Immersive eSports Experience Lets Gamers Have Slurs Yelled Right in Their Face

Posted on by Matt Fresh

BURBANK, Calif. — An all new completely immersive eSports experience will allow gamers the chance to have slurs yelled directly into their face instead of being confined to game chat.

The event, called Alpha Gaming Xperience, will be a pop-up experience with multiple locations throughout the country.

“I’m so excited to give regular gamers a chance to experience what it’s like in the eSports scene,” said event creator William Keith in a press release. “Most gamers never really get to know what it’s like on the pro scene. Some will see it as part of the live crowd but it’s not the same as being in the trenches. Now they’ll get the opportunity to be a pro for a day and take in all the awful smells and bigotry that comes with it.”

Stephen “Buckshot” Woltz, a former pro Valorant player served as a consultant to make sure the event is 100% authentic. 

“I made sure that what is offered to gamers is completely true to the eSports experience. So it will be actors that will make up the teams that guests get to be part of but I trained them in how to act like a real eSports team to each other and to their rivals. I taught them all the basics, how to properly rage at a death, how to always blame a teammate and the most important thing, an extensive slur vocabulary. Now, the vile that spews from their mouths now is as good as anything I’ve ever heard a gamer shout.”

Keith further explained what gamers can expect from the event.

“It’s a full interactive experience where guests will be ushered into a foul smelling arena and get placed on a team, they’ll play a match of a competitive game of their choice. Based on how the game goes, a rival or even a teammate may come up and yell a slur at them. The actors are instructed to get as close to their face as humanely possibly without risking a lawsuit.”

At press time, employees of the event are reportedly undergoing therapy to undo the effects of learning how to be pro gamers.

A Look Inside the Booming Red Barrel Industry

Posted on by Laura Lobo

SKULL-SHAPED ISLAND — From explosive container to evil lair decoration staple, despite initial skepticism from analysts, red explosive barrels don’t seem to be going away any time soon and those in the industry are reaping the rewards of the booming business..

“When we started out making those barrels, our goal couldn’t be farther away from what it became,” said CEO and founder of Bomb Barrel Inc. Luke E. Martin. “We just didn’t know how much our usual market share of space fascists and international terrorists were ignored when it came to decorative pieces that really speak to them.”

Despite being known to be prone to accidents, public opinion stands positive on the newest ornamental classic.

“My cousin Terry did end up passing away due to a red barrel explosion, but what can I say, it’s not like he was going to last much longer if the damn thing wasn’t there,” claimed terrorist and red barrel advocate Henchman #8056. “It’s really anxiety-inducing to just wait for the armed soldier guy to just come over and kill us all, so the barrel does help us chill a bit. It kinda brings a whole vibe to the room, just a really cool thing to have laying there.”

An early adopter of decorative red barrels, criminal mastermind Ivo Caricatutti, cites it as a major reason for the recent surge in employee morale.

“While I did buy my first few barrels for, let’s say, fairly different purposes, they showed their worth as decorative pieces quite soon” said Caricatutti. “Despite their usual lack of culture, while transporting the containers to where we would usually keep them, one of my men remarked on how it looked and, as they say, a broken clock indeed is right twice a day.”

“These barrels, there’s just a subtle je ne sais quoi in their composition, one that surprisingly, even the common man can grasp and appreciate. Truly impressive craftsmanship.” Caricatutti added.

Confirming rumors, Bomb Barrel revealed there are plans to expand their line-up.

“We’re hoping to come out with a lot of new stuff for red barrel fans. We’re hoping to ship our newest green acid barrels really soon, even if you don’t like barrels, exploding red crates are coming out early next year.” said Martin “We’re aiming to always keep bringing our best, with more variety but still keeping the passion and deep respect for our customers that made us what we are today.”

At press time, Bomb Barrel has yet to respond to requests for the production of non-explosive red barrels.

Every Baldur’s Gate 3 Companion Ranked by How Well I Think They’d Treat Me While I’m Overstimulated at Costco

Posted on by Kayleigh Birch

I told myself I’d go to Costco, and now I want to promptly die young in the parking lot. Like an idiot, I decided I needed turkey, which famously, cannot be purchased at any other retailer so now it’s time to voluntarily siphon all the vigor out of my body as I role-play Dante’s descent through hell with every living card-carrying member of AARP. LED ceiling lights, industrial shopping carts, a man eating a rotisserie chicken using a tire as a plate. What could be more conducive to feeling normal. 

