Brody R Thompson, Author at Hard Drive

Charger Cable With Sparks Shooting Out of It May Need To Be Replaced at Some Point

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Travis Tack

TRENTON, N.J. — The phone charger that local man Michael Kelton, 34, leaves next to his bed has begun to discharge electrical current through the air at random, sources have confirmed. Luckily, Kelton says he’s begun considering possibly ordering a replacement at some point in the future.

“My last charger burned down my apartment and I still kept using it for four more months at my new place,” Kelton told reporters. “So yeah, the shooting sparks thing isn’t great, but as long as I don’t spill anything on it or keep any paper over there, I don’t think it’s a very big deal. Plus, my father taught me not to waste anything, and this is how I honor his memory. He died last year after eating a bunch of old food.”

Experts have warned that once the insulation becomes damaged, the conductors become exposed and the charger cable could pose a fire risk unless Kelton wraps a bunch of duct tape around it.

“Come on man, use your head,” said local fireman Cal Gunther. “You’re talking about Mike Kelton that lives on Telegraph Avenue? I drove by his house the other night and his upstairs window was smoking. I just think he’s really tempting fate with his setup from the sounds of it. The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s guidelines are clear: if you find any signs of damage, cords and chargers must be replaced within the next 2-3 years, hopefully.”

Of course, it’s only a matter of time before the dirty, damaged, and semi-functioning cable finally reaches the point where Kelton is forced to start considering the possibility of maybe adding a replacement to his Amazon wish list. But, for now, he remains committed to the generic blue cable that costs $6.99 at the CVS a mere five blocks from his home.

“It takes time to replace these things,” Kelton continued. “And I just have a lot going on right now. For example: I’m thinking of getting pizza later. That sounds like a lot of work, though. I probably won’t, actually.”

EA Sports FC 24 Best Controller Settings Guide

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Samam Hasan

EA Sports FC 24 brings in a new generation of football gameplay for players all over the world to enjoy. To win in the game or even stay competitive, players will need the best controller settings suited to their playstyle. Every setting makes a difference in FC 24, especially the Ultimate Team mode, so it is essential to find out which is suited. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the best controller settings in EA Sports FC 24.

EA Sports FC 24: Best Controller Settings

When playing Ultimate Team, the controller preset will always be set to Competitive. While you can’t fully customize the preset, there are noticeable things you can tweak within various factors of the gameplay. Let’s take a look at them:

Shooting

Shot Assistance: Assisted
Timed Finishing: Off (based on player preference)

Passing

Through Pass Assistance: Semi
Lobbed Through Pass: Semi
Ground Pass Assistance: Assisted
Cross Assistance: Semi
Lobbed Pass Assistance: Semi
Pass Receiver Lock: Late
Precision Pass Sensitivity: Normal

Defending

Auto Clearances: Off
Clearance Assistance: Classic
Jockey: Manual
Defending: Advanced Defending
Pass Block Assistance: On

Switching

Auto Switching: On Air and Loose Balls
Auto Switching Move Assistance: Low
Right Stick Switching: Classic
Right Stick Switching Reference: Player Relative
Right Stick Switching Sensitivity: 4
Next Player Switching: Classic
Player Lock: Off
Icon Switching: On

Dribbling

Contextual Dribbling: Off
Orbit Dribbling: On

Goalkeeping

Save Assistance: Assisted

Controller Preferences

Analog Sprint: Off
Trigger Effect: Off
User Vibration Feedback: Enhanced

These settings will help you out massively in EA Sports FC 24, especially in Ultimate Team. While you’re looking to improve your Ultimate Team success, check out our guide on how to get coins faster!

Super Mario Bros. Wonder Release Time & Date: Preload Guide

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Noah Hunter

For any Nintendo Switch owner, Super Mario Bros. Wonder has been a long time coming. The system has not seen a new 2D Mario title in its lifetime until this point, with only New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe jumping over to the system. Wonder looks to bring loads of creative twists to the formula we all know and love. Of course, this includes new powerups like the infamous Elephant Fruit. With such an exciting release coming soon, when can you preload Super Mario Bros. Wonder? Here’s everything you need to know.

When Can You Preload Super Mario Wonder?

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is now available to preload on the Nintendo Switch family of systems! This gives you an entire week to download the game prior to the release. Nintendo makes the Wonder preload easy, so you won’t have to do anything at all.

