-
CultureKotaku Game DiaryFallout 76’s New Camera Quest Helped Me Fall In Love With The Game’s Broken Beauty
Fallout 76’s world is lonely. Despite being a multiplayer game, it hosts just a couple dozen people around a sprawling map in any session you play. Other Fallout games might have a lot of computer-controlled civilians to chat with. Not this one. All of the non-player characters died long ago, or mutated beyond recognition. This…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsThe New Magic: The Gathering Expansion Makes Every Match More Spectacular
War Of The Spark, Magic: The Gathering’s latest expansion, is available one week early in Magic: The Gathering Arena, the card game’s digital version. It’s already shaping up to be one of the more memorable climaxes in the game’s recent history. Narratively, War Of The Spark couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune cultural moment.…
By Ethan Gach -
EsportsThe Overwatch League Goes To Texas This Weekend
I normally try to zero in on one particular esports event or theme around it each weekend for this post, but this time there is just too much god damn high-level, mouse-clicking, button-mashing, card-dropping, play-calling competitive gaming action going on not to run through all of it. First up we have the Overwatch League. Week…
By Ethan Gach -
Valve Is Finally Replacing Its Ugly Dota 2 Statue With A Better One
Back in 2017, some of the most dedicated Dota 2 players spent hundreds of dollars on microtransactions to win a special collectible statue. The versions that Valve shipped out were so ugly, and so poorly received, that Valve said it would make replacements. Yesterday, it said that it was finally ready to ship them out.…
By Ethan Gach -
PlayStation Now Has Gotten A Lot Better
PlayStation Now used to be a pricey way to stream the PlayStation’s back catalogue of games, which was only useful for people with good internet and no bandwidth caps. Last September the company added an option to download certain games directly, allowing users to play them offline. PlayStation Now is now a lot more like…
By Ethan Gach -
Players Are Creating Amazing Things With Overwatch’s New Workshop Tools
Earlier this week, Blizzard added a Workshop to Overwatch that makes it possible to modify in-game scripts to create all sorts of new custom modes. Players have wasted no time in doing some really cool stuff with it. When Blizzard announced the Overwatch Workshop on Wednesday, it led with the example of a level inspired…
By Ethan Gach -
EsportsReport: Rick Fox Leaving Esports Organization Because Of Racist Comments By Shareholder [Update]
Retired NBA star turned esports entrepreneur Rick Fox is preparing to cut ties with Echo Fox, the competitive gaming organization he helped found, after another shareholder allegedly used racial slurs during an email exchange, according to a report by Richard Lewis for Dexerto According to Lewis, the racist remarks came from an investor at Vision…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsPagan Online Mixes Diablo-Style Loot With Arcade Combat
What surprised me most about Pagan Online, a new action role-playing game that launched on Steam Early Access last week, was how meaty the moment-to-moment fighting felt. When I launched an attack and connected with a wave of enemies, it really felt like I was messing up their day. Pagan Online is a collaboration between…
By Ethan Gach -
ReviewsMultiplatformSteamWorld Quest: The Kotaku Review
I never know exactly how I’m going to approach each new battle in SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. No matter how much I plan and prepare ahead of time, I can’t control the cards that end up in my hand in this turn-based role-playing card game. Perfect optimization is always a few steps out of…
By Ethan Gach -
BlizzCon, Blizzard’s annual convention for all things, well, Blizzard, will take place November 1 and 2 this year. Tickets go on sale May 4. The event will host all of the regular esports tournaments for games like Overwatch and Hearthstone, and who knows, Blizzard might even announce another mobile game.
By Ethan Gach -
Super Mario Maker 2 will be out on Switch on June 28. Nintendo dropped the news today in a tweet, but still hasn’t revealed much else about the game since February’s Nintendo Direct. We learned a ton from that trailer but questions still remain like which characters will be playable.
By Ethan Gach -
Block, Yoda Can Finally
Star Wars: Battlefront II came out 17 months ago. In all the time since, Yoda hasn’t been able to block attacks with his lightsaber. Luke Skywalker was able to block. Obi-Wan Kenobi was able to block. But not the Jedi master who taught them. Until now. Today’s Battlefront II update adds a new costume for…
By Ethan Gach -
Anthem’s New Stronghold Mission Has One Really Cool Moment
I’m playing Anthem, and I’m flying through a tunnel. There are a lot of those in the game. This one happens to be filled with water. At the other end I can make out some light. I fly closer to it. Eventually I break through the surface into a sandy, sun-bleached arena surrounded by massive…
By Ethan Gach -
Hindsight 20/20 is a cool-looking action adventure game coming to consoles and PC sometime in 2020. Announced by Triple-I Games, an indie studio founded by former BioWare, ArenaNet, and Sucker Punch devs, Hindsight is being pitched as a Zelda-like that incorporates morality-based decision making into the gameplay.
By Ethan Gach -
Final Fantasy Artist Yoshitaka Amano Has Designed A Magic: The Gathering Card
War of the Spark, Magic: The Gathering’s next expansion, features the game’s largest collection of Planeswalker cards to date. Wizards of the Coast has tapped a number of different artists to create alternative versions of the cards for Japan, including Yoshitaka Amano of Final Fantasy fame. Amano produced concept art for the series up until…
By Ethan Gach -
BioWare Delays Anthem’s Big Cataclysm Event
In an Anthem update released today, BioWare lead producer Ben Irving and head of live services Chad Robertson announced that a number of updates planned for the game, including its limited-time Cataclysm event, have been delayed. “While we have delivered many of the Act 1 features on time, we are not going to hit all…
By Ethan Gach