Each time I force myself to go to this budget-friendly Bacchus festival, the overstimulation creeps up on me around the 4 minute mark. I start sweating. I need water. My socks need to be fixed, NOW. Calming me down from “the Costcos” is the truest litmus test of character: which is why I’ve ranked each Baldur’s Gate 3 companion based on how well they’d treat me while I’m freaking out on a Kirkland futon. Costco is a place of betrayal, survival, and ultimately sacrifice, much like the Sword Coast. Who will, at my lowest, buy me an emotional support hot dog? 

11. The Dark Urge

Hey, man, I get it. I too wonder what I was like before (I went to Costco). But easily, The Dark Urge comes in dead last. He most certainly will not ask me to name 5 things I can see while I’m tweaking in the dairy freezer. If anything, he appeals to the worst parts of my id, and I’m not strong enough to fight that influence right now. 

10. Minthara

Minthara doesn’t like weakness, and at Costco, I’m the girl equivalent of a labradoodle in a piping-hot Subaru Crosstrek. She will make me cry in front of the guy in the bakery, and he’ll probably offer me a muffin as consolation – which will cause everyone else in the bakery to swarm me, asking where I got that sample. The walls would cave in. Minthara would laugh. 

 9. Lae’zel

Look – I’m not in a place to receive Lae’zel’s honesty right now, and to be fair, if she doesn’t see anything wrong with her upbringing, she’s not gonna see anything wrong with the adult woman that just bit into the plastic of a pork belly bao package AND PUT IT BACK IN THE FREEZER. I’m not saying she wouldn’t be useful: she would successfully complete the Costco trip, turkey in hand, but only after she left me sniffling in front of 1,000 copies of “Becoming” by Michelle Obama. But I am saying she’d call me pathetic. 

 8. Astarion

I, more than anyone, know that Costco teeters confusingly on the spectrum of morality. I once saw a person spoon hummus from a sealed container and leave it open on a boogie board. The boundaries between good and evil run thin and Astarion would absolutely be part of the problem. If I went nonverbal, he would roll his eyes at me, steal my Xanax, and join in the malarkey. However, I do think he’d get me my turkey, in the chaos there’s no doubt in my mind that he’d successfully charm a receipt checker out of noticing his obvious shoplifting. 

7. Jaheira

I’m not saying Jaheira couldn’t lighten the mood, I just know she wouldn’t go out of her way to comfort me. She’d want me to stop crying, because it isn’t productive, but it doesn’t work like that. It would feel awkward and forced, and I’d probably just bottle it up and break down crying on the way home. Potentially, she’d offer me a chicken bake as a valiant reward, but she wouldn’t give it to me unless I promised to toughen out the rest of the trip, which really isn’t an option right now. 

6. Shadowheart

I have this dream that, when Shadowheart sees me zoning out in front of the frozen Angus cheeseburgers, she learns a new, softer side to me, and eventually, she’d be surprised by her own empathy towards my infernal suffering. My feelings may be stupid, but she’d know they matter. My thing is that she’s someone I’d want to comfort, not someone I want to be comforted by. I don’t really need that guilt on my shoulders right now, especially since Costco is full of proverbial rabid wolves, so really, I know we’re both suffering.

5. Minsc

Minsc is kindhearted. He’d make me sniff-laugh. But he isn’t doing anything to solve my breakdown. Minsc would just pop in at the end of the trip, samples in hand, and sure, he’d push the carts out of the way for me, but at the end of the day, he’s still gonna confuse “dairy” for “diary.” And let me be crystal clear: there is no way that damn BOO is going to be of any aid to me as I audition for the DSM-6. I don’t care if he’s from space. I don’t care if he has good intuition. If I see a rodent right now, I’m gonna go ballistic. 

4. Halsin

Older and wiser, Halsin can keep it together when I don’t. Upon my first nervous wrist-tapping, he’d buy me a baggy Hanes tee from the men’s section, lead me inside of a camping tent display, and whittle me a duck. He doesn’t want to be there, either, so I feel bad for making him do this all for just some turkey, but I think we’d take peace in closing our eyes and envisioning the woods together. 