How to Preload Super Mario Bros. Wonder

To preload the game, you simply need to pre-order it from the Nintendo eShop. If you have it pre-ordered, it will automatically begin downloading as a preload when your Nintendo Switch is either on or in rest mode. So, you just need to make sure you have purchased the game from the eShop.

Super Mario Wonder Release Date

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is set to release on October 20, 2023. Additionally, the game is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. Notably, Wonder has a total of twelve different playable characters, including Yoshi, Nabbit, Daisy, Toad, Toadette, and the regular cast of Mario characters. Overall, we can’t wait to get our hands on Super Mario Bros. Wonder and experience the wonder that awaits.

Spider-Man 2 PS5 Preload Guide: When Can You Play SM2?

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Noah Hunter

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 release date is arguably one of the most anticipated titles of 2023. The game has plenty of people ecstatic to see Peter, Miles, and fan-favorite Spider-Man villains face off against each other. With so many excited to play, when can you preload Spider-Man 2 to your PlayStation 5?

SM2 is the sequel to 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. In the title, Peter Parker took on Doc Ock, Mr. Negative, and plenty of other villains. It’s been a long five years, but we’ve never been more excited to jump into Insomniac’s incredible world. Here’s everything you need to know about preloads and the release date of SM2.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 How to Preload

The preload for SM2 is now unlocked! Boot up your PS5 now to get ready for the upcoming release.

To preload, you must pre-order the game head to the game in your library and select download. This will then begin downloading the title to your PlayStation 5 console. We highly recommend that you preload the game, as it will take up a whopping 88GB of storage. Attempting to download this package at launch could take quite a while, so it is best to do it during the preload phase.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 PS5 Release Time & Date

Spider-Man 2 will release on October 20 worldwide for PlayStation 5 exclusively. Below, we’ve compiled the times you can expect to launch into the game depending on your time zone and region.

October 20 @ 12 AM EDT

October 19 @ 11 PM CDT

October 19 @ 10 PM MDT

October 19 @ 9 PM PDT

Additionally, the game has not been announced for any other platforms at the moment, so this only applies to PlayStation 5. Though, a release of SM2 on PC down the line would make sense, with both Marvel’s Spider-Man and Miles Morales making their way to the platform last year.

So, that’s precisely when you can play Marvel’s Spider-Man 2! You can expect a grand adventure with both Peter and Miles, as you face off against Lizard, Kraven, and Venom. Plenty of surprises are surely in store, and we can’t wait to dive in on October 20. Looking for all the trophies available in the game? Check out our trophy list guide!

Phil Spencer Cancels Activision-Blizzard Deal After Playing Overwatch 2 For the First Time

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Parker Johnson

REDMOND, WA — Despite the prior announcement that the long-awaited deal between Microsoft Gaming and Activision-Blizzard King closed earlier today, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has announced the deal will no longer go through after playing Overwatch 2 for the first time.

“I didn’t get a chance to play the new installment, and just kind of assumed it would be the first game, but better,” Spencer said. “I couldn’t be more wrong. Why is it 5v5 now? Queuing for a tank takes so much longer. I just want to hook everyone as Roadhog like the good old days. Not to mention Logan and I can’t both play tank anymore. He’s going to get to do it because he’s better than me, too.”

After finding out even more about the game’s development, Spencer increasingly became more disappointed with missing features and modes that were promised, including the hotly-anticipated Overwatch 2 PvE Hero Mode.

“Oh, and now the single-player mode they kept telling us to wait for isn’t even coming? It’s just this event bullshit! Where’s the skill trees? The customization? This really should’ve been included in the due dilligence we did for the acquisition.”

Overwatch 2 Game Director Aaron Keller spoke about his new boss’s frustration with the latest installment in the franchise.

“Look, we weren’t really trying to make a good game with this one,” Keller said. “We just needed to find a way to transition to a more predatory business model. But now Phil keeps talking about ‘broken promises, missing features, putting the players first,’ and a bunch of other nerdy shit like that. This isn’t what I signed up for at all.”

At press time, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick declined to comment and was seemingly at his desk muttering something along the lines of “please never let me have consequences for my actions.”

Looney Tunes Characters Ranked by Their Utility as a Military Asset

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Sean Mullee

The Looney Tunes have long been used by the U.S. military as morale boosters in the form of aircraft nose art and squadron insignias. But if they were true patriots, these toons would be serving their country a lot more directly. With that in mind, please enjoy this ranking of which Looney Tunes characters would best serve the interests of the United States military.

#22. Playboy Penguin

He looks like something American GI’s would torture for fun in a Vietnam movie to give our hero a moral dilemma.

