian leadership tactics ever yielded dividends to your stock portfolio? Has your child ever maintained quarterly growth for multiple years by making up bullshit measurements for growth and user retention?

We thought not.

It’s a sad day in America when the coldblooded murder of one of our fellow executives, all of whom deliver results every day to the economy and most importantly, our shareholders, is met with indifference and even celebration. And yet, so many of you find tears to shed every time a grade school classroom is turned into a Jackson Pollock painting from the blood of children. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

To those of you who have embraced, praised, and gone so far as to canonize Mr. Mangione; enjoy this moment while it lasts. Savor it. Because while most of our pet congresspeople hem and haw and do a sad little dance every time a school is turned into a warzone and, as if it wasn’t obvious, they are merely providing lip service to something that will never be addressed. Because they know doing so would impact the bottom line of the very people responsible for putting them in office. So let’s see how long it takes for a bill named the “Brian Thompson CEO Protection Act” to pass vs something like the “Stop Children From Being Butchered Act”. I think we all know the answer. Luigi Mangione is not some folk hero nor is he some righteous crusader. He’s an opportunity. He’s the excuse we need to cinch the noose a little tighter around your collective necks. So as we said, savor this moment because it is fleeting.

Finally, once our good friend Donald reascends the throne, the real fun will begin. We’re in talks to have Secret Service protection for every executive in the country to ensure this won’t happen again; Anyone who makes an attempt will have their body pumped full of more hot lead than a high schooler in homeroom, and their bloody carcass put on display. There will also be a hotline where people can report suspicious behavior both online and in the real world — and be rewarded handsomely for speaking out — on anyone who is even remotely suggesting some harm befall one of our most precious resources: the capital holders AKA the ones our founding documents refer to when they say “We, The People”.

Kindest Regards,

The CEOs of America

Texas Instruments Announces TI-83 HD Remake

Posted on by Peter Cunis

DALLAS — Just in time for Christmas, Texas Instruments CEO Haviv “Texas Toast” Ilan took to X to announce the upcoming HD Remake of the classic scientific calculator known as the TI-83, much to the elation of calculator enthusiasts around the world. 

“We’re excited to revisit this classic so that a new generation can experience it for themselves,” announced Ilan, “Our development team has been hard at work upgrading the graphics by adding a third color. For those of you who crave the nostalgia of the original, you can switch back over to the greenish-gray and black scheme you remember from your glory days.”

Ilan followed up his post by describing some of the features that would be included in the HD Remake of the TI-83 (which fans are already calling “TI-83.5”).

“The HD Remake includes a museum section where you can look at all of the old manuals and advertisements for the TI-83’s 1996, 1999, and 2001 releases,” Ilan’s post continues, “And we’ve included social media functionality too, so you can share all of the sines and cosines you make with your friends. You can even challenge them to beat your high score in that terrible version of Mario that only one kid in high school knew how to install.”

However, while the response on social media has been largely positive, some prominent content creators have made videos criticizing the upcoming release.

“First of all, it’s absolutely insane that they’re remaking the TI-83 before the TI-82,” said calculator vlogger MathMatrixPromVarsClear in his latest video, “The TI-83 HD Remake Is BULLSHIT.” “We’ve seen this sort of so-called ‘remake’ from the calculator industry before, and it’s proof that they’re all just out of touch with the community. We don’t want tooltips for the weird buttons that tell us how to use them. We want to stare at all the weird little buttons on our calculators and just imagine what happens if we push that one that says MATRIX.”

 The TI-83 HD Remake will release in x years, where x = 3x^(2 + 17.32x) ÷ (∑(i=27)^32 (i^2)x + 18.2313^27.23x + 23y.

Luigi Mangione Escorts NYC Mayor Eric Adams to Prison

Posted on by Andrew Quemere

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted on federal bribery charges in September, was escorted to prison by local folk hero Luigi Mangione.

“Eric Adams is a crooked, venal man who has victimized the residents of New York City for far too long,” Mr. Mangione said during a brief press conference. “Bringing him to justice felt gratifying, but he kept staring me in the eye, which was unsettling. I mean, like, have you ever heard the weird stuff that guy said about 9/11?”