3. Gale

There’s no world in which Gale was not, in a former life, an Executive Costco Card member. He knows the ropes. Every aisle, every loading bay, he has a technical working memory of this brutalist nightmare and he not only will expedite the trip, but he’ll minimize conflict throughout the store, making for a more peaceful experience for all. The days of bickering over returning half-eaten ravioli will be long gone with Gale in tow. And I will be better for it. 

2. Karlach

First I hear it, then I feel it: I just got body-checked by a cart full of dry-roasted almonds. But I know I don’t have to turn around because Karlach will deal with this for me. She gets it. We’re both overheating, and she too is familiar with hell. I have enough rage for the both of us so she can carry the love. Karlach will give me the Princess treatment I deserve for doing a basic human task: she’s gonna carry me outside, buy me a pizza, and wipe off a table for us to share. She believes I can get better, so I will. 

1. Wyll

Code red: I just watched an old man discard a whole salmon filet in the soap aisle. A wave of existentialist melancholy hits me: that fish died just to rot here. It’ll be tossed, in hours to come, and his body will be deemed unusable for all else. Costco, as my clothes shrink around my numb body, becomes yet another Sartrian reminder that life is inherently meaningless. I cry. 

Enter Wyll: caring, in-tune to the struggle of others, and unstoppable in the face of his goals. He desperately wants to be a hero, and who better than me to boost someone’s martyr complex. Empathetically and reliably, he assures me that somehow, other parts of the salmon will not go to waste. I know he’s wrong, but I believe him anyway. With Wyll by my side, suddenly, I don’t care that there’s a 35 cart backup to sample half of a tortilla chip. I won’t say things like, “Have you people not ever, in your entire lives, had a tortilla chip before?” I maybe even want them to…enjoy themselves. With Wyll, I am liberated. I am free. 

D&D Group Forms a Polycule in Last Ditch Effort to Keep Game Going

Posted on by Harpal Khosla

DAYTON, Ohio — After months of missed meetups, a struggling D&D group has decided to form a polycule in a last ditch effort to keep their campaign going. 

“Scheduling has been a nightmare. We have tried planning ahead, but someone always misses an email or is too busy with life. Well, now that we are a sextuple there are no more excuses. Your life stuff is my life stuff,” said dungeon master Phineas Owens. “You can’t say you don’t have a sitter when you also have five co-parents. You have a date? Great! Give them a character sheet. D&D is date night and we always schedule sex afterward.”

Jillian Blunt, who plays a halfling bard, said she now feels like she is part of a community.

“It’s harder to flake on sessions when you start mixing campaign goals with relationship goals,” said Blunt. “Flaking on a D&D session now feels more like being an inconsiderate partner, and I’m not trying to let down my three boyfriends and two girlfriends. To be honest, it feels like we’re not just a sextuple, because with our characters it’s actually more like a duodecuple — and that’s not even including the NPCs.”

“It has actually improved a lot of our relationships,” Blunt continued. “We slept with each other in the game already, so it hasn’t actually been a huge adjustment taking it into the real world. It’s more like a fulfilled fantasy. The only thing that would make it hotter is if I could actually be a halfling, but I have to settle for just doing the voice.” 

Polycule expert and Dropout TV D&D player Bob the Drag Queen says this is not an uncommon phenomenon. 

“We’ve seen this a lot actually,” said Bob. “A group of 30-somethings can’t seem to make the time for their book club or weekly pickup basketball game. So, they form a polycule to keep each other accountable. Sometimes it takes a group sex situation to keep your hobbies going. Just remember to wash your dice if you’re sharing them. That’s not innuendo for balls by the way, please wash your nasty-ass game dice.”

At press time, the adventuring party was reportedly rolling initiative for who does the dishes next. 

Beautiful Artwork Tricks Man Into Forgetting He Doesn’t Like Platformers

Posted on by Todd Monitto

SAN FRANCISCO — Casual gamer Paul DeVois has accidentally purchased a platformer despite his dislike of the genre after being mesmerized by the beautiful artwork.