#21. Granny

I’ve never seen Granny survive an anvil to the head like most of the other characters on this list, and you want me to believe she’d survive artillery shelling?

#20. Lola Bunny

Lola is the only toon on this list that was created during the 90’s Looney Tunes renaissance. And as a child of the 90’s, she is fully undeceived by sponsored Army Twitch streamers and Marine Corps TikToks, so good luck getting her to serve.

#19. Beaky Buzzard

Just our luck, one of the few characters that can fly just happens to be a complete dope. Good luck getting any good surveillance intel out of this schmuck.

#18. Sylvester the Cat

If you can’t catch Tweety Bird, how the hell are you supposed to catch al-Qaeda?

#17. Barnyard Dog

This dog is most commonly shown failing to cross a line drawn on the ground. Indiscriminately blowing through borders is one of the main tenets of the U.S. military, so I think they might just be ideologically opposed.

#16. Marvin the Martian

This guy has spent thousands of years trying to destroy Earth and hasn’t made a dent, total fraud.

#15. Yosemite Sam

Sam has been depicted serving in many armed conflicts: the American Revolution, Civil War, and World War I. There’s no place in a blue-blooded military for hired guns, especially ones who routinely pick the losing side.

#14. Porky Pig

Imagine your platoon is under heavy fire from an ambush. Munitions are depleted, several men are lost, and your last hope for survival is you squad leader, who picks up the radio and says “We need ai-badidi-ai-badididi-ai-badidi-air support!”

#13. Speedy Gonzalez

Sure, no cat can outrun him, but a Hellfire missile damn well could.

#12. Slowpoke Rodriguez

Unlike his faster cousin, this mouse understands the importance of packing a gun.

#11. Elmer Fudd

Easily manipulated and able to operate a firearm, this is the exact kinda guy the Army hunts for at your high school career fair. You better believe he’s driving a Camaro off the lot with a 30% interest rate and Oakley sunglasses.

#10. Gossamer

I don’t know what he is, but I know he can kill.

#9. Tasmanian Devil

Taz has an insatiable hunger and jaws that can bite through just about anything, but his lack of self control makes him a liability on the front lines. They’d probably stick him in a black site and use him as an instrument of torture.

#8. Pepé Le Pew

Pepé is a walking chemical weapon, the use of which is considered a war crime *wink*

#7. Wile E. Coyote

He would fit in perfectly with whatever military squadron is responsible for wasting a bunch of taxpayer money on shit that doesn’t work. He’s approving those $1 trillion jets that can’t fly in a storm and licking his lips at all the roadrunner he’s gonna have for dinner.

#6. Foghorn Leghorn

Foghorn doesn’t seem like an active combat guy, but I think he’d really kill it as a Bob Hope, USO type. He’d airlift showgirls into war zones to make all the toons’ eyes spring out of their skulls and get awarded the Medal of Freedom.

#5. Tweety Bird

Tweety possesses an ideal level of blissful ignorance to the world around him that would make him the most deadly drone pilot the United States has ever seen.

#4. Bugs Bunny

An accomplished trickster, Bugs would run a serious misinformation PSYOP by dressing up as a beautiful woman and getting some poor, democratically elected, leader of a resource-rich nation to shoot himself in the face.

#3. Daffy Duck

For over 80 years, Daffy couldn’t sniff the top half of this list. That was until a 2012 episode of “The Looney Tunes Show” had him join a spec ops division of the U.S. Marine Corps and break Bugs out of an Albanian Prison (real). Plus, I’ve seen him take bullets to the face at point blank range and only suffer a repositioning of his bill.

#2. Cecil Turtle

At first glance he may not look that formidable, but Cecil is one of the few toons to ever outsmart Bugs Bunny. Get this geezer in a war room with one of those big glowing tables and he’d bring our boys home within six months.

#1. Roadrunner

I’ve seen this guy break the laws of physics hundreds of times – he’s going straight to Skunk Works.

Mother of Final Boss Reaffirms Vulnerability Is Just a Phase

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Walker MacDonald

Ving Thorr the Conqueror, final boss of the overnight roguelike hit Hell’s Kiss: Death Incarnate, had recently gone through a rather public, even blatantly visible, bout of insecurity, until his mother Mary Lou subtly reassured him that his vulnerability was just a temporary phase.

“I’ve just been going through a lot recently,” shared a dejected Ving Thorr after yet another crushing loss at the hands of a brave protagonist. “Ever since I took that promotion to Final Boss, it seems like every time I try to put myself out there, I just get beaten down again and again. I’m punished for just being me. Even when I try to change it up, y’know? Never good enough. Everything feels so cyclical.”

