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CultureThe Outer Worlds Gets A Bigger Text Mode
The Outer Worlds received an all important new feature in today’s patch: a bigger text mode. Finally, no more squinting at my TV from six feet away. The option to shift to the larger print can be found in the settings menu. There’s no slider so you can only toggle it on or off, but…
By Ethan Gach -
Tips & GuidesHow To Kill Jedi: Fallen Order‘s Oggdo Bogdo More Easily
The key to beating one of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s earliest optional boss fights is to start it off with a jump attack. If that attack connects successfully, you’re golden. If not, you’re in for a world of pain. Oggdo Bogdo is a giant black alien toad on the first planet you go to…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureI Didn’t Realize How Much I Love Suspending Games Until The Outer Worlds Took That Away
The Outer Worlds begins with your character coming out of cryo-sleep. They’ve been out of commission for years as their colony ship traveled across the galaxy, but once awakened they’re able to pick up right where they left off. I’ve come to take it for granted this console generation that my games can do this…
By Ethan Gach -
CulturePokémon Sword And Shield Are Making Some TVs Shut Off [Update]
Over the weekend, some players sat down to play Pokémon Sword and Shield on their Roku TVs, only to have them get stuck frozen on the startup screen before rebooting. Roku said it’s currently working to fix the problem. “We are aware of an issue when using Nintendo Switch and the latest Pokémon game impacting…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureUntitled Goose Game As A PS1 Game Is Perfect
Indie developer Narayana Walters decided the titular fowl from Untitled Goose Game wasn’t menacing enough and so decided to recast the anti-hero in the lo-fi hell of a PlayStation 1 game. Untitled Goose Game is an animal circus full of clever little details and brilliant moments of spontaneous slapstick, but at bottom it’s about a…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureKotaku Game DiarySpamming Like In Death Stranding Makes You Feel Real Good
Death Stranding’s America is dotted with thousands, possibly even millions, of player-made structures that can make the post-apocalyptic expanse less dangerous and also less lonely—perhaps even welcoming. These structures have a social media-inspired system that lets you click a “like” button on them. And I am determined to favorite them all as much as possible.…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureFallout 76, One Year Later
Bethesda launched Fallout 76 one year ago today, and almost everything that could go wrong did. And yet 12 months later it’s still around, still getting updates, and full of players who remain willing to pour their best and most creative energies into trying to make it an interesting and wondrous place. It’s been a…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureA Ton Of Final Fantasy Games Are Coming To Xbox Game Pass
Final Fantasy VII through XV (excluding the two MMOs) will get added to Game Pass in the coming months, Microsoft announced today during the latest episode of Inside Xbox at this year’s XO19 fan event in London. That chunk of the series includes 10 games, many of which, like Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XII:…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsAge Of Empires II‘s Remaster Kicks Ass
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is a lot. It adds new campaigns, civilizations, revamped enemy AI, and 4K graphics, in case you’ve been waiting to see a flood of medieval warriors clash incomprehensibly with one another in crisp detail. Remastered and slightly reworked, one of the defining real-time strategy games of the turn of…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureGoogle Confirms All The Stuff Stadia Won’t Have At Launch
Ahead of Stadia’s launch next week, Google’s representatives fielded questions during an AMA on Reddit about what exactly the video game streaming service will include in the beginning. The answer is, not much. The whole thread was a good reminder that much of Stadia remains as theoretical as it seemed when it was originally pitched…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsLegend of Bum-bo Is A Pleasing, Puzzling, Poo-Filled Prequel To Binding Of Isaac
I’ve been staring at my computer screen for three minutes trying to decide where the piles of poo should go. If I can get four of them in a row, I can fling a pile at the rotting sack of guts bearing down on me, and temporarily block it. But no matter how I tried,…
By Ethan Gach -
Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club dropped some wonderful news overnight: Shovel Knight: King of Cards and Shovel Knight Showdown will both come out on December 10. The first, a bonus campaign to the original game, and the second, a multiplayer fighting game spinoff, were originally set to release last April.
By Ethan Gach -
CultureMajor Ghost Recon Breakpoint Update Isn’t Enough To Fix The Game
Today, Ghost Recon Breakpoint got its biggest update since launch. Besides the two new faction missions, there are a host of tweaks, some big, some small, touching on almost every aspect of the game. They might not turn Breakpoint into a game you need to play, but they are slowly turning it into the sort…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureXbox One Is Getting A Shuffle Button To Let You Go Through Your Backlog At Random
A new “Surprise Me” button will be added to the Xbox One’s game library, Microsoft announced yesterday on Twitter. Rolling out first for players in the Xbox One insider testing program, the “Surprise Me” button will allow the indecisive player to select a game randomly from their library to play. The button doesn’t automatically launch…
By Ethan Gach -
EsportsCompetitive Madden Returns This Weekend Starring Two-Time Champ
Pro Madden kicks off the first major tournament of its 2020 season this weekend with the Madden 20 Classic in Arlington Texas where all eyes will be on Michael “Skimbo” Skimbo to see if the existing champ can win his third straight title. Skimbo has been a powerhouse at the Classic for the last two…
By Ethan Gach -
Fallout 76’s Raid Missions Feel Like Chores
In gaming parlance, the phrase “raid” implies some grand story, an epic boss fight, and the promise of great rewards at the end. Bethesda has called Fallout 76’s latest addition to the game a raid, but it lacks those things. Instead, it takes the base game’s worst quests and repackages them the most grindy, punishing…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureWoman Says Oculus Rift Cofounder Put His Hand Up Her Skirt During VR Demo
Earlier this week, Autumn Taylor, marketing director at the virtual reality game studio Owlchemy Labs, said that Oculus cofounder Michael Antonov groped her during a VR demo in 2016. At first, Taylor described the incident without revealing the person’s identity. “They showed me VR demos, but put their hands up my skirt while they did…
By Ethan Gach