Ethan Gach

Rocket League Is Ditching Loot Boxes

Psyonix announced in a blog today that its car soccer game Rocket League will be leaving loot boxes behind in a move aimed at “creating the best possible experience for our players all over the world.” The change will happen sometime before the end of the year with a new system coming in to replace…

After Months Of Delay, Anthem’s Cataclysm Event Is Finally Live

Without any fanfare, today BioWare dropped Anthem’s biggest update since the game was released in February. Update 1.3 adds a bunch of new loot, a guild system, and the game’s long-awaited Cataclysm event, which was originally due out in May After a rough launch, BioWare announced a series of updates that would be coming to…

Pokémon Card Requiring Players To Speak Banned To Prevent Linguistic Confusion

The Pokémon Company announced late yesterday that it’s banning one of the Pokémon trading card game’s newest cards at this year’s World Championship. That’s because this card introduces some potential language barrier issues between international players that would, overall, make it a huge pain in the ass if anyone decided to actually try and use…

Grandia HD Collection, featuring the first two games in the series, is coming to Switch August 16. It’s the first time both games will appear on a Nintendo console. If you don’t have a Switch or can’t stand to wait another week an HD version of Grandia II is currently on Steam.

PAX Cancels Controversial Hosts’ Live Podcast, Won’t Say Why [Update]

The Seattle gaming convention PAX West has canceled a planned live recording of the “Sacred Symbols” gaming podcast, hosted by politically controversial commentators Colin Moriarty and Chris “Ray Gun” Maldonado, that was set to take place at the show on September 2. It hasn’t yet given a reason for the cancellation, which has caused a…

The beautiful blocky destruction game Riverbond is getting ported to Switch later this year. Like so many interesting games that get overshadowed on other platforms, Riverbond’s arcade-y four-player dungeoneering feels perfect for Switch. Plus, it’ll arrive alongside some new DLC world.

Destiny 2 Players Are Having Fun Punching Raid Bosses To Death

Destiny 2’s raid boss fights are supposed to be brutal, drawn-out affairs. They take a while to complete even for stronger players. Over the weekend, though, Destiny players discovered a character build that can be used to kill any raid boss with just a few punches. The build is by Gladd, who we’ve reported on…

Twitch Uses Mario Reference To Let Viewers Know Ninja Left

Last Thursday, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced he was leaving Twitch to stream exclusively on Mixer. Twitch has subsequently added a tongue-in-cheek reference to the original Super Mario Bros. at the top of his channel to mark the popular streamer’s departure. “The Ninja you’re looking for is in another castle,” a banner at the top of…

Smash Bros. Takes Center Stage At The Biggest Fighting Game Event Of The Year

For the first time since it was released in 2016, Street Fighter V won’t be the final headlining event that concludes the Evolution Championship Series this weekend. Instead, that honor goes to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. This is the first time in the history of the series that it’s ever received top-billing at the event.…

Genshin Impact was announced at E3 and now has a gameplay trailer that debuted at ChinaJoy 2019. The open world JRPG has been described as anime Breath of the Wild, which I can totally see, and which I’m totally here for. It’s supposed to come to PS4 sometime next year.  

Eliza is a visual novel from Zachtronics, developer of Opus Magnum and EXAPUNKS, coming to Steam August 12. If you’re familiar with Zachtronics’ games, you know they always have a weird twist, and sure enough Eliza revolves around an AI-powerd counseling app and the human forced to be a proxy for it. 

GameStop Lays Off Dozens Of Regional Managers As It Searches For A Future

On Tuesday, several GameStop employees took to Reddit to report that their regional sales supervisors had been laid off. These anecdotal reports, combined with tips to Kotaku about some layoffs, have since been bolstered by an email from GameStop management, whose authenticity Kotaku has confirmed, that surfaced stating more than 50 people had been let…

The Original Diablo Is Now Playable In Your Browser

The sanctity of this place has been fouled! Released back in 1996, the original Diablo has never gotten as much attention as its successors. That’s one of the reasons a group of programmers took it upon themselves to reverse engineer the game’s source code to make it possible for others to port it to web…

Electronic Arts Says Its Customers Just Aren’t That Interested In Switch Versions

The Sims on Switch seems like a no-brainer. It’s a chill game about managing the daily life of virtual human beings where high-end graphics and framerate don’t really matter. In a recent earnings call, however, the head of Electronic Arts explained why the publisher sees things differently, and why it hasn’t brought The Sims—or much…

A new batch of games is headed to Game Pass starting August 1 with the delightfully minimalist shoot ‘em up Downwell. Other notable additions include Space Hulk Tactics on August 8 and Slay the Spire on August 14.  

Splatoon 2‘s 5.0 patch is now live, adding to the option to re-play previous Splatfest stages in private mode and throwing in a ton of other adjustments. You can find the full list of changes over at the game’s Nintendo Support page

I Didn’t Think The Surge Was For Me Until I Saw It In A Netflix Show

I had no intention of ever playing The Surge. It looked boring, overly familiar, and mostly desolate, like a dozen other third-person action games by studios I’d never really heard of in which some dude, always some dude, is on a mission to wreck shit up because that’s what’s supposed to make for a cool…

Mutant Year Zero has received an update on Switch that improves the performance and visuals While the changes are noticeable in docked mode, the game still doesn’t look great when playing in handheld.

Rick Fox Accuses Fellow Esports Organization Investor Of Trying To ‘Engineer A Firesale’

In a new interview with The Richard Lewis Show, Rick Fox accused fellow Team Echo Fox investor Amit Raizada of being a “bully,” “self-dealing,” and holding the company “hostage.” “For me, unfortunately, two years in I discover the nature of who he is, and shame on me for not going to Google,” Fox said during the…

Tactical Strategy Game Mutant Year Zero Looks Like A PS2 Game On Switch [Update]

What the duck am I looking at? Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden was one of last year’s surprise delights. Now it’s out on Switch, which should be a great thing. There’s just one problem: It looks really bad. [Update – 10:23, July 31]: The Switch version of Mutant Year Zero got a patch yesterday…