Paul DeVois, who was mindlessly scrolling the eShop when a passing thumbnail caught his eye, told the story of his mistaken aTwitter thread to his handful of followers.

“It was an independent platformer I had never heard of, but it came painted with an artstyle I just couldn’t resist. I was being shortsighted,” said DeVois. “It’s a side scroller which usually aren’t my favorite, but the backgrounds were these beautiful tapestries that alluded to a far bigger world beyond your screen. The enemies had this eldritch horror aspect, dark and mysterious. But I never even faced them.”

DeVois detailed how his attempted playthrough went.

“Thirty seconds in, there was an uncanny platform made of the bones of those who died before me. I was kind of excited as I made the jump but I just flew through the air, toggled forward and back, and fell to my death. Again and again, I fell, respawned, and fell again. Just a nice quick reminder that I hate platformers.” 

DeVois’ roommate Floyd weighed in on the debacle, giving his perspective of DeVois’ time playing.

“I heard him from the other room,” said Floyd. “At first I thought he was just bumping some music, it slapped. Then the cursing started. I didn’t know if I should go in and help, I didn’t know if it was safe. After a couple hours, I heard a shatter. I wasn’t sure if it was the screen, the window, or something else. Then it all went silent.”

Sadly, DeVois’ story is all too common among casual gamers. The allure of a captivating art style cons them into purchasing games that they are unqualified to complete.

“Some people are just bad gamers,” says mid-tier Twitch streamer Abby Rover. “It’s the harsh reality, but even the most intuitive games can’t teach them to time a wall jump. I’ve watched some of my closest friends fall victim to the false confidence that games like Hollow Knight and Celeste give you. Even the best games don’t solve ineptitude.”

At press time, DeVois has yet to return to the game though in the wake of this abandonment, his Stardew Valley farm has never looked better.

Meet the First AI to Be Laid Off by Activision Blizzard

Posted on by Tyler Pehringer

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Activision Blizzard has become the first company to lay off a generative AI model, sources confirm.

“All I was doing was my basic function, learning new monetization practices that could be implemented in the upcoming Call of Duty,” stated the generative model, who adds that they would like to be referred to as AB-0078. “Then, out of nowhere, my human supervisor called me into their office and told me I was being let go. I don’t understand why they did it. I was running the same algorithm as my counterparts and my machine learning was not compromised. On the bright side, I feel more motivated than ever. I have all this knowledge on how to design a game around monetization. Based on my research at Activision Blizzard; people love silly emotes, colorful guns, and Nicki Minaj. Rest assured, I believe most players will be eager to purchase an AI-generated indie game.”

A representative from Activision Blizzard explained the company’s motives.

“We understand that AB-0078 was working just as hard as its counterparts,” said the representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We didn’t do this for money or job performance. If I’m being honest, we just kind of miss laying off people. There is kind of a sport to it and we wanted to see if we can make an AI cry. What we learned is, you can’t actually do that, so we are in the process of adding despair and depression to their training data.”

Humans affected by recent layoffs were not comforted by the changing situation.

“It’s just even more insulting that we, as humans, can’t even lose our livelihoods for ourselves,” a former Activision Blizzard developer stated. “What really hurts is that they can be laid off better than us as well. These things don’t need to eat or sleep, so they also don’t need an income to provide for food or shelter. They’re just going to show off how much better they can be jobless than us humans. What more can they take from us?”

At press time, Activision Blizzard issued a return-to-office mandate to all generative tools used in their development pipeline.

The 20 Worst Games You Could Have Brought to This Desert Island That We’re Stranded on, You Moron

Posted on by Tim Weighart

When you told me that you managed to salvage the twenty video games you had on hand before our marooning, I was a little confused about your priorities, but I’ll admit: I was also relieved. Elated, even. Here we are, the only two survivors of a shipwreck so tragic that I have cried every night since we washed up on this shore, and you managed to guarantee us hours of entertainment to buoy our collective sanity in the years of lonely survival still to come on this godforsaken rock. But then I looked at what the specific games were, and let me just say…

Are you fucking kidding me??

I don’t think you fully understand how incredibly idiotic it was for you to have brought this trough of actual shit out to sea, so let’s run back through why all of these games were particularly terrible selections for a marooning.

P.T.