The embattled Mr. Adams now faces additional counts of corruption, according to court records.

“Shortly before Defendant was taken into custody, witnesses observed him stuffing wads of cash into a burlap sack with ‘ILLEGAL BRIBES FOR MAYOR ADAMS’ written in the Comic Sans font on its side,” the documents say.

Political analysts predicted that Mr. Mangione’s approval rating, which already surpasses that of Congress, will receive a significant boost from apprehending Mr. Adams.

“The images of Mangione from the perp walk were instantly iconic,” said one analyst. “He looked so poised, so powerful. And Adams, as usual, looked like a perplexed Mr. Potato Head protruding from a suit.”

Mr. Mangione ended the press conference without taking questions, simply telling reporters, “I have bigger fish to fry.”

Hanukkah Miracle: One Steam Gift Card Enough for Eight Games

Posted on by Dan Katz

FOX POINT, Wis. — The Lord has smiled upon the Levin family, blessing them with a true Hanukkah miracle. The $25 Steam gift card 13-year-old Jordan received from his Nana, expected only to be enough to buy one game, lasted for eight full games. 

“Frankly, I’m kvelling,” said Rabbi Moishe Lipman. “When Jordan was called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah just months ago, I saw in him a great love of family, respect for his teachers, and a desire to reap from life whatever he, with the guiding hand of G-d, should see fit to sow. It comes as no surprise to me, then, that he harvested ‘Black Mesa,’ ‘Darkest Dungeon,’ and six more games from just one Steam gift card.” 

A humble young man, Jordan gives ample credit to the Steam Winter Sale for his ability to make the most out of his bubbe’s generous gift. 

“I love my Nana. I love her more than anything,” said Jordan, beaming. “That I could celebrate the Festival of Lights with her was all I needed. She made her famous latkes – that was more than enough. But to be able to grab ‘Mass Effect: Legendary Edition,’ ‘Party Hard,’ and ‘One Finger Death Punch 2’ on Steam was the applesauce on top.” 

Jordan admitted that he considered selling his ‘Team Fortress 2’ items to accumulate a couple more bucks so he could afford the discounted ‘Cyberpunk 2077.’ But seeing ‘Portal’ and ‘Portal 2,’ which he had foolishly long ignored, in a dirt-cheap bundle, he felt it would have been a shande to put his entire gift card into just one game.

“My husband and I are just relieved that my mother bought a gift card because we told her to, not because someone on the phone told her to buy some at Target to repay an ‘accidental’ deposit to her bank account,” Devorah Levin said. “And ‘Civilization VI’ should alone be enough to take the sting out the stinker presents he’s about to get the next couple nights, at least until Civ VII comes out.” 

At press time, Jordan planned to take the $1.53 he had left over and put it toward tzedakah at Sunday School.

Game Night: Satisfy the Whims of the Pachinko Gods In ‘Ballionaire’

Posted on by Thomas Wilde

Whenever I complain about the random factor in a roguelike, especially the deck-builders, someone comes out of the woodwork to explain to me that I am mistaken and/or innately flawed as a person. I do not agree with the former perspective. This sort of game always involves, to some degree, the luck of the draw. The great ones give you ways to build around, ignore, or worth within that; the mediocre ones turn into a coin-flipping simulator.

In Ballionaire, the luck of the draw is the entire point. Ballionaire is to pachinko what Slay the Spire is to collectible card games, but with a physics-based element that has a knack for screwing you over. It’s more of a raw gamble than most games in this vein, where your best possible plan can sometimes be blown to hell through no fault of your own.

In something that appears to be an MLM, a cult, or possibly both, you’re a lowly “nillionaire” who’s out to learn how to earn from the Keepers. That means playing their elaborate game to earn as much money as possible within a set number of ball drops. With each success, you graduate to the next level of “tribute,” but if you fail to meet the Keepers’ demands, you have to start from scratch.

Between each drop, you randomly draft a series of 3 or more pins for your board, which you use to set up a gauntlet of high-scoring bumpers, traps, and obstacles for your next ball. The early rounds are easy, but as you progress, you’ll need to pay attention to setups and synergies to satisfy the Keepers’ requests.

