Ari Notis

Spiritfarer Pokes Fun At Animal Crossing’s Jerk Raccoon, Tom Nook

Spiritfarer and Animal Crossing: New Horizons have a lot of shared DNA. Both feature anthropomorphic animals with distinct personalities. Both give you a space of your own that you can shape to your whims. Both demand a meticulous level of resource management. And both, more surprisingly, star a morally defunct raccoon salesman who worships at…

Spiritfarer Is A Chill, Touching Take On A Stressful Genre

Spiritfarer, which is described by developer Thunder Lotus Games as a “cozy management game about dying,” came out yesterday for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. I’m only a few hours into this massive, striking game—it’s reportedly 30 to 40 hours long—but those words seem remarkably accurate so far. To play Spiritfarer is…

Red Dead Redemption 2 Is Already Leaving Xbox Game Pass

Like the Wild West world it depicted, Red Dead Redemption 2’s time on Xbox Game Pass is coming to a sudden, ignominious end. Despite just joining the service in May, Red Dead Redemption 2 will become unavailable on September 7. Red Dead Redemption 2’s departure follows a similar path as Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V,…

So Glad I Finally Discovered The Sci-Fi Puzzle Adventure Observation

“I am here.” You’ll hear that line often over the course of Observation, a puzzle-adventure game that came out last year for PC and PlayStation 4 and earlier this summer for Xbox One. (It’s also included in the Xbox Game Pass library.) If you’re looking for a short, satisfying adventure to help you weather the…

Tips For Playing Fall Guys

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is taking the gaming world by storm. The party platformer battle royale, out this week for PC and PlayStation 4, pits dozens of players against each other in a series of mad-dash mini-games. It’s largely uncomplicated; most of the mini-games require running forward and jumping at the right time. But there…

Through Monday, multiplayer will be available to all Xbox One players, regardless of Xbox Live Gold status. Microsoft is also unlockinga ton of games, including Gears 5 and Borderlands 3. In other news, Sony is making multiplayer free for everyone on Saturday and Sunday. Let’s hope the Fall Guys servers can keep up

How To Survive Fall Guys‘ Toughest Mini-Games

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout released yesterday on PC and PlayStation 4. Thanks to Twitch hype and inclusion in August’s game with PS Plus, Fall Guys landed with a splash—such a big splash, in fact, that server issues persisted throughout much of yesterday, preventing eager players from testing out this hotly-anticipated party game. It’s by and…

Nintendo Added A Surprise New Stage To Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Ask any Smash fan and they’ll tell you that updates to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are negligible. Usually, they’ll introduce the barest tweaks to existing fighters, or adjust the online mode in some barely noticeable way—and nothing more. So it’s somewhat of a surprise that, in last night’s 8.1.0 update, Nintendo added a whole new…

Fall Guys Servers Can’t Keep Up With Launch Day Popularity

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout released today on PC and PlayStation 4 to much fanfare—perhaps too much. The hotly anticipated physics-based party platformer has been plagued by server issues all day. Connection issues started shortly after 8:00 a.m. ET. According to the game’s official Twitter account, more than 120,000 players connected to the game at once,…

How To Unlock The Rest Of Paper Mario: The Origami King’s Settings

For a modern game, Paper Mario: The Origami King’s settings are archaic. When you first start out, you can adjust the brightness, or the rumble in your Joy-Cons. You can toggle the motion controls on or off. There are three other options, but they’re listed, literally, as “????” To find out what they are—as well…

Ghost Of Tsushima Could Really, Really Use A Loadout Feature

Ghost of Tsushima almost has it all. It’s freakin’ beautiful. The quests and characters are endlessly entertaining. The combat’s a blast—a deft blend of skill mastery and power fantasy. You can even pet foxes (aww). But there’s one big quality-of-life feature missing from this action-packed, samurai-themed masterpiece: loadouts. When playing Ghost of Tsushima, you’ll find…

Spider-Man Will Be A PlayStation Exclusive Character For Marvel’s Avengers, Reminding Us All How Much Console-Exclusive DLC Sucks

In a move already being roundly criticized on social media, Crystal Dynamics’ Jeff Adams revealed today that Spider-Man will be available as a free update for PlayStation players of this September’s Marvel’s Avengers game in “early 2021.” PC and Xbox One players, apparently, won’t get to play as him. Adams announced the move in a…

What Happens When You Abandon Your Animal Crossing: New Horizons Island

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game that demands attention. The way it’s structured, you’re supposed to play every day, or at least check in to see what’s up. Like brushing your teeth or taking out the trash, Animal Crossing is, at its core, a chore. So what happens if you forget to do that…

Gigaleak Suggests Animal Crossing Could Have Been ‘Human Crossing’

Was Animal Crossing almost Human Crossing? Files unearthed in the massive Nintendo “Gigaleak” suggest that homo sapiens were once intended to appear in the first entry of the popular life-sim series, a Japan-only release called Animal Forest Some background: Animal Forest—or Dōbutsu no Mori, in Japanese—released in 2001 on the N64. Later that year, it…

Noah Cyrus Made A New Video For ‘July’ In Dreams

Dreams players have been making a lot of creative things in the PlayStation 4 sandbox, including Mario games and a recreation of Adam Jensen’s swanky pad. Now, the biggest musicians in the world are getting in on the action. Yesterday, Noah Cyrus dropped a music video for her smash hit “July,” entirely created in Dreams…

Fans Spot Countless Differences In ‘Gigaleak’ Pokémon Diamond Prototype

Early prototypes of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl have emerged from the Nintendo “Gigaleak.” Like much else involved in this Snorlax-sized trove, it’s a lot to comb through, so Kotaku reached out to Pokémon expert Lewtwo to help sort through the many differences between the prototypes and the Diamond and Pearl we all know. Users on…

Let’s Talk About Ghost Of Tsushima‘s Ending

Ghost of Tsushima has been out for almost two weeks. Maybe you’ve already finished it. Maybe you’re creeping up on the end and want to know what you’re in for. Maybe you love the game so much you don’t want it to end and instead want to read vicariously about the finale. Let’s talk. Heavy…

Halo: The Master Chief Collection Is So Fun Right Now

I’ve played Halo: The Master Chief Collection off and on—more off than on—since it released in 2014. The serious connectivity issues that persisted well past launch were one thing, but the game also hit that fun wall all first-person shooters hit. Sometimes it takes months or years, but the run-of-the-mill players always abandon ship for…

Ghost of Tsushima Patch Adds Higher Difficulty, ‘Lower Intensity Combat’ Setting

Ghost of Tsushima receives a few game-changing options in a new update today. The 1.05 patch will include a new difficulty level, a new combat accessibility setting, and some additional options for the game’s text. The new difficulty level is called Lethal, and it sounds exactly like that: Enemies are both more aggressive and more…

Here’s The Deal With Ghost Of Tsushima‘s Final Stance

Success in Ghost of Tsushima requires one thing: mastering the game’s four sword stances. Each stance deals boosted damage against specific enemy classes, which is essential for managing crowds and quickly taking down Mongols. There’s Stone stance, which wrecks anyone wielding a sword. Water stance makes short work of shields. Wind stance trumps spears. And…