Mary Lou Thorr had shared further insight to the matter as only a mother could.

“Everybody in his position goes through a stage like this, and typically another stage, usually followed by a surprise final one, but it’s been especially rough on my Vingy.” said Thorr in a hushed tone. “The industry’s not like it used to be, the landscape has totally changed. Strategy guides, save states, summoning assists are a daily threat. And what do the bosses of the world have? Giant glowing eyeballs and limbs that leave men like Ving so vulnerable. Emotionally and literally, like he’s wide open to attacks for 15 second intervals. It’s shameful.”

Matthew Rainnie, co-developer and enemy relations manager of Hell’s Kiss, held a more bureaucratic view of the boss position in today’s climate.

“To shoot straight with you, the industry is a joke, it’s no secret,” he said. “Anybody worth their salt is over at Fromsoft just hammering kids day in day out like it’s nothing. These guys should feel lucky to have a job at all. Frankly, that might not even be a reality soon. Based on current projections, we’re looking at replacing them all with AI before the end of the decade. Something that can learn a player’s moves, and doesn’t need things like insurance, dental, or health care. It’s time we really put the computer in ‘computer player’.”

At press time, it was heard that Ving Thorr had stepped down from his position as final boss, and taken a more comfortable position as one of those ambient NPC models that just kind of linger in the background. “It’s definitely a downgrade. Less animations, less polygons, less pay,” he said. “But hey, I’m happy. I finally feel like I can think outside the hitbox.”

‘I’m Somewhat Of A Gamer Now Myself,’ Says Mom Referring To New York Times Spelling Bee

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Jus Kaplan

WEYMOUTH, Mass. — Last week, local mother of two Stephanie Mendoza proudly informed her kids that she’s a gamer now that she regularly plays the New York Times Spelling Bee, according to local reports.

“I want to tell you boys something super exciting: I game now, just like you!” said Mendoza over dinner to her teenage sons. “It’s not Call of Battlefield or whatever you call that shooty game you two play with your friend Kayden, but it’s definitely a game! And guess what? Your mama is pretty darn good at it!”

Laynie Vaughn, a colleague of Mendoza’s, confirmed her claims of gaming prowess.

“Steph is hands down the best Spelling Bee player in our office. Every day our team does the puzzle during lunch and she always guesses the pangram way before anyone else,” said Vaughn. “She has been getting a bit carried away recently, though. Yesterday when our manager couldn’t make it past the ‘Solid’ rank, she laughed and said ‘Get good, noob’ in front of everyone. Then when she reached ‘Genius’ she stood up and shouted ‘G-G-E-Z’, whatever that means. It was kind of startling.”

Mendoza’s older son Edward, 16, says his mom’s new behavior has indeed become worrisome.

“I’ll admit, at first I thought it was pretty cool to have a gamer mom. She let us stay up and play COD until like 3 a.m., even on school nights.” he said, rubbing the bags under his eyes. “But she hasn’t done laundry or made dinner all week and I’m not sure she’s taken a shower either. And when my 11-year-old brother asked her for help with his English homework, she said no because it was a ‘skill issue.’ She told him to ‘grind harder’ and just went back to clicking letters. I wish my mom wasn’t sweaty at Spelling Bee.”

At press time, Mendoza was seen throwing her phone across the room after failing to figure out the New York Times Connections puzzle.

Uh Oh: Date Just Referred to Vhs Collection as “Nest Egg”

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Joe Rumrill

SILVER LAKE, Calif. — A first date went south in seconds yesterday when a local woman heard the man-child she was out with earnestly call his VHS collection his “nest egg”, sources urging the woman to flee reported.

“I mean, the night was far from perfect from the start, when for some reason he requested we meet at a Barcade that he’d been banned from for jamming Lunchables pepperoni slices in the quarter slots,” said Shocarra Cunningham, while looking up nunneries on her phone. “So, 15 minutes later after we had been tossed out, we were out sitting on the curb making conversation, and then he drops that ‘nest egg’ bomb. All his meager finances are tied up in the moldy boxes of videotapes, I guess. He had pictures of them in his wallet, like a normal person would have of their loved ones. My Hinge algorithm is trying to do me in.”

When asked about his experience on the date, Travis Bailey couldn’t wait to talk further about the value of his cherished VHS haul.

