Ari Notis

The Biggest Video Game Surprises Of 2020

Every year, we run down the best annual surprises from the world of video games. Needless to say, 2020 was not like previous years. That’s why, this year, we’re reorienting our annual tradition to focus on the biggest—not necessarily the best—ones. 2020 was full of shockers. This was the year Sony held a virtual event…

The State Of The PS4 And PS5 In 2020

Despite the harrowing circumstances impacting the world, 2020 was a stand-out year for PlayStation. Over the course of 2020, Sony published more than half a dozen top-shelf games, a huge step up from last year’s scant offerings. Beyond that, the company pushed out two models of an ambitious gaming console, and boosted support for the…

The State Of Xbox In 2020

This time last year, Microsoft’s current flagship console was little more than a swanky video spot aired during a swanky awards show. Now, it’s the capstone to one of the biggest years for Xbox in recent memory. Time sure works in funny ways. Yes, it’s been almost one year to the day since Microsoft officially…

Ghostrunner Is Actually The Fall’s Sharpest Cyberpunk Game

Ghostrunner is a lean-forward game. You know the position: When the going gets tough, anything short of absolute focus won’t cut it, so you lean forward, elbows on thighs, in order to close the distance between your eyes and the TV as much as possible. With a lean-forward game, the going is always tough. Ori…

Call Of The Sea Is A Welcome Reprieve From All My Recent Video Game Murdering

There have been a lot of harsh, dour video games this fall. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla centered on conquest and amputation. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War featured history’s most cynical dirtbag. Cyberpunk 2077 is Cyberpunk 2077. If it’s all been a lot to stomach, consider a change of pace: the delightful Call of the…

Hades is finally getting cross-save support for Switch. Supergiant Games announced the update in a tweet today.

CDPR Is No Longer Telling PlayStation Owners To Ask Sony For Cyberpunk 2077 Refunds

The Cyberpunk 2077 refund situation only gets weirder and weirder. Developer CD Projekt Red is now telling players who requested a refund for the game’s PlayStation 4 version to sit tight. Following a weekend of ire about Cyberpunk 2077’s subpar performance on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, CD Projekt Red publicly apologized and directed dissatisfied…

EA Play won’t be coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC until some time next year The addition—which is already part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (for console)—was planned for this month.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 1.1 Update Addresses Game-Breaking Bugs

Ubisoft is releasing a big update tomorrow for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla across all platforms, aiming to balance combat, improve performance, and generally smooth out a game that’s not without its fair share of bugs. But the biggest blessing comes in the form of several planned fixes for broken objectives. Fixes for more than two dozen…

How To Get A Refund For Cyberpunk 2077 On PS4 Or Xbox One

You don’t have to stick with Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt Red’s latest open-world escapade released last week to a raucous mix of fanfare and criticism, with much of the ire rooted in how poorly the game runs on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One—and how CDPR hid those versions from players and reviewers until launch. If…

The Last Of Us Part II Wins Game Of The Year At The 2020 Game Awards

The Last of Us Part II won Game of the Year at the 2020 Game Awards, beating out games like Ghost of Tsushima and, somehow, Hades for the top spot. Beyond the accolades, tonight’s event—which was held digitally this year, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic that shows no signs of abating any time…

Seven Settings To Change In Cyberpunk 2077

After eight years, multiple delays, and 800,000 cumulative lifetimes’ worth of reported crunch, Cyberpunk 2077 is out in the wild. It’s a whole lot of game, brimming with gear, side-quests, and map icons that make you compulsively go, “Ooh, what’s that?” As with any massive game, there’s also an overwhelming amount of settings, many of…

I’m Not Yet Sold On Paradise Killer, But Its Soundtrack Is Unforgettable

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today, let’s dive into the OST from Paradise Killer, the deliciously weird puzzle-mystery game from developer Kaizen Game Works. Let me kickstart your day with some inside baseball: We plan Morning Music picks ahead of time, and…

The PS5’s Limited Controller Support Is An Issue For Gamers Who Need Accessibility Options

The PlayStation 5 is in many ways a fantastic machine, but it’s far from perfect. Games take up more space than indicated, the dashboard’s newsfeed can get needlessly cluttered, and the simplest way to power the thing down is a departure from the hold-the-big-center-button norm. Beyond that, nearly a month after launch, Sony’s latest console…

Insomniac added a new “Performance RT” visual mode to Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The new setting allows for ray-tracing at 60FPS, with the tradeoff being an unspecified adjusted scene resolution 

‘Free’ Gears 5 Expansion Highlights Growing Divide For Game Pass Subscribers

Gears 5 is getting a new campaign expansion next week. It’ll be available at no extra cost for members of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, a $15-monthly subscription. Everyone else will have to pay up. It’s just one more perk suggesting a growing gulf between the entry-level and premium tiers of Microsoft’s games-on-demand service. The new…

How To Avoid Burnout And Finish Any Open-World Game

Do you ever feel like there are too many open-world games, and too many of them take up too much time? Just consider some offerings from this year alone. There’s Ghost of Tsushima, the gorgeous samurai action game, which can take you more than 60 hours to check off every objective. Ubisoft released not one…

How To Clean Up Your PS5’s Newsfeed

Like an untamed Instagram feed, the PlayStation 5 sometimes gives you updates about things you don’t care about. When you tap the PS button, you’ll see an “official news” card, which lists a handful of news blips—trailers, announcements, that sort of thing—about “your games.” Most of the games listed appear to be those you follow…

Activision Blizzard Suing Netflix Over Poached Exec

For those of you who love corporate beef, here’s a whopper: Activision Blizzard is suing Netflix. As reported by Deadline, Netflix poached a top Activision exec, chief financial officer Spencer Neumann, before his contract expired. In response, Activision filed suit in the Superior Court of California earlier today. According to Activision’s lawyers, Neumann started working…

Cake Bash Is A Deliciously Sweet Take On Mario Party

Everyone loves a good sugar rush. It’s why, no matter how big the backlog, we gravitate to games that could generously be qualified as comfort food. But the sweetest sugar-rush I’ve run into lately isn’t some paint-by-numbers first-person shooter you’ve played a hundred times or some formulaic open-world adventure you won’t even need a tutorial…