eulogy

Tomas Franzese / Riot Forge Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is a new game about getting out of your comfort zone and connecting with others. In many ways, that’s also the story of Riot Forge. The publishing label pushed its corporate parent Riot Games out of its AAA design instincts to expand the world of Runterra. There’s only so much narrative you can weave into something like League of Legends, and all of Riot Forge’s games offered unique perspectives that enriched this world. I found fulfillment in that…

Kinmoku Growing up, I routinely did the very thing adults begged me not to do: I talked to a lot of strangers. That was thanks to the World Wide Web, which was a digital wild west during my formative years in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. As a small-town nerd who couldn’t always find friends with the same passions as me, I spent many days in online communities. Long before writing professionally, I’d cut my teeth in criticism on IGN’s forums, crafting weekly reviews of Super Smash Bros. Brawl reveals. I’d…

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things musicGet our Now Hear This email for freeShane MacGowan’s widow Victoria Mary Clarke shared an anecdote about Johnny Depp with the actor in attendance during her eulogy at the Pogues frontman’s funeral on Friday (8 December).Depp, 60, was among the stars in attendance at the ceremony held at St Mary of the Rosary Catholic Church in Nenagh, County Tipperary.The Pirates of the Caribbean star had been friends with MacGowan…

The Batman: Arkham Trilogy Nintendo Switch port has added a tribute to Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy at the end of Batman: Arkham Asylum. GAMINGbible editor Ewan Moore posted the new addition on X (formerly Twitter), calling it a “lovely touch”. The addition reads “in memory of Kevin Conroy” and is present at the end of the first game of the series on top of a black and white drawing of Gotham City. The ports were released last week, with complaints that Batman: Arkham Knight suffered a massive graphical downgrade and…

‘Pin-Poké-Ball’ didn’t have the same pizzazz The Pokémon franchise is no stranger to excellent spinoffs. Between the lauded Mystery Dungeon crossovers, the well-regarded (if seldom played) Pokkén Tournament, and, of course, the cultural juggernaut that is Pokémon GO, there’s been a Pokémon game for just about every genre imaginable. Once upon a time, there were even two excellent Pokémon pinball games. The original Pokémon Pinball is something of an oddity, even when viewed amid the eclectic Game Boy Color library.…

Alex Villanueva sat under warm lights in his home library. He was dressed in a crisp, long-sleeved shirt. Framed photos from his private life — his wedding day, his children, his younger days as a deputy, even a picture of the family golden retriever, Alvin — sat on a wooden desk.He looked directly into a camera. “I’m not a politician. I’m not a bureaucrat. I’m a reformer,” Villanueva said. It was May 2018, a few weeks before the primary election, and he was recording a video asking voters to chose him as the next Los…

When Florida security guard George Zimmerman was acquitted over his shooting of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2013, 18-year-old Jake Blount turned to the past to cope with his despair. “I wanted to know how music has historically allowed Black people to feel human in the face of racism,” he says. “My ancestors would have sung spirituals and work songs when they were enslaved – this music is all that remains of how they survived.”Initially, Blount found their message jarring. “It felt like they were saying:…

Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream is an 140-minute shapeshifting epiphany-slash-freakout leading to the revelation that, yes, we’re lovers of David Bowie and that is that. It’s a glorious celebratory montage of archive material, live performance footage, Bowie’s own experimental video art and paintings, movie and stage work and interviews with various normcore TV personalities with whom Bowie is unfailingly polite, open and charming. (There is the inevitable Dick Cavett – who deserves a documentary of his own – also Russell…