“Oh yeah, it’s a pretty extensive collection. Got all sorts of limited edition clamshell cases, even have a copy of Mars Attacks signed by Tom Jones himself,” said the 36-year-old former dogwalker, while waxing his handlebar mustache. “Plus, I’ve got like 85 copies of Bowfinger…It’s not especially rare, but there’s a lot of them, y’know? If I sold them all for a buck apiece, I’m 75 whole bucks richer. If that’s not a retirement fund, I don’t know what is. Between my videos and my collection of all 50 state quarters, I could start shopping for second hand mopeds, like, TOMORROW. Life is sweet.”

Los Angeles Times love columnist Tovah Wendricks espoused a growing concern with the financial stability of men in Bailey’s age-range and interest bracket.

“Our studies show a whopping 91% of first dates end in men revealing themselves to be completely ill-equipped for their own futures, let alone sharing it with someone else.” she said. “We find it’s best for the long-suffering responsible parties on these dates to simply ‘play it cool, say ‘that’s cool’ and leave this fool’. Follow those directions, and then going forward maybe not matching with men who reference their supposed nunchuck ability in their profile, and true connection could come your way soon. At least, we hope to god it does.”

At press time, Ms. Cunningham was further mortified when she witnessed Bailey attempting to tip a bartender with a couple of Pog Slammers.

50 Games To Play if Your Day Job Isn’t Tedious Enough

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Robert Carnevale

Having too much fun in the wage cage, skipper? Enjoying your 9-to-5 grind to the point where you wish you could feel the pain of working a job you hated? Then, gee golly, do I have 50 nasty little surprises for you. Get ready to ask for fifteen minutes of your life back, because here are 50 games you should play if your day job just isn’t tedious enough.

#1 — Every single Assassin’s Creed since the second one

You ever vomit everywhere, and there’s chunks of food you ate two days ago spread out across a giant area of floorspace? Ubisoft’s been studying this imagery’s effect on humans for the past dozen Assassin’s Creed games. That’s why their game maps look like giant, bloated piles of vomit that’ll take you half a decade to complete. It’s a social experiment.

#2 — WWE Champions

I used to have a wife, Katrina, and a dog, Casper (like the friendly ghost). She took the dog and left when I decided to dedicate time to grinding out Hulk Hogan JPEGs instead of focusing on our marriage. But good god, I needed those gacha pulls. I still do. And gin. I need gin. Alexa, tell Scopely to send me some gin.

#3 — Starfield

My buddy Todd and I got together before he started mapping out Starfield, and as a prank, I said, “hey, if I can fit this whole cucumber up my ass, you gotta let me make one design choice on your next game.” Well, long story short, don’t blame Todd for the fact you have to navigate about sixteen menus every single time you want to take your spaceship anywhere or remove an item from your inventory. Sorry!

#4 — Baldur’s Gate 3

Imagine you get home from a hard day of work, and all you want to do is watch a bear fuck a gay vampire. Simple goal, right? Wrong. In order to do that, you have to navigate about five wheel menus to select the “fuck” action, and then you have to listen to some nasally narrator use her “bedtime” voice to painstakingly describe the lust you feel all for the privilege of maybe catching some bear sideboob in a thirty-second cutscene. Yuck.

#5 — Marvel’s Avengers

Plundering natural resources from Wakanda as Iron Man is all well and good, but does the guy with a nuclear missile for a heart really need to spend that much time grinding in order to defeat a robot spider the size of a minifridge? Anyway, Square Enix agreed with us and killed the game, so you don’t really have to worry about any of this anymore.

#6 — Telling Lies

You ever spend way too long fast-forwarding and rewinding through a YouTube video to find the one interesting bit you wanted to share with your friend? That’s the gameplay of Telling Lies. Anyone nostalgic for VCRs will enjoy it.

#7 — The Last of Us Part 2

I’ll never forget the day Neil Druckmann was dropped off at my orphanage. Even as a youth, he had a mature, developed hatred for humanity. One day, as I was serving him his dinner of orphan gruel, he stared me down and said, “I’m going to make you traipse through the hollow corpse of America as a bodybuilder who plays golf with fathers’ heads. And I’m going to watch as you weep when I win Game of the Year awards from an industry desperate to appear sophisticated.” Sick fuck.

#8 — Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon

After years of Sonic fans calling him a softy, Sonic Team’s Morio Kishimoto declared war on gamers, incensed by their baseless claims that he suffered from erectile dysfunction. But as it turned out, they weren’t saying he had ED—they were accusing him of making Sonic games too easy. Kishimoto later recognized these criticisms were lost in translation and confirmed plans to apologize for Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon in the near future.