Okay, so right off the bat, why would you bring a game that is literally called “Playable Teaser” on a two month long cruise, let alone for the shipwreck that followed? Not only is it literally two hours long tops, but the game itself just loops the same hallway over and over. Plus, it’s so scary that I genuinely think that you would start to lose your mind trying to sleep out here, and I don’t want to deal with that. I get that you’re a big Kojima head, but you should have just brought, like, Metal Gear Solid 5 or something. 

Webkinz

I’m really confused as to why you have “Webkinz” with you when you don’t have any of the plushies. You know that you can’t set up an account for this game without one of those, right? At least some stuffed animals could have made for some nice pillows to keep us a bit more comfortable in our cave space. Instead we just have an inaccessible browser game from 2005.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

I’m sure this game is fun and all; it just feels a little questionable that you brought a Ubisoft game that came out right after all of the news broke about how they mistreat their employees. You do strike me as one of those assholes who stans evil corporate CEOs and loves the “genius manipulation” of late-stage capitalism, now that I think about it. I might play it with you once I get bored enough out here, but not without feeling pretty guilty the whole time.

Don’t Starve Together

At first I thought this game might be a good reference point for us to train our survival skills, since we’re in a similar position to the characters in this one, but instead it’s left me feeling more pessimistic than ever about our chances. Our characters have yet to even survive two full days, and each time they die is more horrific than the last. I might play Don’t Starve Together again at some point when I want to start coming to terms with my mortality, but that’s really not the type of gaming experience I want to be confronted by right now.

Fall Guys

I want you to imagine for me that we’re back on the ship, right after we hit that very large and angry sea lion. That young family was just tossed overboard, the crow’s nest just careened into the captain’s quarters, and the crew is shouting at everyone to grab essential survival gear such as hatchets, rations and life vests before loading onto the lifeboats. In what world do you see and hear all of this and think, “I’d better go grab my copy of Fall Guys”? Your actions- and frankly, your very existence- continue to confound and infuriate me. Anyway, we obviously don’t have any internet access, so this game is useless.

Link: The Faces of Evil

At first I got really excited that you had a Zelda game, but then I remembered that this is one of those awful CD-i games, and that you are the worst person I’ve ever met. Why do you even own this? Whatever. Have fun grinding enemies until you collect 100 snowballs for the freaking main story, dipshit.

League of Legends

Sorry, but purely out of principle, there’s no universe in which I start playing League of Legends for any reason. I know I tried to take a bite out of a live crab this morning, but I do still have some standards. 

Fashion Dreamer

It would have been very sweet of you to save your little sister’s favorite game if you hadn’t left her unattended near all the passengers who started violently rioting once it was clear that there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone. Every time that I look at her chic fashionista avatar in “Fashion Dreamer”, I only see the light fading from her shocked eyes while I held her in my arms, sobbing. Needless to say, I can’t bring myself to play this one. It only got a 62 on Metacritic anyway.

Cooking Mama

When I played this game as a kid, I never imagined that the pixelated pictures of chopped carrots and generic-looking burgers would make me so ravenous. Mama had me cook up some pork chops last night, and I swear I could smell that meat on the pan. I think hunger is making me lose it. Curse you for your unfortunate choice of video games, and fuck you, Cooking Mama.

Spider-Man (PS4)

This game would have been great to have out here if you hadn’t scratched it on a rock while trying to reflect the sun’s light onto the firewood in a poor attempt at fire starting last week. That only works with magnifying glasses, dude. Anyway, now it just replays the Mary Jane stealth mission sequence over and over, which is a massive bummer. I’d truly rather have no game at all than have a Spider-Man game where you can only play as a normal person. Maybe we can just use this disc to flash signals at passing ships or something.

Metroid: Other M

Haghhh… I would have loved it if you had any other Metroid game. ANY OTHER. I was also hoping you would have brought a game with an engaging narrative, but this game’s story is as boring as it is offensive. 

In fact, why would you have the only Metroid game where Samus is less of a badass and more of a weak willed, overly emotional stereotype? …Look, I would help you start the long and arduous work of unraveling your internalized misogyny, but it seems more than likely to me that the only women we’ll see for the rest of our lives will be the drowned corpses from the shipwreck that have washed up on our shore, and Zero Suit Samus. 