Initially, Ballionaire is a riot of colors, sounds, strange sights, and new terminology, but it’s easy to pick up most of it over the course of your first game on the simplest board. Early on, you can set up obvious tricks on the board like pinball bumpers, to keep your ball in play for another couple of crucial seconds, but the further you get into the game, the more elaborate your options become.

This can include planting a field of vegetables in the middle of the board so your ball will collect them on the way through, then hit a Chef’s Pan that will transform the vegetables into a Pizza that you can pick up for a big score multiplier. You could also go all in on elementally-aligned balls and pins that work with them, so your water balls force Pumpkins to grow until they’re worth thousands on each hit. Another style of pin eats your original ball to spit out coins, which can either be used as a simple multiball or get fed into a piggy bank for reliable per-drop income.

Like other roguelikes, it’s a question of what you can set up on the fly with what you’re given, and what you can do to tilt the odds in your favor. It’s easy to accidentally set up negative synergies in Ballionaire, and while you’ve got a limited number of removals with which to eliminate inconvenient pins, you also get passive abilities (“Boons”) that you can’t get rid of.

It’s the sort of thing that makes my brain itch. Ballionaire couples the feel of a Vegas slot machine with the just-one-more buzz of this sort of short-run roguelike. It’s two addictive tastes that compound one another, as told through bizarre graphics that look like an Adult Swim show based on ‘90s skater art. The higher your values go, the bigger the numbers get, until the lower half of your screen explodes into financial fireworks.

My primary issue with Ballionaire is that it’s still essentially a slot machine. The one thing that you cannot influence about it to any significant degree, at least not with anything I’ve unlocked to date, is the initial ball drop and its ensuing spin. I’ve lost entire runs because my last ball decided on a whim to take a magnificent suicide dive straight off the edge of the board, or threaded a very careful needle between every single bumper and barrier I’d set up. There’s an actively malevolent element to Ballionaire’s physics that holds it back.

You can unlock additional toys and tools by playing Ballionaire, but you do so via a gacha system that involves earning prize tickets for an in-game vending machine. Some of the unlocks are legitimate upgrades, but it’s a gamble in a gamble in a gamble; you might win them, then you might get them, and then they might not show up in a run where they can be used properly.

Ballionaire still has some legs, and it’s a great game to throw on your Steam Deck, but I couldn’t recommend it without a disclaimer. Even more than other roguelikes, it’s a game about trying to minimize the influence of pure luck, and every once in a while, it’ll decide to doom you for no particular reason. There are some good ideas and solid design here, as well as a particularly evocative metaphor for modern capitalism, but Ballionaire has a knack for sudden failure that holds it back.

[Ballionaire, by developer Newobject and publisher Raw Fury, is available now on Steam for $12.34. This column was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by a Raw Fury PR representative.]

“The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol” Praised by SEO Experts

Posted on by Amity Gilmour

Despite lukewarm reception toward The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol, there is one group of individuals who have praised the show: SEO experts.

“Bravo to the Walking Dead,” said Liz White, a self-proclaimed SEO Expert, Marketing Influencer, and AI Virtuoso. In a sprawling LinkedIn post, she wrote that “There hasn’t been this big a step forward since we started harvesting and selling user data. AMC has pushed the envelope, and it’s up to us to deliver.”

AMC was quick to capitalize on the attention, heaping praise on what some have called a masterclass in outreach.

“In our post-scarcity society, attention is a premium” explained Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead, Former Showrunner of Seasons 4 to 8, Executive Producer of Fear the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, and eternally despised figure in the fandom Scott Michael Gimple. “That’s why we built our latest product solely based on its potential to rank first on Google.”

When asked if this was an attempt to artificially direct traffic to their show, Scott disagreed. “We put a lot of genuine love and care into crafting this franchise,” he explained, writing an emotional moment for a character with the express purpose of killing them off a minute later. “We value the support the fans have shown us over the years. We just want to make sure new people can find us.”

There has been a lot of heated debate online surrounding the ethics and effectiveness of building a brand solely around its SEO potential.

