Ethan Gach

Yes I Know I Need To Put My Xbox One On An Actual Shelf (Someday)

My Xbox One has been precariously balanced on top of a stack of books for almost two weeks and will probably stay that way for several more because I am a monster with a million other things on his to-do list. I’d like to say I originally saw this set-up as an art installation, a…

The Year In Tiny Video Game Text, 2019

Games are cheaper than ever, but the three cataract surgeries I paid for this year in order to read the words in them has made the hobby itself way more expensive. In all seriousness, it’s 2019 and so many games, both big and small, are still impossible to read without squinting until a blood vessel…

Bethesda Patches Fallout 76 Cheat After Hacker Uses It To Steal Players’ Items

Last weekend, someone managed to steal items from hundreds of players in Fallout 76 using a new hack. While Bethesda patched the worst parts of the exploit, some of the affected players are still waiting to hear if the company will be able to restore their lost loot. A video posted Sunday on YouTube showed…

The Year In Video Game Skies, 2019

Despite video games’ best efforts to make me spend my time staring down at the floor and picking up random junk, I keep looking up to the skies above and the stars beyond. 2019 was full of lovely depictions of both. This is the third annual collection of video game skies, and each year I’m…

Ethan Gach’s Top 10 Games of 2019

It’s been a bad year for great games, but a great year for good ones. I say that not to disparage any particular game, big or small, but rather to help explain why this was the hardest list of games I’ve put together since I started writing for Kotaku three years ago. While a few…

This Year’s Dawning Event Is A Huge Gift To Players Grinding Destiny 2‘s Season Pass

Destiny 2’s seasonal “Dawning” event is showering players in experience points, helping to ease the months-long grind through the game’s second battle pass-style reward progression. The event went live last week and will remain in effect until January 14. During that time the Tower will have a nice, festive dusting of snow and players will…

Call Of Duty Players Are Getting Quick Nukes Thanks To Spawn Camping On New Map

Tactical nuke kill streaks are supposed to be hard to get in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but some players have been getting them incredibly fast thanks to bad spawn points on the game’s Shipment map. Over the weekend the TapXNation YouTube channel put up a video showing a player by the name of Streaking…

Man Masters Time Crisis, Playing On Two Screens At Once

On December 15, cosplayer and light gun arcade game master Eddie Esguerra went viral on social media. DC Comics editor Andi Khouri Tweeted a video of him dual wielding two pistols in Time Crisis 2 as if he were a character in an anime by. The video, in which Esguerra dodges like a boxer and…

CD Projekt Red and Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski have signed a new agreement “further solidifying their relationship,” the studio announced in a press release today. It said it’s received new rights to the property, but didn’t go into more detail. Sapkowski had previously threatened to sue for additional royalties.

Saint-14 has officially returned to the Tower in Destiny 2 The legendary Titan appeared after the game’s daily reset and has a handful of quests to give players, including one to help build an Obelisk in the Tower. Hopefully that one’s not bugged too.

Fans Are Hard At Work On A Witcher Total War Game

The Witcher books have already spawned a role-playing game trilogy, a spin-off card game, and even a Netflix TV show, but now some fans are trying to mod strategy game Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms into a Witcher game. The fan project, first spotted by PC Gamer, is titled Witcher: Total War and aims to…

Finisher Roulette Is My New Favorite Low-Key Destiny 2 Feature

Killing hordes of the same aliens over and over again feels a lot livelier thanks to Destiny 2’s new random finishers. Finishers seemed like a fun but mostly superfluous idea back when Bungie added them to the game with the release of the Shadowkeep expansion in October. The option to perform a finisher kicks in…

Borderlands 3’s Quest Cycling Option Is Amazing

I’m getting pretty sick of opening up menus in games, so when I realized I could just toggle through quests at any time in Borderlands 3, I was overjoyed In previous Borderlands games you could highlight a limited number of quests to pursue at one time. The latest game effectively lets you track all of…

Soccer Superstar Removed From China’s Pro Evolution Soccer After Calling Out Human Rights Abuses

Video game publisher NetEase has said it will remove Arsenal player Mesut Özil from Pro Evolution Soccer 2020 in China, after Özil criticized the country’s mass imprisonment of its Uighur Muslim population. “The German player Özil posted an extreme statement about China on social media,” NetEase wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, according…

Cadence of Hyrule is getting some surprise free DLC today. The Octavo’s Ode update will add its titular boss as a playable character with his own story. The game will also get the traditional gameplay of the original Crypt of the Necrodancer in the form of a new Dungeon mode. 

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition just got its first big patch fixing some bugs, improving competitive matchmaking, and adding a new holiday-themed map mod. I don’t play a ton online and so haven’t run into as many of the matchmaking issues as some, but it’s nice to see unit pathing improving. 

How To Get Destiny 2’s Buggy New Obelisk Working

It’s the second week of Destiny 2’s new Season of Dawn, which means there’s a new Obelisk for players to activate. That’s easier said than done, though, thanks to a bug that prevents you from being able to interact with it. The latest Obelisk appears in the Gulch section of the European Dead Zone. Like…

Borderlands 3 Comes To Stadia, But It’s A Two Month Old Version

Borderlands 3 is out on Stadia today, but there’s one problem: it’s an older version of the game, which doesn’t include the latest updates. “At launch, the Stadia version of the game will reflect all updates and fixes that were released through October 24,” Google said in a press release today. October 24 marked the…

I Feel Ready For The Future Of Video Game Streaming On Xbox One With This $15 Piece Of Plastic

Power A’s new mobile gaming clip looks like the sort of accessory I might have bought for my Game Boy Color back in the 90s. It’s a mess of black plastic that makes weird clicking noises and, to the untrained eye, looks like garbage. But it’s made my Xbox One controller into an excellent portable…

Hackers Find Way To Add NPCs To Fallout 76

New cheat programs are helping some Fallout 76 players duplicate their items and add massive new objects to the game like airships and even non-player characters. On December 14 during Fallout 76’s free weekend event, Unknowncheats.me forum user ErectBAN released a series of cheat scripts they wrote for the game on PC allowing players to…