Author Archives: Hayden Dingman

It’s beginning to feel a lot like E3—or at least, as much as it can this year. This morning Microsoft hosted the first of its Xbox 20/20 events, showing off the first ever footage of games running on the upcoming Xbox Series X. (And yes, most of… Continue reading →

Steam tells me I own over 2,000 games I’ve never played. Not one single minute. Never even installed, in most cases. It’s a shameful list, and while mine is extreme (thanks to my job) I think most gamers eventually rack up a similar backlog. The… Continue reading →

When do we draw the line between “early adoptionâ€� and, uh, “regular adoptionâ€�? With virtual reality, maybe it’s right now. Years of sluggish sales had me convinced that virtual reality might disappear with nary a whimper, but then the hard… Continue reading →

“Watch those rockets!â€� “Grubs are moving!â€� “He’s turning around!â€�The Locusts are relentless. In threes and fours they take to the field, emerging out of the ground until I can get close enough to toss a grenade down the hole. The Locus… Continue reading →

Let me say up front: I am not a game developer, and am not approaching this topic as a game developer. Call me an enthusiastic hobbyist, maybe. Inform, Ink, Unity and Unreal, Blender—I’ve played around with plenty of tools over the years, and I … Continue reading →

Is it worth it to upgrade a laptop’s RAM or storage? We had a chance to find out when Dell asked us to test the upgradability of its Inspiron 15 7000.I admit that as I faced this challenge, I started sweating. Panic-sweating. In my experience, upgra… Continue reading →

It’s a big week for tactics games. Tomorrow the XCOM: Chimera Squad spinoff releases (and we’ll have some impressions of it as well), and next Tuesday is the debut of Gears Tactics. If you’re a few years behind the curve though, or simply canâ… Continue reading →

Solitaire. One of my favorite games of 2020 so far is solitaire. Here’s a card—now stack another on top of it. That’s it. Mindless, or maybe just mindless enough. Fwit, fwit, fwit, the sound of the cards stacking on top of each other as I go o… Continue reading →

To say I had low expectations for Fallout 76’s new Wastelanders expansion would be an understatement. My original Fallout 76 review was not kind, but at least ended on a hopeful note. “Maybe like Elder Scrolls Online, Bethesda can tease a decent… Continue reading →

“Can it run Crysis?â€� has been a PC-building meme for over a decade now, but once upon a time it was a legitimate question. When Crysis released in 2007, very few PCs could run it, and even fewer could run it well. The game itself was fine, but t… Continue reading →