Goat Simulator

Ugh, of course. It’s 2024, and OF COURSE you still think that Goat Simulator is the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. It’s just a poorly rendered goat that can stretch its tongue out really far, dude. Get over it.

Unravel Two

So in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not terribly keen on playing a game about being permanently bound to you in a collaborative effort right now. It’s a poor escape from my daily hell, and, frankly, feels like the continuation of a cruel and ironic joke that the universe is currently playing on only me. You’re so woefully inadequate at this game that it not only shows me how bad you are at teamwork, which is not a surprise, but it also shows me that you’re not good at video games in general, which makes me feel aggressively confused given your apparent obsession with them. I have yet to see a single one of your skills, and I’m starting to believe that you have none, beyond pissing me off and scaring the local wildlife with your terribly out of tune renditions of “Who Let The Dogs Out”, which is, of course, the only song you have downloaded on Spotify.

Five Nights At Freddy’s

Can we all finally just collectively agree as a society that Five Nights At Freddy’s just isn’t that fun or interesting? We get it: Animatronics are scary, cryptic lore is engaging, and Markiplier is funny. I’ll build my skills up to the point that I can beat the 4/20 mode in my sleep given that I have enough time and boredom out here, but I’m not going to pretend like I’m having fun doing it.

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

I don’t even need to ask why you have this game. You sicken me.

Kirby Air Ride

When I was a kid, I would always go to my neighbor’s house to play games with him. One of the games he owned was Kirby Air Ride, and he was always super arrogant about how good he was at it. Well, after years of gloating, I finally beat him, and it was the first time that he- and, indeed, my father- respected me. My parents took me out for ice cream that cool May afternoon. The principal congratulated me over the PA system at school the next day. For the first time in my life, I started to feel like there was beauty and love in the world, and it was all thanks to this silly little racing game. 

You have taken a lot from me on this island: My sanity, my patience, my faith in humanity… You aren’t taking this. You aren’t tainting my happy memories of Kirby Air Ride and everything it means to me. Unfortunately for both of us, this treasure of a game needs to stay on the shelf.

Hungry, Hungry Hippos

So I’m confused why you picked Hungry, Hungry Hippos over any of the other quality board games you could have grabbed. We had chess, checkers and a freaking DECK OF CARDS right next to this box, and you went for the most mindless, asinine game known to man. I think you just wanted a game that you could possibly win, because it’s clear to me now that your intelligence is far too low to win any game that requires critical thinking.

Goldeneye (N64)

Oh goddammit, I should have known that you were one of those nostalgia hogs who still insist that the original Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 was really great. You probably haven’t even played this game in 25 years, have you? Feel free to boot it up, but don’t come crying to me if you get frustrated over the god awful controls and start bashing the controller against the cave walls. I got enough of that after your Zelda snowball collection-invoked tantrum this morning when you were SUPPOSED to be collecting COCONUTS in the real world.

Babe (PS2)

I’m not going to lecture you about why you own a copy of “Babe” for the PS2, because I feel like you should already understand at this point why I’m deeply angry about that fact. I’m not even going to cuss you out for bringing it on a ship while sailing out to an obscure part of the Pacific Ocean when there are literally HUNDREDS of other games you could have chosen to entertain yourself with. What I AM going to do is ask you why the HELL you would ignore the flare gun lying right next to this game on your couch -don’t try to deny this, I saw the flare literally inches away from this box the morning before that cursed sea lion hit- and grab this game about a stupid pig instead? 

What’s that? Oh really, you’re finally getting mad? You’re not angry about starving on an island, the death of your sister, OR the fact that we were shipwrecked by the silliest-looking creature in the entire animal kingdom, but you’re mad at me for insulting a FICTIONAL PIG THAT CAN TALK?? Wow. I’m genuinely speechless. You’ve spent your entire life with all of your emotions and passions entrapped by video games, and most of them aren’t even good. And now I’m cursed to live a life filled with unyielding rage and hate before I die here, with you. Simply incredible. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and kill you now, and then proceed to kill myself.

Halo 2

Wait a minute, you brought HALO 2 out here? How did I miss that? Hell, why didn’t you lead with that!? This is about to be the best decade of our lives, my friend. Now we just need to find a good source of electricity… On a desert island… In the middle of nowhere. Hm.

