Author: Emily Carter

In my years of reviewing NBA 2K games, I’ve come to appreciate–and even expect–the game to feel like an authentic love letter to basketball in so many ways. This has been a consistent attribute of the series going back over a decade. NBA 2K doesn’t just capture the culture of basketball; it helps shape it. No other game–not even Madden, despite the head start gifted to it by simulating Americans’ unique obsession with football–offers a total package as immersive and rewarding as NBA 2K. That’s why, in addition to my NBA 2K25 review–and so as not to become too bogged down in the ins and outs of it there–I’m also taking a moment to address the unfortunate pay-to-win economy still infecting what is otherwise the perennial sports game of the year.If you don’t play NBA 2K, you may be unfamiliar with its woes in this regard, and if you do play it, you may have normalized it to the point that you no longer see it as a concern. Unlike other sports games in which the focal point is often either the team-centric Franchise-style mode or the fantasy-card-collecting loot-box mode, Visual Concepts has built up its MyCareer mode and its social MMO hub, The City, to offer a compelling–and s…

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A new challenger has entered the handheld gaming PC scene, as Acer is throwing its proverbial hat into the ring with the Nitro 7. Announced this week at IFA 2024, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 has some great hardware that makes it an attractive alternative to the other handhelds on the market.

Acer Nitro 7

The Nitro Blaze 7 is equipped with a seven-inch 1080p screen that has a 144Hz refresh rate, and it uses a Ryzen 7 8840HS chip with a Radeon 780M integrated GPU. It also has 16GB of RAM, a 50-watt-hour battery, and up to 2TB of SSD storage. The processor it uses is one that you’d typically find in high-end gaming laptops, so this device could potentially boast better performance when compared to its rivals, but that could drain ihe battery very quickly.For the controls, there’s an asymmetrical analog stick layout, the usual face buttons, shoulder buttons, and the typical spread of shoulder and trigger butt…

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