Chris Suellentrop
Slate
Rhode Island, United States
Contact Chris
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Chris:
Super Mario Odyssey Embraces the Essential Weirdness of Mario
The new game for Nintendo Switch is not as groundbreaking as Super Mario Bros. or Mario 64, but it still equals and sometimes surpasses them. → Read More
I Finally Like My Xbox One
I didn’t realize I hated my Xbox One until I loaded Fallout 3 on it and felt all warm and fuzzy when I saw the Xbox 360 logo and heard the Xbox 360 theme. It was Thursday, and it was the first time my Xbox One has ever made me feel warm and fuzzy. All it took was for Microsoft to start putting an Xbox 360 inside it. → Read More
Touring Boston's Freedom Trail in Fallout 4
Approaching Fallout 4 like a tourist isn’t easy. There aren’t as many Bostonians around as there are in present-day Massachusetts, and there are more Super Mutants and feral dogs. (I’m not saying it’s worse in the 23rd century.) Still, there is a sightseeing tour. → Read More
Twenty Hours With Fallout 4
I’m 20 hours into Fallout 4, and I still don’t know whether I like it. That’s a testament to the game’s virtues as well as the game’s failings. I have no plans to stop playing. I’d rather be playing Fallout 4 than typing these words. Yet I still haven’t forgiven the game for taking so long to hook me. → Read More
Could a Video Game Start A Religion?
I’m a confirmed believer in the church of video games, a sect whose faith has been rewarded over the past decade, as games have sailed easily over the hurdles that have been placed in front of them by the apostates. No one really disputes anymore that games can make us cry, make us laugh, teach our children, train our soldiers, or advance political arguments. Is there anything games can’t do? → Read More
I Love Reading Internet Comments
I have a confession to make. I read the comments. Actually, it’s worse than that. I don’t just read the comments, I enjoy reading the comments. I’ve been getting paid to write on the Internet for more than 15 years, and you, Ungentle Reader—yes, you, the one who used to write “More liberal claptrap!” under my articles and now writes “tl;dr” and “Do you even game, bro?” instead—you are the wind… → Read More
What The New Assassin's Creed Gets Wrong (And Right), According To A Historian
Bob Whitaker, a historian of modern Britain at Louisiana Tech and the host of the YouTube series History Respawned, recommends Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the entertaining new Ubisoft game set in Victorian London. He likes the way it successfully captures the feel of the British capital in the 19th century, and he particularly likes the way the game depicts the Thames River as crowded with… → Read More
Forget No Man’s Sky. I’m Getting Hyped To Play Some Spore
In the fall of 2006, the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine published dueling Spore previews in the span of four weeks. John Seabrook, writing in the New Yorker, said that the game was “anticipated with something like the interest with which writers in Paris in the early twenties awaited Joyce’s Ulysses.” Steven Johnson, writing in the New York Times Magazine, predicted that the game… → Read More
Three Minutes of Fighting Over a Half-Naked Man in Assassin's Creed Syndicate
Where is a guy supposed to dump a body around here? Here is a three-minute video—taken from a late-game mission but devoid of spoilers—from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, a game I quite like. The setup: Jacob Frye, the assassin I’m controlling, has just knocked out a British royal guardsman and stolen his uniform. Next, he’s (we’re?) supposed to stash the body somewhere before escaping, hopefully… → Read More
Assassin's Creed Syndicate: The Kotaku Review
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate is—wait for it—an Assassin’s Creed game, with all that that implies. → Read More
All Games Should Unlock Every Level Right Away
Super Mario 4D Universe—or whatever the next one will be called—should come with every single level in the Mushroom Constitutional Monarchy unlocked. The next Grand Theft Auto should make all of its missions immediately playable in the very first minute. Uncharted 4 should let me jump into the middle of Nathan Drake’s adventures as soon as I slip the disc into my PlayStation. → Read More
Prison Architect Devs Wonder if Their Game Should Have Looked Less Like America
People are interested in Introversion’s very good sim Prison Architect because it tries to model the complexities of life inside a penal institution. People also seem to be tougher on Prison Architect than they are on more frivolous games, for the very same reason: it attempts to simulate the complexities of prison life. How do its creators feel about that ambivalence? → Read More
Watching the Democratic Presidential Debate In Virtual Reality Sucked
You won’t be shocked to learn that watching Bernie Sanders shout about email is not virtual reality’s killer app. I watched Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate on my Gear VR, using Next VR in the Oculus store, and the aesthetic experience was markedly worse than watching the debate on TV, like a normal person. I know this because I shifted back to plain old CNN several times—when my… → Read More
Prison Architect: The Kotaku Review
Almost a decade ago, a majority of the Republicans in Congress voted to pass a prison reform bill called the Second Chance Act, and a Republican president signed it—during an election year, no less. As a policy matter, the bill was modest, less than $100 million a year for things like job training, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and housing assistance to try to reduce the re-arrest… → Read More
How to Be a Video Game Snob
My favorite film critic, A.O. Scott of the New York Times, is trying to reclaim the word “snob” for people of discernment. “If the words nerd and geek can be rehabilitated—if legions of misunderstood enthusiasts can march from the margins of respectability to the heart of the mainstream—then why not snob as well?” he pleaded in the Times on Sunday. → Read More
SOMA Is Scarier When The Monsters Aren’t Around
This picture of a mouse might be the scariest thing I encountered in all of SOMA. Now that I’m not playing the game, I can see that it is not, in fact, scary. Out of context, you might even find the picture funny. Yet while I was immersed in the game, feeling like I was Simon Jarrett lost in the wreckage of the Pathos-II, I found this mouse profoundly disturbing. → Read More
Video Games Should Have Fewer Achievements
SOMA is a standout game, and one of the many ways it distinguishes itself is through its restrained use of achievements. There are 10 on Steam (or 10 trophies on PlayStation), and each is nothing more than a progress marker. They come infrequently and unexpectedly. I wasn’t sure when one would pop up or why. They weren’t typically bestowed after especially dramatic moments in the game. Their… → Read More
The Game About Talking to a Mage Is Not as Good as the One About Texting With an Astronaut
Lifeline is supposed to be the best game for the Apple Watch. Like you, I suspect, I don’t own an Apple Watch. I do own an iPhone, though, and Lifeline is a pretty nifty iOS game. So why is Lifeline 2, which was released last week, such a disappointment? → Read More
A Former Heroin Addict’s New Memoir About Video Games
“When it comes to probing questions about their intimate life as computer-game players, most people don’t have much to say,” writes Michael W. Clune in his absorbing new memoir Gamelife. “They’ve never thought about it. Or they’ve repressed it. Or they’ve forgotten. Or they’re embarrassed. Society has convinced them that computer games are a trivial pastime and there’s no reason to think about… → Read More
Pausing In A Porta Potty In Metal Gear Solid V Makes Me Happy
As I write this, Venom Snake is waiting in a Porta Potty north of Kabul during a sandstorm. I feel a little bad about it, to be honest. → Read More