Ethan Gach

Competitive 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…

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…

Remedy Entertainment says it’s looking into how to improve Control’s performance on console but that it will take time. The studio also says that an on/off toggle for Motion Blur and Film Grain will be coming in the next update, along with improvements to the map display. 

Woman 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…

Turn-based survival game Overland finally has a release date and it’s not that far off, arriving on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Switch on September 19. In Overland you travel across a post-apocalyptic landscape Oregon Trail-style in-between getting in tactical fights. We’ll find out soon if it’s as good as it sounds. 

I Feel Gross Just Watching NBA 2K20’s Loot Box Trailer

NBA 2K20 is supposed to be a game primarily about playing basketball, but you wouldn’t know that from the game’s latest trailer, which makes the game look like something you might see in a casino. Released on Monday, the “MyTeam” trailer for NBA 2K20 shows off all the ways you can recruit better players and…

I Didn’t Grow Up In The 80s, But This New Game Makes Me Feel Like I Did

There was a time, I’m told, when arcades were everywhere and kids spent long summer nights pissing away whatever money they had just to lose over and over again in games like Sinistar and Out Run. I missed that period of time by a decade, but that hasn’t stopped me from pining for it, like…

Apocalyptic ice age simulator Frostpunk got its first expansion today adding a new map for the game’s endless mode called The Rifts. The game is also getting a few more updates later this year, including a new scenario and a handful of other endless mode maps. 

Tips For Playing Control

Control takes you on a fascinating journey through a monstrous office building full of occult horrors. It also holds a lot back, preferring to show rather than tell. As a result, there’s some information that can be really useful to know but that the game doesn’t explain well, or at all. Whether you’re just getting…

Sony Is Still Trying To Stop People From Hacking The Vita, For Some Reason [Corrected]

Correction: 8/28/2019, 1:30 p.m. ET: After the publication of this story, the Vita hacker in question now says that the h-encore² hack in fact still works with the 3.72 Vita firmware. Kotaku apologizes the error. The original story is below. Less than a day after a new exploit for jailbreaking the Vita was discovered, Sony…

There’s a Mega Man Zero / ZX Legacy Collection (yes, that’s the official name) and it’s coming to PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on January 21, 2020. It’ll include Mega Man Zero 1 through 4 as well as both Mega Man ZX games which are more Metroidvania-inspired.    

Emulator Can Now Use Machine Learning To Translate Games (Poorly)

The developers behind RetroArch, the popular one-stop shop for retro gaming emulation, announced a new feature over the weekend: translating Japanese text to English on the fly. The results aren’t great, but they’re better than nothing and likely to improve over time. RetroArch’s new “AI Service button” uses a Google API to scan whatever is…

Control: The Kotaku Review

Control is the latest game from the makers of Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break. It’s a twisted, haunting odyssey through an old post-WWII office building under siege by parasitic beings from another dimension. Control has all the standard elements of a regular third-person shooter, but its exhaustive world building and all-consuming eeriness make…

Anthem: Six Months Later

It’s already been six months since the online shooter Anthem came out. A lot has happened during that time, though not as much as players had hoped. The game launched with many bugs and flaws, and both players and the developers have acknowledged that it needs a lot of work. While developer BioWare has addressed…

Koei Tecmo wants players to submit ideas for which Monster Rancher creatures should be linked up with what music when the game’s remaster gets ported to Switch and smartphones next year. The original game spawned creatures from CDs inserted into the PS1 but the new game will use a different system.

Fallout 76 Player Completes New Raid, Earns Useless Drill

Almost anyone who’s ever raided in a game before has a horror story about that time they worked really hard only to be rewarded with a piece of junk. At least one super unlucky Fallout 76 player recently joined their ranks. “We beat the final boss, opened up the loot chest at the end,” wrote…

Dota 2 Team Sent Packing From World Championship After Tragic Misclick

Painful counterfactuals stalk even the best athletes. On Monday, Manchester United star Paul Pogba missed an easy penalty, dooming his team to a 1-1 draw against a lesser opponent. Last night, a Dota 2 player tried to ban a particular hero from the match, but ended up selecting him instead. It’s impossible to reduce any…

There’s a long lost member of the Ginyu Force and her name is Bonyu. Designed by series creator Akira Toriyama, she’ll be introduced in the upcoming role-playing game Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Bandai Namco announced today. Her backstory will apparently get explored in one of the game’s side-quests.

Vermintide 2‘s ‘Winds Of Magic’ Expansion Adds More Grind But Not Much Else

Developer Fatshark has called “Winds of Magic” Vermintide 2’s first expansion, but while it offers a completely new mode and progression system, it currently just seems like another DLC. On top of that, it feels unmoored from the strong lore and ambient apocalyptic mood that guided previous additions to the game. “Winds of Magic” opens…

Have you ever wanted to skid off-road in a tractor trailer, potentially rolling down snowbanks or smashing into trees and watching your load go tumbling out into a winter wonderland? Well SnowRunner has you covered. An upcoming game in the MudRunner series, it’s set to come to release next year.