Playing The Seance of Blake Manor and The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow has brought me to an undeniable truth: We need more games that feel like The Wicker Man.

Great day to play Light Up The Town on Steam, a cozy game where you decorate your neighborhood for Christmas. Playable on Steam Deck, too. store.steampowered.com/app/3419910/...

If Santa stopped by your house last night, I hope you and your kids are having a wonderful morning.

I'll be giving away some game codes here courtesy of the ID@Xbox team. Check back regularly as more will appear. Happy holidays! 🎁 KPHCT-TP?XD-Q24FV-2CGQQ-C3CMZ

When the year began, we penciled into our publication calendar the idea to finish 2025 by naming a Portlander of the Year. By the end of autumn, it was clear that this figure wasn’t really a person at all. It was a concept. It was a frog.

The regulatory body that oversees paper towel math is failing us.

For my last piece of 2025, I wrote about how it feels to love Arc Raiders so much while also being so disheartened by how it uses generative AI.

Weekly watergates is simply too many Watergates, in my opinion

Buying games on Steam is a separate hobby from playing games on Steam.

my Arc Raiders username: juturna(#3946)

#pescatarian #Seafood #Speciesism 🐟 ‘The "fish don’t feel" excuse doesn’t hold. Pain in fishes is well-documented — behavioral, neurophysiological, & pharmacological evidence stacks up beyond reasonable doubt’

I define the Attitude Era as the period when every wrestler was getting run over by cars.

The Séance of Blake Manor made the GameSpot 10 Best Games of 2025 List. "The Séance of Blake Manor's pacing, design, art, and narrative coalesce into an elegant detective experience that will leave you punching the air as its secrets begin to unravel." www.gamespot.com/gallery/game...

imagine if everyone had this level of acceptance

my love language is gifting people video games

Next year is gonna be weird. I’ll be on paternity leave for most of Q1 and into early Q2. I started working when I was 16 and have never taken more than a week off since then, and frankly, I don’t use as much PTO as I should. I don’t know how to relax, but I’ll have three months to learn.

Trump: "The only time anybody could see those planes was when those bomb chutes open up, because it becomes totally un-stealth. You're going in, you go like this. As soon as it goes like this, for some reason the plane is totally visible. Not good. I watched it happening. I watched it go bing bing"

My most-played Steam game in 2025 was @velanstudios.bsky.social's taken-too-soon all-timer, Knockout City (private server edition). Admittedly, this is because my little girl hops in regularly to pummel the bots, but she takes after me because we both adore that game. Long live KOC.

We are failing our kids

BREAKING: PlayStation is buying Nintendo, according to a fourth grader at my daughter’s school who was not joking

Reads like a note you’d find on a computer in Fallout where eventually the robots killed everyone in the vault.

I was 14, in the theater with my cousins and my dad for the midnight release of Freddy vs. Jason. A Super Bowl-level event for a horror-obsessed kid like me. (Team Freddy btw)

Newly Unsealed Batch Of Epstein Estate Photos Contains Rare Holographic Dershowitz

In case you missed it, we revealed our (unranked) list of the 10 best games of 2025, as decided by the @gamespot.com team. Lots more year-end coverage coming soon, including our Game of the Year reveal.

This isn’t a new thought but I’ll never get over how we have weekly Watergates now.

There's a trio of horror games that recently arrived that I sadly didn't have time to cover, but I hope to play them this holiday break or early next year during paternity leave. Those are Total Chaos, Routine, and Sleep Awake. Avoiding all reviews of them for now so I can go in knowing nothing.

Reminder that Batman Arkham Origins and Spider-Man: Miles Morales are both set during Christmas and feel awesome to play around this time of year.

This week, @notfunnyj.bsky.social chatted with @tarsierstudios.bsky.social co-founder Andreas Johnsson & senior narrative designer Dave Mervik about the co-op horrors of Reanimal! #HorrorSky 🍎 apple.co/48Q9ZS5 🟢 bit.ly/4pNB4uY @bloody-disgusting.com @bloodyfm.bsky.social

Each year, I write about my top 20 games in a thread. This is that thread for 2025. I’ll be posting one game per day, starting with #20.

Funny thing about writing online is sometimes Google Discover will be like, “Hey, you should read this.” My dude, I wrote this.

The gambling epidemic has been quietly ruinous for a generation of mostly dudes. We’ll be very lucky to look back on these years and say, “Wow, that got bad for a while.” Frankly, I don’t know how we fix it as so many are incentivized not to.

I quit Spotify in June but I took a peek to once more quantify my undying love for Circa Survive. 🥲

Pete Hegseth is the kind of liar who thinks confidence and a loud voice can substitute for truth. It doesn’t. PS- none of this should be making old man Trump drowsy.

Absolute cinema. Five stars are simply not enough. boxd.it/bUZhAJ

Looking for recommendations: Spotlight, Zodiac, All The President’s Men—what are some other great movies about journos making phone calls, connecting dots, and doing cool stuff?

After 120 hours in Arc Raiders, I finally killed another player. Here's how it happened. www.gamespot.com/articles/aft...

The real question is not "Why is Bluesky so left-coded," the real question is "Why can't the right exist in a social media environment without algorithmic assistance, where people can ignore them"

After 120 hours in Arc Raiders, I finally killed another player. Here's how it happened. www.gamespot.com/articles/aft...

Pretty sure if I met Kurt Angle I would actually cry. He is my GOAT, undisputed.

I’m not much of a talker until I find out you like Circa Survive, then I get like this right away.

I wish I jumped into this pic with my wife. I feel like no one will believe I’m with someone so beautiful. 🫠

The Lonely Nothing in the Dark Five Characters in Search of an Exit

Thursday forever 🖤

using gen AI is the online equivalent of driving a cybertruck

Great week. I also cleared 200 movies watched this year, thanks to Letterboxd and @moviemadness.org. Easily the most I’ve ever watched in one year.

Some of the most fun I’ve had with games all year has come from replaying Days Gone on the hardest difficulty. I’ve always loved this game, and playing it this way has made me appreciate it even more.

It’s wrong of me, but sometimes I get annoyed at the bands that found only modest success but stuck together forever. Why couldn’t that be Circa Survive? 🫠