Cecilia D'Anastasio

Medieval fighting game For Honor is launching a weekly 1 vs. 1 tournament called the Hero Series with the Electronic Sports League. It begins July 8th and culminates in a live event in Burbank, California.

Of Course There’s A Reason Why Tekken 7‘s Android Has Breast Physics

Tekken 7’s Alisa Bosconovitch looks like a woman, but she is certainly a robot. So recently, a confused player asked Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada why, despite being synthetic, Alisa’s breasts bounce. Most people might assume the design is to turn people on. But Harada actually attributed some essential functionality to those jiggly robot breasts: Huh!…

Arms Players Are Fed Up With Throw Spammers

Nintendo’s slinky boxing game Arms has come down with a cheese plague. A popular, cheesy playstyle of Arms’ (probably) most popular fighter is pissing off a lot of players in the game’s Ranked mode. Ninjara is Arms’ chain-clad ninja. When his chain throw attack is paired with a jump and his Teleport dodge, Ninjara’s speedy…

A Silent Voice, which won Japan’s Movie Critics Award for Best Animation, finally got an American release date: this coming October It’s a drama about a deaf girl and her elementary school bully who are reunited years later.

Manga Pirates Are Having Trouble Going Legit

Manga pirates have operated in the internet’s shadows for decades, hiding from furious publishers whose translation efforts, pirates say, are shoddy, too slow or nonexistent. Now, as more pirates realize the potential value of their translation skills, they’re poking their heads out from the underground and asking for legit work. But the financial impact of…

Diablo III‘s Necromancer Is The Best Spellcaster Yet

About an hour into taking Diablo 3’s new Necromancer class for a spin, I encountered a turgid, hulking monster called a Grotesque. I had already massacred several of the small bats preceding it, and by using my class ability Corpse Explosion, I did enough damage to the Grotesque for it to inflate and rupture. Out…

Today, Diablo 3 added a Necromancer class to its morbid ranks. It’s a blast—and literally. “Corpse Explosion,” a callback to Diablo 2, does exactly what it says. When a Necromancer explodes some corpses to kill a monster, and then explodes that monster’s corpse to kill worms it hosts, you know you’re playing Diablo

Pathfinder‘s Upcoming Video Game Looks Like Baldur’s Gate

Dungeons & Dragon’s cousin, the tabletop role-playing game Pathfinder, is finally primed to get its own dungeon-crawly video game. Last week, Pathfinder: Kingmaker met its Kickstarter funding goal, raising over $500,000, which will furnish the base game with add-ons. Pathfinder: Kingmaker, developed by Owlcat Games, looks a little like Baldur’s Gate. It’s a single-player game,…

Dungeons & Dragons Wouldn’t Be What It Is Today Without These Women

Almost every copy of the first Dungeons & Dragons adventure written by a woman is buried in a landfill in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Those copies, published in 1980, were the masterwork of a game designer named Jean Wells, who worked for D&D’s first publisher, TSR. Wells designed Palace of the Silver Princess to her tastes,…

Overwatch‘s Confusing Reporting System Is Making Trolling Worse

When a player reports an abusive teammate in Overwatch, the most common response is rarely fear, regret, or even an apology. It’s “go ahead!” Overwatch’s reporting system is opaque, like any game’s, but word on the street is that it’s toothless. As someone who spends roughly 10 hours a week playing Overwatch, I’ve seen toxicity…

YouTuber Reminds Fans How Much Fake Donations Can Hurt

In a heated video yesterday, professional streamer and YouTuber Desmond Etika Amofah issued a warning against against viewers who “fuck with me, fuck with my money, or fuck with my life.” Amofah, a big personality in the Nintendo community, displayed five recent donations to his Twitch stream, each in quantities of $50 or $100. Then,…

Hands-On With Sansar, The New Second Life

In 2003, when Second Life launched, all it took was a few customization bars and the promise of infinite possibility to get users hooked on the idea of a virtual reality. Now, in 2017, our standards are a bit higher. “Immersion” isn’t as easy to sell with a microphone, an avatar and some content creation…

Point: Helix From Arms Is Bad; Counter-Point: No He’s Not

Here at Kotaku, we have strong opinions about video games. Currently, Arms’ DNA-themed fighter threatens to tear this snack website apart. Helix is Arms’ gooey fighter whose signature “Blorb” arms squirt blinding goo on opponents’ faces. Depending on who you ask, Helix is either a lovable snot ball with tons of competitive potential or a…

Arms: The Kotaku Review

Arms may look like a Mario Party mini-game, but it doesn’t play like one. Charming and involved, Arms toes the line between a party game and an entry-level fighter with moderate depth. While Arms succeeds as an easy-to-pick-up brawler, its ambitions as a hardcore game for serious players are less certain. Arms does one thing,…

Tips For Playing Arms

On the surface, Arms looks like a cute game about the dangers of slinky arms, but it quickly gets challenging. Out today, Nintendo’s new fighting game has players throwing punches with spring-loaded limbs. Programming good impulses takes time and guidance. And although only ten fighters feature in Arms, with so many detachable arms to choose…

PlayStation just showed some gameplay footage of gross 1v1 fencing game Nidhogg 2. Compared to the original, Nidhogg 2‘s weapons system is expanded and its simple pixel-art graphics are totally overhauled. It’s slated for release this summer.

Arms’ first DLC character is Max Brass, the boss in the game’s single-player campaign. Downloading him will be free. The game is alsoaddinga “Spectator Mode.”

A new story on Anime Feminist tackles the notion of “volunteer interpreters” after Anime Expo, America’s biggest anime convention, put out a call for passionate, Japanese-speaking fans to interpret for free.

Dishonored Creators Responded To Criticism Of Game’s Women By Making Emily A Badass

In Dishonored 2, people panic when Emily Kaldwin enters a room. When she’s caught sneaking around the docks, NPCs yell out in terror. It’s a special feeling to play a fear-inducing women in a game, and yesterday at E3, Arkane Studios’ co-creative director explained to Engadet that, if it wasn’t for criticism of Dishonored 1’s…

Ashly Burch ‘Heartbroken’ She Won’t Play Chloe In Life Is Strange Prequel

As the longest strike in Screen Actors Guild history chugs on, video game voice actors are making painful career sacrifices to show solidarity with their union. 234 days into the strike, after Microsoft announced Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, fans immediately sussed out that award-winning voice actress and SAG-AFTRA member Ashly Burch will not…