#9 — Twelve Minutes

You know how if you get in an argument with your spouse, smoke a cigarette, smash some dishes, and apologize, but do it all in the wrong order, your wife will stay with her sister for the weekend and then you have to repeat the cycle next weekend? That’s Twelve Minutes.

#10 — Final Fantasy XV (but really, all of them)

Yeah, the antics of Final Fantasy XV‘s metrosexual boy band were boring, but let’s not dance around the truth of the matter: every Final Fantasy is thirty hours of tedious, mindless anime melodrama wrapped up in stupid haircuts.

#11 — Monster Hunter World

Monster Hunter World was actually an alpha build of Horizon Zero Dawn that Capcom stole and eventually released as-is. It was a complete fluke that Monster Hunter World became a best-selling sensation; Capcom did not expect people with actual friends to get together and aimlessly dick around in a jungle for hundreds of hours.

#12 — Horizon Zero Dawn

Sony, much like Capcom, figured out how to make a game about dinosaurs tedious: shove in needless crafting, a map that’s too big, and a narrative backdrop that’s a waste of everyone’s time. Much like Capcom, Sony was shocked that this formula—which was designed to repulse intelligent life—could sustain a franchise.

#13 — GTA V Online

Honest to God, earning money in real life is less tedious.

#14 — Marvel Snap

In the time it took me to grind out 7,500 gold bars for one of Marvel Snap’s premium card bundles, my son applied for college, got accepted, went there, and returned with a liberal arts degree in basketweaving. He now works at Google.

#15 — High on Life

Imagine having to endure hours of Rick and Morty humor alongside some of the blandest gunplay since the gaming industry’s most recent FPS release. Horrifying, right?

#16 — Papers, Please

This game actually is a day job. It’s probably not too different from yours, in fact. So why would you pull a double shift if you’re not getting paid? Ask Lucas Pope for your 1099 form.

#17 — Rainbow Six Siege

Keeping up with this game wouldn’t be so tedious were it not for Ubisoft rebalancing it every five minutes to destabilize any sort of playable, enjoyable meta. Seriously, I take a break to make lunch and the yacht map is no longer in the game. I pick up my kids from school and Blackbeard’s been neutered past the point of usability. I go to Yves Guillemot’s house to demand an explanation for Ubisoft’s recent actions and I end up in jail. Great.

#18 — Doom (2016)

Lock yourself in a closet filled with bugs and kill them by hand. After eight hours, you will have completed Doom. Now do it again to complete Doom Eternal.

#19 — Ghostwire Tokyo

Ghostwire Tokyo might look better than an average Ubisoft game, but it doesn’t play better than one. Picture a big sandbox map filled with icons– icons as far as the eye can glaze over!

#20 — Shadow of the Tomb Raider

More like Shadow of My Ass Falling Asleep on the Couch. The finale of Square Enix’s store-brand Uncharted trilogy is every bit as formulaic as you’d expect. The tedium of watching Lara refuse to develop any sort of personality after three entire fucking games… it’s enough to drive a person crazy.

#21 — Borderlands (all of them)

Rumor has it, if you whisper “Claptrap” in front of a mirror three times, Randy Pitchford will materialize behind you and rattle off some jokes that were so bad they couldn’t even make it into the Borderlands games, otherwise known as the endless lootershooters Randy used to beta test his standup routines.

#22 — Far Cry (all of them)

Assassin’s Creed is a little different with guns, but not much, you know? There are still numerous bad guy camps to conquer, shareholder meetings to attend, quarterly fiscal targets to meet, lowest-common-denominator game design principles to formulate future monetary plans around… The list goes on.

#23 — Control

There is a plot somewhere in Control, but you’ll need the patience of a saint to find it. If scraping through every inch of a digital office to find lore nuggets sounds tedious, that’s because it is.

#24 — Destiny 2

Much like with 9/11, people thought it couldn’t get worse after the first one hit. Then came the second, and everyone realized it wasn’t an accident: it was a coordinated assault on the American people. Destiny 2 is villainy of the same degree, almost. It is the free-to-play shell of a mobile game rebranded as a premium experience by executives who want to use your syphoned time as an experimental means to achieve immortality.

#25 — Deathloop

Thank God we don’t live in the world of Deathloop. Imagine if all the homeless people you shanked to death last night respawned every morning. You’d never get through your daily chore list. Is this relatable to anyone? I hope not.

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