Cecilia D'Anastasio

WWE 2K18 Looks Gnarly On The Switch

If you’re the kind of person who watches WWE matches on 75% speed, WWE 2K18’s Switch version may be for you. For others, not so much. Released today, the game has fans beggingfor a framerate patch. WWE 2K18 is about 23 gigs on the Switch. That’s 10 gigs bigger than Zelda: Breath of the Wild.…

The Secret Lives of Virtual Worlds is a brand new podcast about people’s digital lives in video games and virtual worlds. The first few episodes cover a donkey rancher’s foray into Eve Online piracy and an Arkansas performance artist who streamed Lord of the Rings Online from a crate.

Steam announced today that it will no longer accept Bitcoin, an invisible currency we never knew it had accepted, anyway. Citing Bitcoin’s volatility and increasing processing fees, Steam says Bitcoin is no longer tenable for them as a payment option. Isn’t this the kind of thing it was made for in the first place?

The Best Overwatch Feeling Is Hooking A Tracer

If Overwatch had a sequel that was just Roadhog grabbing Tracer with his chain hook, I’d pay a whole $40 for it. Snagging Overwatch’s Roadrunner, pulling her in and head-shotting her is the best feeling in Overwatch Roadhog and Tracer are like the tortoise and the hare. Roadhog isn’t very mobile; he can’t dash, teleport…

The Last Months Of Gazillion Entertainment, Maker Of Marvel Heroes

November 22nd should have just been game designer Anthony Gallegos’ birthday. But circumstances were unusual this year. His employer, Marvel Heroes developer Gazillion Entertainment, had put him and the rest of its staff on unpaid furlough earlier that week. He didn’t know when he’d see his next paycheck. His dog Shasta had just been diagnosed…

YouTube is taking a tougher stance against “disturbing content,” the company said in a blog post last night. Its CEO announced the company would boost its manual content moderation workforce next year and boasted of its current algorithms’ effectiveness. It’s a crowd-pleasing move for advertisers, and yet, YouTubers are still crying out for help getting…

How To Cook In Dungeons & Dragons

A few months ago, I proposed a wild idea: Dungeons & Dragons—except you cook what you kill. After a little tinkering, I’m happy to report that my mechanics for cooking in D&D are now widely available. There aren’t always easy-baked ways for players to collaboratively role-play in every D&D game. Cooking is a great way…

I’m taking over Kotaku’s Twitch channel today along with some rag-tag friends to marathon my favorite local multiplayer games! Tune in from 12:15 to 6:00 for Super Smash Bros 4, Crawl, Starwhal, Mario Kart 8, Nidhogg 2 and more.

Dragon Heart Dumplings And Other Real Recipes From Battle Chef Brigade

When Victoria Rosenthal started replicating dishes from eat-what-you-kill game Battle Chef Brigade, she had a little difficulty finding dragon meat at the grocery store. To cook up the game’s BBQ Dragon Shank, she had to get creative. “[Dragon meat’s] art includes pieces of meat that appear to have a thick layer of fat followed by…

YouTube Show Anime Crimes Division Is Naruto Meets CSI

Tracking down a play-for-keeps underground Yu-Gi-Oh ring; rescuing a shipping container of helpless anime body pillows; mediating a gang war between the Subs and the Dubs—these are the anime crimes that Detective Joe Furaya (Vine star SungWon Cho) solves in Anime Crimes Division, the best anime YouTube series I’ve seen yet. The three-episode series debuted…

Overwatch‘s Doomfist Kinda Sucks, So Thank Goodness For Patches

Five months after his release, it turns out that Overwatch’s villainous, terrifying hero Doomfist kind of sucks. Barely anybody wants to play him competitively and, frankly, that makes sense: His beat-em-up playstyle doesn’t feel like a great fit for Overwatch’s cartoonish first-person shooter world. Yesterday, Blizzard finally announcedthat they’re tweaking the hero so, hopefully, he’ll…

Furi is a boss battler that some people like but some people did not like(guilty) and, early in 2018, it is coming to the Nintendo Switch.

Overwatch‘s Little Onion Octopus Has Become A Sensation

Some Overwatch fans might argue that the first-person shooter’s darling isn’t any of its heroes. It may be an onion-headed cephalopod that, initially, was nothing more than an innocuous background object. In the year and a half since Overwatch’s release, Pachimari’s fandom has outshone some of the games’ actual heroes’. In Overwatch’s early days, Pachimari…

Come On, Anime

In the category of “gross anime things,” let’s talk a little about an increasingly popular gross anime thing commonly referred to as “Really 700 years old.” That’s when a 700-year-old demon with the body of a young girl who, somehow, finds herself in a sexually compromising position. Yep. Historically, the trope has referred to otherworldly…

Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode just got a massive patch that added smoke grenades, leaderboards and 4k support for the Xbox One X (or, as I like to call it, the Xbonex).

Fans Relive Final Fantasy XI‘s Punishing Past On Private Servers

Back in the early 2000s, Final Fantasy XI was famous for completely disrespecting players’ time. Masochistic and convoluted, the MMO  drew in thousands of dedicated players who traded hours upon hours of grinding for the sweet feeling of accomplishment. 15 years later, more player-friendly MMOs monopolize the genre. And yet, there are still hundreds of…

Crawl is a delightful and creepy local multiplayer game where the players are monsters who take turns killing off another player, the sole human. And on December 19th, it’s coming to the Switch!

Ode, a new game from Ubisoft, is trying to give “soundscape” a new meaning. Players travel through “musical gardens” and play musical plants in the sonic exploration game.

Anime Lovers Have Mixed Feelings About Fan Service

Anime’sfan service can be a minefield. Some fans scroll through each season’s offerings looking for the show with the greatest ratio of panty shots to plot. Others will turn off an anime and bury their face in their hands after even one lingering shot of an ice skater’s butt. But fan service means a lot…

The first major expansion to D&D’s 5th edition, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, is out today. It’s full of new subclasses, spells, backstory ideas and tools for Dungeon Masters.