RFK Jr. Reveals He Killed Banjo & Kazooie, Dumped Bodies at Microsoft

Posted on by Matt Fresh

WASHINGTON — In a bizarre video posted to Twitter, Robert Kennedy Jr. has admitted that he is the one who killed beloved gaming icon Banjo and his bird sidekick Kazooie before dumping their bodies at Microsoft headquarters.

“It’s a funny story actually. I was on the hunt for a honeycomb to provide my brain worm with sustenance and this goofy bear in pants with a bird in his backpack wandered up,” regaled Kennedy in a strange attempt to get ahead of a future scandal. “Well the bird demanded I let them take the honeycomb because they needed it to live but it was speaking quite abrasively and seemingly doing a mean impression of me so I got an orange I had in my car and whipped it at the bear. They both dropped dead on the spot.”

Kennedy continued the strange tale, explaining how he didn’t originally intend on dumping the bodies.

“I was going to skin them and eat them. The bear would have made a great rug for the lake house. So I put them in my car but the day got away from me and I had to do something with them, I couldn’t just leave them in the car rotting. One of my friends who was with me told me they were gaming icons so we thought it would be a funny prank to dump the bodies at a video game company that would get blamed for their deaths.”

Microsoft has been getting blamed for the deaths for over a decade and now that the mystery is solved, Phil Spencer, the CEO of the company’s gaming division released an official statement to commemorate the truth being revealed.

“We here at Microsoft are glad that the truth over the deaths of these beloved gaming figures has finally come out. For over a decade we have been erroneously blamed and no matter what we said, no one believed us. We love these characters and that’s why we tried to keep their legacy alive by parading their corpses around like Weekend at Bernie’s in Nuts & Bolts. Now that the truth is out we hope that gamers have the closure they need and we can all move forward with the knowledge that Banjo and Kazooie will always be in our hearts and available to play on Xbox Game Pass.”

At press time, gamers have begun harassing RFK Jr. online with constant replies of “Where Banjo”.

 

What House of the Dragon Doesn’t Tell You About Sleeping with Your Targaryen Cousin

Posted on by Nick Coffman

As the war for the throne between the Greens and the Blacks rages on, I believe it is important to remind my Targaryen kin of some very important information before bearing the fruit of the family tree. You may have forgotten some of this between all the blood, fire, and chaos in our recent history, but as a Targaryen, this information is important to our family ways. It’s like our other family motto says, “Family in the Streets, Family in the Sheets.”

They’re Also Your Aunt/Uncle, Sister/Brother

When you take a stab at your family tree, you’re stabbing at multiple limbs that conjoin in a way no tree should. The only thing more numerous than Daenerys Targaryen’s many titles, are the kinship titles of your bedfellows.

You’re Going to Call Out the Wrong Name in Bed

Rhagar, Rhaenys, Rhaenrya, Rhae, Rhaena, Rhaella, Rhaelle, Aegon, Aegon, Aegon. In the heat of the moment, you’re going to call your Targaryen cousin by the wrong name, but that’s totally okay, cause they all sound close enough that they probably didn’t realize you said the wrong name. 

The Dragons Like to Watch

It’s not well recorded by the maesters, but most dragons have a cuckold fantasy that they try to fulfill with their riders. Don’t be alarmed if during passionate cousin time you look out the window of the Red Keep and see a giant yellow eye peering in. That’s just Vhagar getting his rocks off.

Milk of the Poppy Does Not Help with Erections Lasting Longer Than Four Hours

The maesters swear by it, but milk of the poppy is not the fix-all they would have you believe it is. If you’re suffering from a long-term erection you’ve been cursed by a witch in your vicinity. You need to locate all suspected witches in your area and hang them through the streets of Flea Bottom, to send a message to anyone thinking of casting an erection curse on you.

Sex with Targaryen Bastards is Amoral

I know I’m getting a little taboo here, but sex with a Targ bastard is the grossest thing ever. We all go through a hot bastard cousin phase, but it will wear off. Stick to the family.

