RS Gaming

For the last 25 years, Xbox and Halo have been inextricable. The first-person shooter game and its iconic green-armored protagonist, Master Chief, are household names even to non-gamers. For players, the franchise is a key pillar of the Xbox ecosystem — maybe even the pillar. Halo is Xbox, and Xbox …

The idea of “true player autonomy” has regularly been a tough goal to achieve in video games. Many role-playing games burst onto the scene promising that your choices will matter, only for that claim to fall flat in practice. Obsidian Entertainment has done an admirable job avoiding those pitfalls in …

This post contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Dispatch, now available on PlayStation 5 and Windows. It’s been attempted a few different ways, but nobody has really cracked a legitimate hybrid of scripted TV and video games. Netflix tried with the now-unlisted Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, and studios like …

There’s a special sort of bliss that comes from a dumb action game. It doesn’t matter if the plot works or if the impetus for slicing up bad guys makes sense; the only thing that matters is how good it feels to slip into the hypnotic trance of carnage with …

Forty years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System hit North American shores, singlehandedly resurrecting the video-game market after its infamous post-Atari crash in 1983. To do so, it needed a heavy hitter, a killer must-have title that could put butts in seats and lock audiences into the tube TV until their …

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Battlefield 6 has been a major hit, with fans across all platforms rushing to game’s multiplayer mode for one purpose: break stuff. With a peak concurrent player count of over 747,000 users on Steam alone for the game’s Oct. 10 launch day, Battlefield …

The world’s biggest media franchise has been evolving. Since transitioning to 3D graphics with Pokémon X and Y (2013), the mainline series had stumbled through a period of stagnation — their eight gyms, each tackled in a specific order ending up in a showdown with the elite four, has become …

Brooklyn’s on fire. The intermittent pops of muzzle fire are drowned out as tank treads grind the asphalt down Washington Street toward the East River waterfront, where a 100-year-old carousel lays in ruin. As U.S. forces lay waste to the tourist spots and halal trucks in a deadly skirmish with …

Like death and taxes, Call of Duty is inescapable. For over 20 years, Activision’s military shooter has been an annual staple, arriving each fall just in time to make bank amid the holiday rush. With that level of ubiquity also comes malaise, and nowadays it’s newsworthy just to hear that …

O ne chilly day last January, Brennan Lee Mulligan was walking by Penn Station, pondering the distance between the hot dog stand at the subway entrance, to the stage at Madison Square Garden. He was having an “out of body experience,” he remembers, describing the journey — through the doors, …