Cass Marshall

Polygon •

A Minecraft Movie tries to construct a captivating tale, but falls off the rails

With A Minecraft Movie, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre director Jared Hess and his writing team had the unenviable task of finding a consistent story in the world’s most popular video game. Minecraft is enjoyed by everyone from small children building their first basic cubic structures to grown adults who have mastered the game’s mechanics​. It’s become a sprawling, nearly universal experience that can be enjoyed as a dungeon crawler, an action-strategy game, a series of novels, or through en...
Polygon •

Warhammer 40K, explained

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, and for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. Human blood and human flesh — the stuff of which the Imperiu...
Polygon •

Everyone hates my big stupid horse in Red Dead Online

Red Dead Online, much like Red Dead Redemption 2, gives the player a horse as their primary means of travelling through the world. In Red Dead Online, your horse cannot die, and players carefully weigh the pros and cons of each horse for each competitive task, unless you are me, in which case I just picked a giant horse and all of my friends fucking hate him. Meet Hayseed, my loyal friend.My first two horses were a lean gray stallion named Wild Eye and a chestnut PS4 special edition horse named...
Polygon •

This free narrative game asks if you’re a bad enough dude to save John Lennon

Time travel is a difficult trope to work into a story, as it opens up so many possibilities. When the characters can go not just anywhere, but anywhen, it can be tough to just pin down a premise. A new indie game, available for free, puts the player in the shoes of the time police. These time cops have a crucial mission: It’s the 1980s, and you have to stop the assassination of John Lennon.Time Force X: Mission of Lennon is a text game created by the Anime Sickos podcast, with contributions from...
Polygon •

I’m a Fallout 76 wine mom and I’m gonna cut you

Needless to say, the promise of NPCs has forced me to abandon my prior strategy for surviving the post-apocalypse. I acted as a chameleon, taking on whatever role I needed to make it through each session. One day, I’d be a scavenger wearing Enclave armor. The next, I’d bulk up in mercenary-looking gear to guard my friend’s shop. Some days, I’d just head out and explore, killing hordes of giant sloths and Scorched.You might remember Prindel Blatch as an NPC in Anthem, assuming you remember anythi...
Polygon •

I’ve found the key to making everyone mad in Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is a fascinating game because so many factors are outside your control. If I see another ship on the horizon, there’s a surprisingly complex flow chart of factors that result in a decision to stand and fight, attempt to ally, or cut and run. With every encounter, I take part in this delicate social dance. That can be frustrating — if you want to fight or hunt players, and they want to placidly sail and go on adventures, there is a clash of expectations.What am I supposed to do, ju...
Polygon •

Helldivers 2’s game director speaks on a frantic first year and the future of the Galactic War

Mikael Eriksson: The launch success, the sheer magnitude of players, and the Sauron’s Eye of the world shifting to look at us was beyond anything that we had anticipated. We had to scramble to bring things under control, and it took us quite a long time after launch to get to a point where we were in control of the situation. The first three to six months were not at all as we had expected. At least 50% of plans were different, because we had to shift so much to focus on build quality. So many o...
Polygon •

Riot explains why Arcane erased a League of Legends champion

League of Legends is over 15 years old. The game is nearly old enough to drive or vote, and its developers at Riot Games haven’t been shy about applying retcons or reworks to champions or other aspects of the game as needed. Even longtime players can find themselves surprised by these overhauls. For instance, one champion was in the game for 11 years before he was suddenly replaced with someone completely new, but with the same name. The new Viktor has been taken from Arcane, which is much less...
Polygon •

Critical Reflex’s focus on horror has led to some of the year’s best, weirdest games

While some game genres are swelling to larger and larger sizes, encompassing vast open worlds stuffed full of optional side quests, horror games have remained a smaller subset of games as a whole. The horror genre is naturally resistant to an overly long campaign, as even the most terrifying enemies and bewildering scenarios lose their edge after hours and hours of exposure. Some of my favorite games this year were small, tightly-scoped horror (or horror-adjacent) experiences, including titles p...
Polygon •

MrBeast’s new social media firestorms, explained

The MrBeast brand is one of the biggest on YouTube, sprawling outwards to encapsulate ghost kitchens, chocolate bars, big challenges, an Amazon reality show, and massive philanthropic stunts. Jimmy Donaldson, the man behind MrBeast, has been the subject of both acclaim and suspicion. His fans praise the entertainment value of his videos and the real-world impact of his charitable acts, while his detractors suggest he’s afflicted with a growth-focused, profit-motivated mindset, or “CEO brain,” an...
Polygon •

Sifting through the slop era of entertainment is a tough task

Right now I have an unlimited supply of content at my fingertips; I’m subscribed to a few streaming services, full of more programming than I could possibly watch in my mortal lifespan. I have a backlog of games piled up on my PC and a stack of unread books, and I’ve also fallen behind on my hobbies. It feels impossible to catch up, especially since there’s a constant flow of new stuff, all designed to be as easily consumed as possible. This is the slop era of entertainment, where quality has be...
Polygon •

I’m back into pro wrestling, thanks to parking lot brawls and wild acts of arson

My interest in wrestling comes in waves; I grew up watching WWE during the infamous Attitude Era of the late ’90s, and have since followed the sport from afar. Every now and then, something will reignite my curiosity — the rise of All Elite Wrestling (AEW), a particularly stacked card at a big event, or more recently, the rise of fascinating and unhinged rivalries played out through wild stunts and obscene acts.In order to understand the charm behind the abhorrent acts I’m about to describe, it’...