Photo via Status. I’m not usually an earbuds guy, especially when it comes to active noise cancellation. Sometimes, it barely works, and with others, earbud noise cancellation can be so aggressive and tinny. And why would you want something in your ears when you can have pillowy soft over-ear headphone cups? The Pro X ear buds by Status have actually changed my view on earbuds in a few drastic ways. In fact, I’ve been using the Pro X earbuds as my main audio device over the l

All that aside, you probably have a little bit of party monster in you still, and here from the banks of Lake Michigan in beautiful and not actually a warzone Chicago comes a Halloween playlist put together with care by several of our staff members.

I have to admit that I’m hooked on Escape Simulator. So, obviously, I jumped at the chance to play a sequel. And if you’re asking, “Did Escape Simulator really need a sequel?” The answer is: the developers certainly thought so. In fact, their Steam store page lays out their reasons, among them “a fresh start” and an inspiration to “explore darker escape room themes and experiment with new gameplay and puzzle ideas.”  That sounds great to me.

Despite my admonitions, Concierge might be worth checking out if it ticks your boxes. It’s definitely a unique game, and for the gamer that’s seen everything, Concierge might just have something new for you. 

We're a little over a month away from the Black Friday edition of the vinyl community's most divisive day of the year: Record Store Day.Introduced only two years after the first Record Store Day (which is usually in April), the Black Friday variant is much smaller and attempts to cash in on the shopping season with quiet honestly a very niche lineup of releases. So before you head out next month to pick up some releases, here are my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the comp

So here’s me thinking that League of the Lexicon will be a breeze, and I’ll crush my foes, see them driven before me and all that. But League of the Lexicon is fun not only because it has a fun mixture of categories with clever questions, but also because it's challenging even for those who have spent a lifetime playing with the English language. 

Welcome to Blind Spot, where we take time to dig into something big in the cultural zeitgeist we might have missed. A retrospective that’s also a first time perspective. What’s old to you, is new to someone else and in the spirit of that I present to you my Cake Retrospective.

Absolum is one of my games of the year. I have a feeling it's slipping under the radar a bit, but I hope it’s successful enough that Dotemu keeps working on these new IPs, because their first truly novel offering in a long time is an absolute gem. 

Judge Perry said that deploying the National Guard on the streets of Chicago would only make an already volatile situation worse. She said that troops are “not trained in de-escalation or other extremely important law enforcement functions that would help to quell these problems,” and mobilizing them would “only add fuel to the fire that the defendants themselves have started.”

Photo: Chris Riha ( @superbia454 ) The ongoing feud between the sitting president, the Chicagoland area and State of Illinois continues...

“What kind of a country are we living in? And this raid at this building is emblematic of what ICE and CBP and the president of the United States, Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino, are trying to do,” said Pritzker. “They want mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops.”

There are no bad Paul Thomas Anderson movies. And while lately there has been a bit of ebb and flow after There Will Be Blood and...

We’ve been surfing the scene since the very first BitBash. We were there for the Logan Playtest parties, VGA Gallery openings, collabs at MSI and the Art Institute, and the opening of Chi Gamespace. Sadly, a lot of that magic seemed to have vanished in the post-pandemic world, and we’d be lying if we said we didn’t miss it. Until we made it through the doors at the Chicago Indie Game Showcase presented by Indie City Games.

Chicagoans pack the streets of the West Loop for a rally and march on Labor Day. Photo : Aaron Cynic In a press conference that was...

Gap's been doing creative, choreographed ads for quite some time, and has often pulled off some rather elaborate, amusing stuff, from the swing dancing khakis ads of the 90s to spots with Audrey Hepburn, Madonna and more -- and who could forget the iconic West Side Story inspired jeans vs khakis ad from 2000? Collabs are all the rage this...decade, really, so teaming up with someone like Katseye was a foregone conclusion. But was it also a calculated effort?

Gamescom Opening Night Live was just foisted upon us, and with it, Geoff Keighley has again made himself the figurehead for all things gaming events. He uses these events to have mini-E3 Summer Game Fest type announcements and this three hour show was no exception. As such, here are our favorite big announcements from Gamescom Opening Night Live.

Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen at Fan Expo Chicago 2025. Photo: Marielle Bokor We got to catch Ewan McGregor on his Fan Expo...

By the end of the panel, Cena had cemented himself as one of the most straightforward Hollywood/WWE superstars out there. From his modest start at the All State Arena with WWE to being in some of the biggest action and comic book IP on the planet, even if you weren’t initially a fan, he will make you a fan

Fan Expo Chicago 2025 was one for the record books, with a fantastic guest list and a lot of exciting things to do. One of the highlights of the con came when we had a chance to interview some of the cast of Aliens, who we'd had the pleasure of seeing together in their Friday panel. For this task, we enlisted Antal Bokor, our managing editor, a combat veteran, and a lifelong fan of Aliens, to take on the task of interviewing people who quite literally influenced all of ou