Ranking the year's biggest gaming tech & a new anthology of games writing
Just in time for Black Friday!
Turkey dinner didn’t go as planned, but I’ve been playing as many games with family as I hoped to this Thanksgiving weekend. Especially Half-Life: Alyx, which my sister’s fiancé finally spurred me into setting up on my Quest 2 (I blanched at the hoop-jumping required, but the yelps the game drew from my sister more than paid off our persistence!).
I’ve also been hard at work reviewing other gaming tech — specifically, the handheld platforms and controllers I so adore. I’m not so crass as to rank them in the NPR article, but I will do so here as a treat to you, dear reader!:
5 — Atari 2600+: I got to talk to Here & Now’s Scott Tong on-air about this re-release of a 1977 home console — tune in to hear him play the Cold War classic, Missile Command. But while it’s a neat museum piece, I concur with my colleague Tre Watson’s take: “I'm grateful the Atari 2600+ exists for hardware conservationists and nostalgic gamers. But $130 is steep for what you get — the console, one controller, and the 10-in-1 cartridge… it's really not worth it unless you've got cash to spare and a hankering to relive a bygone era, warts and all.”
4 — Asus ROG Ally: As someone who’s invested over a thousand of dollars on portable gaming hardware before, I wanted to like the Ally. It’s got Windows built-in to play games off Xbox Games Pass and the Epic Games store, and it’s more powerful than the Steam Deck. But the Windows interface is so clunky that I ended up sidelining the Ally. To quote myself: “I'd only recommend it to PC enthusiasts who prioritize flexibility over convenience.”
3 — PlayStation Portal: “Intended for use within your home network, the Portal can wake up your PS5 and stream games from it at the press of a button… [I]s the Portal worth its $200 price tag when it's merely a way to play PS5 games without a TV? Only if you really, really need your PlayStation fix when you're lying in bed or (gasp!) on the toilet.”
2 — DualSense Edge: This fancy PS5 controller fast eclipsed my previous favorite, one I modded with a third-party kit to get the back paddles I depend on for action games like Sekiro and Elden Ring. It’s undoubtedly indulgent at $200, but it’s hard to imagine my PlayStation life without it.
1 — Steam Deck OLED: “I rely on the Steam Deck to plow through my backlog in planes, trains and automobiles — the new version's vivid pixels stay visible in direct sunlight, a frequent issue I had when playing titles with inky shadows or low contrast colors.” As Polygon’s Chris Plante proclaimed: “it’s the original device improved to its full potential.”
I also produced an interview with Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon, editors of new anthology of musings on games. Here’s a sampling of the article I wrote to accompany the audio feature:
“Heady discussion of video games thrives online — I’m personally hooked on YouTube videos that dissect canonical and obscure titles or offer wide-ranging comparative analyses.
But such essays rarely end up in slick trade paperbacks. A new anthology, Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, bridges the gap… [using] games to explore a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from gender identity to family trauma to radical politics.”
The book made for lively conversation — and you can hear more of it on Here & Now Anytime. My favorite essay? “This Kind of Animal” — Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s meditation on Disco Elysium and the death of his father.
Here & Now Highlights
In addition to the Critical Hits interview and the Atari 2600+ segment, I also produced two media roundups this week. NPR critic Eric Deggans joined Robin Young to discuss his November TV picks, and Andrew Limbong, host of the Book of the Day podcast, shared selections from NPR’s massive Books We Love project.
Since Black Friday’s increasingly lengthened to include nearly all November, personal finance expert Jill Schlesinger also joined us to talk about holiday spending projections and what they might mean for the economy.