“This is another hammer in the coffin of independent media,” claimed indie director Eddie Gilderflower. “Just because I wrote the name of my series in a dead, forgotten language, I’m unfairly penalized in search engine rankings. All so multi-billion dollar companies can make a few extra bucks. It’s outrageous and unfair.”

At press time, Scott Gimple announced a massive crossover event entitled AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead Who Live in the World Beyond, Daryl Dixon Doomsday Endgame.

Half of Marvel Rivals Roster Removed in Thanos Update

Posted on by bee

GUANGZHOU, China — An Avengers-themed game update to ‘Marvel Rivals’ has reduced its selection of available playable characters by half. The changes were introduced in NetEase’s official development blog:

“Today marks the beginning of a new season of Rivals! Thanos has entered the fray to wreak havoc on the Timestream Entanglement in our new Avengers: Metagame storyline. He determined it would be a mercy to eliminate half of all characters after recognizing the unsustainability of our large roster. All of the heroes who died in Avengers: Infinity War have been removed as well as several others chosen at random. Oh, we also dusted Hawkeye’s whole family again. They weren’t characters in the game, we didn’t even bother putting their deaths in a cutscene, we just want you to know he’s really sad about it again.”

The roster change has received widespread negative reactions from fans on social media and video platforms. The popular gaming and comic news channel Supermanchild reviewed the update shortly after its release.

“This is bullshit. ‘Random’ my ass: Hela, Iron Fist, Jeff, Luna, and Venom? They just killed off all the good characters instead of trying to balance them. Who are we supposed to play—fucking Namor? And of course all the Thor skins are on sale now. You know, I’m starting to think this game is just a cash grab… and look at Rivals on SteamDB, this is the lowest the current player count has been since launch. They’ll regret this, we gamers hold grudges. We don’t forget. I’m uninstalling this until I get bored with Warzone again.”

Ding Lei, founder and CEO of NetEase, responded to the backlash in a thread on X – the Everything App.

“Looks like Thanos snapped half our players, too” which was ratioed by several replies featuring the character Luigi from Nintendo’s Mario video game franchise. Lei continued in the next post, “We are honored to uphold the super-powerful legacy created by Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe of creating divisive follow-ups to popular media! I just hope we have some players left to disappoint by the time we get to our Ultimatum storyline.”

At press time, NetEase clarified the characters will return next season except for Iron Man who will only be available as a $26 skin for Doctor Doom when he’s added to the roster.

Hailey Joel Osment Admits Kingdom Hearts IV has Been Delayed Because he was Trapped in a Simulation of his Dreams and Just Now Escaped

Posted on by Brendan Osorio

Shocking news came out recently that actor Haily Joel Osment, famous for films such as The Sixth Sense and A.I. as well as his vocal work in the Kingdom Hearts series, has been trapped in a simulation of his own dreams since the release of Kingdom Hearts III.

“It was so strange, It was like I was back on the set of A.I. except also my dad was there, but he wasn’t my dad he was Genie from Aladdin…” Osment said on a recent unlistenable podcast. “I don’t really know how long it’s been. I just woke up a week ago, the last thing I remember is Tetsuya Nomura telling me to drink this special tea that was going to help my voice stay warm for a long VO session.”

Osment had started working on the highly anticipated Kingdom Hearts IV before this strange affliction. Director Tetsuya Nomura claims he had nothing to do with what happened to the beloved actor but says it was a blessing in disguise Osment had the chance to connect deep with his inner soul and let his heart be his guiding key.

“We’re investigating Mr. Nomura, we believe he may be culpable in some way,” Stated Detective Jeffrey Katzeneisner, in a recent press conference. “Mr. Osment described several elaborate ‘disneyfied’ versions of his childhood memories we believe may have been induced by some sort of hallucinogenic tea given to him by Nomura. While Mr. Nomura has denied requests for further questioning; he did send us a box of sea salt ice cream with a note that just read “Chillax bro”.

Osment has stated that although he feels 100% better he still can’t stop hearing Hikaru Utada singing “Simple and Clean” in his head everyday.