Eric Frederiksen has been a gamer since someone made the mistake of letting him play their Nintendo many years ago, pushing him to beg for his own, and it's been downhill ever since. Eric takes a multifaceted approach to gaming news and reviews, mixing business analysis, cultural studies, tech and design. Eric has written for outlets like TechnoBuffalo.com, Playboy.com, TabTimes.com, and Kombo.com. In his free time, Eric perfects his napping technique and pursues the elusive perfect cheeseburger.
I've played about a hojillion hours of Tetris. Me and everybody else who has ever held a game controller, handheld game, or graphing calculator. It's easy to think we're all set on a particular game, or that we've had enough of a game. I was quite sure we'd had enough of Tetris over the years. Then I played Tetris Effect. It's rare to have this good a time being wrong. Tetris Effect is...
I don't envy the team at Rockstar Games that made Red Dead Redemption II. Companies like Valve have rolled over and admitted defeat rather than try to live up to the hype of a previous game like that associated with the first Red Dead Redemption game. Rockstar forged ahead, though, and brought us a game that defies expectation and does its own thing. Even now, Red Dead Redemption looks...
With all the fan theories on Reddit these days, with the way people search frame by frame through movies, it seems more than ever like people want movies to make sense and offer answers. One of my favorite movies of 2018 resisted that drive: Annihilation. This is part of our "Best of" series. For more, check out our Best Videos Games of 2018 and Best Movies of 2018. Annihilation,...
Using Bluetooth on Android sucks. It's just miserable. It doesn't have to be, so why is it? Before we dive in: I'm not an iOS guy. I haven't owned a iPad since the iPad 2, and I've never owned an iPhone. My first Android phone was the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 (or HTC Dream). I'm an Android fan. But Bluetooth on Android still sucks. It's not a matter of signal quality,...
What kind of money would you have to make to spend $900 on headphones? Six digits? Seven? I like fancy headphones and when I look at the pricetag hanging off the Focal Elegia headphones, I physically cringe. That's multiple car payments! That's a PlayStation and an Xbox One – the fancy kind, too. But there's a market for this, because just about every audio company has headphones at...
We know many of the big headset brands on the market. Turtle Beach. Logitech. Astro. Corsair. We're familiar with them, we trust them. Sometimes something comes way out of left field, though, and that's the Victrox Pro AF gaming headset, a $299 piece of kit that aims right for the top tier. As of this writing, this headset is Victrix Pro's only product, though they have a fight stick...
I had no idea God of War was going to be good. I had no idea it was going to be incredible. Even just a month or two before release, I still didn't know what I was in for. See, I played the three main-line God of War games, a tale of Kratos dismembering and disemboweling the entire Greek pantheon across three games. He shouted "Ares!" and "Zeus!" more times than I care to count in a...
Superhero movies are a dime a dozen, but superhero games are still a rare breed. As of August 2018, the Batman: Arkham games were about all we could look to for modern superhero games. Insomniac, the studio behind Ratchet & Clank and Sunset Overdrive had other ideas, though, and after years of previews Spider-Man finally dropped into our laps. There may be spoilers ahead. This is...
Six months later, I still don't know how to talk about this movie with people who haven't seen it. It's unquestionably one of my favorite movies of the year and one of the most important movies of the year, but my biggest request of people when I'm begging them to check it out is that they learn as little as possible. This is part of our "Best of" series. For more, check out our Best...
Usually when I dig into headphones, I'm looking at something from Sony, Sennheiser, Grado, or some other known quantities in the personal audio world. But right now, we're in a transitional period where phones are dropping headphone jacks left and right, forcing people to either go wireless or find a way to get noise from the phone's USB Type-C port up into their ears. USB Type-C...
There are so many superhero movies right now that it's hard to keep track. There are more in development than would fit on two hands. But in the last year, one stands out as the most exciting: Black Panther. In a story with dozens of heroes, Black Panther stands above the rest and manages to be more than just a fun movie—it's a legitimately good one. It's not because Black Panther (...
One of the most enduring images from The Matrix is that shot of Neo dodging Agent Smith's bullets. After upgrading my PC recently, I think I know how Neo feels. I managed to dodge just about every bullet a PC upgrade has to throw at you despite having upgraded the most crucial parts of a desktop computer. A few weeks ago, my computer started to bluescreen at random. It was a bit...
Christmas is just days away, and so is the look of glee on the faces of our loved ones as they unwrap brand-spanking-new Xbox One X consoles, PlayStation 4 systems, and Nintendo Switch handhelds. Can you guess what else is just days away? Server overloads. That 24-hour stretch from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day is when the Western world unboxes more game consoles than any other time. ...
Aquaman hasn't swum overseas to the United States yet, but he's already flush with cash, to the tune of almost $250 million in worldwide box-office pull according to The Hollywood Reporter. The movie hit Chinese theaters in the second week of December and another 42 markets this weekend. The total take so far is up over $260 million, with $189 million of that coming from China....
There's a certain "something" to well-made consumer electronics – especially the kind we're meant to hold in our hands. A really good phone, a solid keyboard, a mouse meant for beating on. That feeling of quality when you first pick it up, and the way it disappears into your hands as you hold it. That's doubly important with video game controllers. They're consumer electronics devices...
Marvel and Netflix stunned – no, that's not right – disappointed us earlier this year when they collectively canned Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and Daredevil. Jessica Jones and The Punisher each have one more season left, and it's very likely they'll get the same treatment. While it's not absurd to think that these characters might find their way to the small screen again, it's not going to...
Quick, what's your password? No, don't tell me, let me guess. It's 123456. No wait – it's password. Statistically speaking, there's a good chance I'm correct. Security firm SpalshData has released its list of the worst commonly-used passwords for 2018, and we're still doing terribly. This list is embarrassing. Let's take a look at the top 15 on the list. 123456 password 123456789...
Unless you're truly hardcore music fan, most of us get our music through our phones nowadays. When it's not thorugh our phones, it's through our computers. iPods have largely gone extinct, and the Zune is the butt of a joke in a Marvel movie. And forget about that iRiver MP3 player I was rocking back in college. Despite that, there are still about a million different ways to listen to...
Alright, alright, I'm a believer. Finally, I can say it with confidence. Noise canceling headphones are dope. But as I suspected, you cannot cheap out on them. You have to go with top-end gear. Noise-cancelling technology is complicated and while you can throw the chips for it into any pair of headphones, that doesn't mean it's going to work well. The Sony 1000xm3 headphones, though?...
Thursday night at The Game Awards, RPG studio BioWare finally unveiled the long-awaited sequel to Dragon Age: Inquisition. But they didn't tell us much. Here's what we know about the game itself. It exists, and it picks up where Inquisition left off. The trailer is accompanied by the hashtag #TheDreadWolfRises. The Dread Wolf is the true identity of Inquisition companion Solas the...