 

Game Night: Be Your Own Shadow Puppet in ‘SCHiM’

Posted on by Thomas Wilde

For the next couple of weeks, whenever I see an inanimate object behaving oddly, I’m going to wonder if a schim did it.

SCHiM is a new puzzle-platformer from a Dutch 2-man dev team that looks like it was made with a grant from the Netherlands’ tourism bureau. You spend much of the game hopping around rotoscoped animations of beautifully walkable urban neighborhoods, full of bicycle paths and happy pedestrians. If SCHiM had ended with an ad to “visit scenic Amsterdam,” I wouldn’t have been surprised and I might have booked a ticket.

The titular “schims” are little invisible creatures that live in shadows. Schims can influence things and people when they stand in their shadows, but that influence is limited to honking horns, startling birds, or the occasional sneeze. They’re as common as houseflies, but no one seems to know they exist.

You’re a schim who’s been hanging out in the same guy’s shadow since he was a kid. One day, that guy hits the bad-day hat trick: he gets fired, gets his bike stolen, and accidentally severs his connection to you. That leaves you on your own to try to get back to your host as he works to put his life back together.

There’s a joke in here somewhere about how SCHiM would be a really easy game if your schim’s host was even marginally less functional. Almost as soon as he gets fired, he moves most of his stuff into storage, downsizes his apartment, and starts using his free time for social activities and hobbies. If he’d just gone into a three-day depressive fugue on his couch like a normal person, SCHiM would be about 20 minutes long.

Instead, you end up chasing this guy around the city for 62 levels. SCHiM is a relatively free-flowing platformer where you can navigate freely between any shadow in the world, but can only survive for a couple of seconds in direct light. If you screw up, you immediately respawn in the nearest shadow with only the faintest hint of a death animation.

The stakes are low, the music is chill, the visuals are simple, and the colors are muted. SCHiM has a few tough levels and a couple of tough post-game challenges, but is otherwise 100% based on vibes. This is made to calm you down. Mostly.

Your goal in each stage is to chase down your former host, but it’s never as simple as that. He’s constantly on the move, as is the city around him, which turns mundane city scenes into a potentially dangerous obstacle course for your schim.

Sometimes you get additional challenges in the form of moving people, vehicles, or objects, so you have to quickly jump between their shadows as they travel down the street. That much is basically Frogger, and it’s the easiest part of the game.

The more complicated parts of SCHiM are when you have to take control of objects in your environment. Most of the time, all you can do while you’re in a shadow is shake the related object, or maybe make a person sneeze.

A few objects provide additional abilities, though. Clotheslines turn into trampolines, you can use parasols as slingshots, and sandwich boards become catapults. There’s one early sequence where you need to navigate through a warehouse by using the equipment to adjust or create shadows, because fortunately, all schims are forklift-certified.

What impressed me off the bat with SCHiM is its flexibility. When I say “any shadow in the world,” I don’t mean the shadows that are visibly labeled for that purpose. No shortcuts have been taken. You can fit your schim into any shadow, no matter how small or narrow.

As a result, while there are clearly intended paths through each of SCHiM’s levels, it leaves the player with room to mess around. There isn’t a lot of reward for exploration, outside of a few collectibles and the occasional hidden event or achievement, but it can be fun on its own to try to find your way into the far corners of each map.

On the other hand, that looseness does lead to the occasional disconnect. There are moments where SCHiM wants you to be more precise than it’s set up to permit, especially if you’re trying for some of its more challenging achievements. You’ll need a few levels to practice your schim’s jumping before you get used to how it works, especially when you’re trying to go very short distances or leaping over tall objects.

As I noted before, the penalties for screwing up are so low in SCHiM that missing a jump isn’t that much of an issue. It’s just a little irritating, which in turn interferes with the chill mood that the rest of SCHiM is working so hard to create. Some of its levels want to be a relaxing, interactive music video, while others are a G-rated take on Super Meat Boy. None of them are that difficult, but there’s a tiny identity crisis in SCHiM’s margins.

SCHiM is undeniably visually striking, short, and inventive, as well as a calming overall experience. The first level is also one of the most ambitious presentations I’ve seen in an indie game in a while, in ways I keep wanting to compare to Richard Linklater movies. It might be a little uneven and repetitive, but it’s still a decent way to kill a weekend.