Ethan Gach

I Really Want To Help Spider-Man Find All His Backpacks

Spider-Man has done the unthinkable and turned me into a completionist. I hate busy work and repetition, and I’ve never 100%’ed a game in my life, but Spider-Man’s various idiosyncratic collectibles changed all of that. As I said in my review, I enjoyed most of the side missions, but I especially loved hunting for Peter…

Epic Drops Video Capture From Fortnite On Switch, Cites Performance Issues

Earlier today, Epic released a new content update for Fortnite that, among other things, vaulted the game’s overpowered drum gun. Something else went missing though, at least for Switch players: the ability to use the system’s video capture while playing the game. After the new update was pushed out early this morning, Fortnite players on…

Some Switch Games Won’t Support Cloud Saving To Prevent Cheating, Nintendo Says

Last Friday, posters on the gaming forum ResetEra discovered that the Nintendo website information page for Splatoon 2 had been updated with a note saying the game does not support cloud save backups, one of the big new features being added to the Switch when its paid online service launches later this month. It’s to…

The Yakuza Team’s Next Project Is Like Ace Attorney With Punching

Today’s PlayStation event in Japan was weird, to say the least. Attendees watched a spaceship in the shape of a DualShock 4 fly through the universe while the buttons on it talked to them in weird computer voices. A few new games did get shown at the event, though, including an action-RPG courtroom brawler from…

Nintendo Announces Pikachu And Eevee Switch Bundles

Today Nintendo announced a new Pokémon: Let’s Go-themed Switch console as part of a bundle for the game’s November 16 release. It’s adorable and comes with Pikachu and Eevee-colored Joy-Con. which Nintendo should really let us buy separately but because they’re Nintendo probably never will. There are two bundles, one each for the Pikachu and…

Trash-Talking League of Legends Star Seeks His Fifth Title This Weekend

One of League of Legends’ biggest stars will have a chance to earn his fifth championship title at this weekend’s North American summer finals—and possibly cement his legacy as the continent’s best player of all time. Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng has been a central fixture of League of Legends in North America going back to 2011.…

The Comic Book Touches That Make Spider-Man‘s Photo Mode So Much Fun

Spider-Man is finally out, as is its day-one patch which adds in a spectacular photo mode. It’s worth taking a second (or maybe several hours) to mess around with, thanks to a number of special bells and whistles that play perfectly into the game’s comic-book roots. We’ve seen a lot of great photo modes recently,…

One Part Of Hyper Light Drifter’s World Still Haunts Me

I’ve played Hyper Light Drifter a few times now, and I always start by going North. I’m drawn by the chilly, snow-covered peaks. But once there, this particular dead and lonely world rocks me to my emotional and spiritual core. Hyper Light Drifter came out on Switch Thursday, two years after its original PC release,…

Tips For Playing Spider-Man

You might have heard there’s a new Spider-Man game out today. You might have also heard it’s very good. For those who have decided to try out this little old game for themselves, I have some guidance to offer. Spider-Man is a surprisingly approachable game, but beneath the surface there are a lot of systems…

Spider-Man: The Kotaku Review

Insomniac Games’ new Spider-Man adventure on the PS4 is a fun comic book brawler with some good story beats elevated by a system of acrobatics that features some of the most intuitive and exhilarating movement I’ve ever experienced in a game. It’s extremely fun, if you’re okay with a version of New York City that…

Today Nightdive Studios released the source port update for System Shock: Enhanced Edition on PC. Not to be confused with the full remake the studio is working on, the update does things like add higher resolution options and mod support for the existing version, while also fixing many of its bugs. 

Microsoft is rolling out Alexa support for Xbox One starting with the Insider program. This new set of features, called Xbox Skill, works with the Echo and other Alexa and Cortana-enabled devices, and includes being able to power the system on. It doesn’t yet include a voice command for getting more exclusives.

Far Cry 5 Players Hoped The Game Was Changing Seasons, But The Truth Is Different 

Far Cry 5 finally got a new game plus mode last week along with its third and final DLC, a set of brief new zombie missions. The new additions have inspired players, always looking for mysteries in the game’s fictional open world of Hope County, Montana, to desperately search for signs the game may be…

THQ Nordic announced today it’s acquired the rights to the 2012 fantasy RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning It was created by the now defunct 38 Studios, a game company founded by Curt Schilling and which the former Red Sox pitcher eventually ran into the ground. The game was good though.

Game Developer Brianna Wu Loses Bid For Congress, Says She Didn’t Fundraise Hard Enough

Game developer Brianna Wu lost her bid for Congress yesterday and in a series of tweets acknowledged shortcomings of her campaign that she said she’d fix for a new bid for office in 2020. “Our campaign raised almost $200,000,” she noted in Twitter shortly after polls closed. “And truth be told, I did not put…

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s new battle royale mode, Blackout, will feature 80 players per match during the beta, Treyarch told Game Informer after months of refusing to say. That’s 20 people less than PUBG and Fortnite, though the studio says the number could go higher for the full game later on.

Game Developer Brianna Wu’s Very Long Shot For Congress

When I arrive at the headquarters of Brianna Wu For Congress, a modest house near the bottom of a quiet street in Dedham, Massachusetts, the candidate is just back from her morning run. She’s practically electric while telling me and her husband about a group of construction workers she’d run past. She had thought they…

Tournament Underdogs Won This Year’s Dota 2 International

Tournament underdogs OG won this year’s Dota 2 International after a tense five game series against higher ranked rivals LGD. Victory must have felt especially sweet for the team’s skipper, Johan “N0tail” Sundstein, the only player who has been on the team since its original formation three years ago. OG has had diehard fans ever…

New Xbox All Access Program Lets You Pay Monthly For An Xbox, Game Pass, And Xbox Live

Microsoft has a new monthly financing program for the Xbox One called Xbox All Access, according to a blog post over at the Xbox website. The program allows users to commit to a two-year plan where they pay monthly for either an Xbox One S or an Xbox One X and subscriptions to both Xbox…

Almost Nobody Predicted This Weekend’s Wild Dota 2 Tournament

The International 2018 ends tomorrow. By day’s end, over $25 million will be divided up among 18 teams from around the world with the lion’s share, $11.1 million, going to first place. Whoever that turns out to be at this point, though, will be a team almost nobody saw coming. The tournament for Valve’s action…