Ethan Gach

It’s Been A Groundbreaking Month For Ocarina Of Time Speedrunning

The last month has seen some dramatic changes to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time speedrunning, especially in the completionist category. A handful of newly-discovered glitches and shortcuts have blown open the doors on what was previously thought possible. One of the scene’s most accomplished players has managed to combine them to achieve some…

Fortnite’s Latest Update Brings An Actual Movie To Its Drive-In Theater

I have yet to make it through the entire three minute fan movie currently playing on loop in the northeastern part of Fortnite’s map without getting shot in the back, but that’s part of the fun. The game’s V5.30 patch hit earlier today, bringing new items and modes, as well as a working projector to…

Twitch Will Stream Months-Long Pokemon Marathon Starting Next Week

Over the next several months Twitch will stream the first 932 episodes of the Pokemon anime series, as well as every movie. The livestream will begin August 27 and last into 2019, the company announced today, making it not only the longest TV-like marathon Twitch done to date but also a perfect test of the…

Reigns: Game of Thrones, a mashup of the fantasy TV show and the Tinder-like card game, is coming to mobile and PC sometime in October. While it’ll include all the big characters from the show, the game explores possible futures for them, meaning it won’t be bound by existing canon.

There Are Never Enough AA Batteries Around To Power My Xbox One Controller

Two AA batteries. That’s all I recently needed to turn my Xbox One controller on and get back to steaming dumplings in Overcooked 2. It was around 1:00 a.m. on a Saturday, though, and I didn’t have any left. I found an Energizer box crammed upside down in a coffee table drawer. It was empty.…

Warhammer Card Game Feels Like A Heavy Metal Hearthstone

Not too long ago I heard about a Warhammer 40k card game on smartphones. I decided, as part of my fool’s errand to try to wrap my head around the new explosion in Warhammer video games, to check it out. What I found was a competent game made irresistible by how unflinchingly metal it is.…

Guacamelee 2: The Kotaku Review

Guacamelee 2 feels great to play. It’s a demanding platformer with elements drawn from the beat ‘em ups of old but executed with such precision they feel modern. The way throwing a punch can be intertwined with hoping over a pit of lava transforms every obstacle into a puzzle. Despite surface similarities and homages to…

Twitch Cuts Ad-Free Viewing Benefit From Prime Membership

New Twitch Prime members will no longer have access to ad-free viewing after September 14, the streaming platform Twitch announced today. Existing subscribers will still be able to watch streams uninterrupted until their next renewal date, at which point the ads will be inescapable for anyone who doesn’t sign back up for the site’s old…

HD remasters of both Grandia I and II will be coming to Switch this winter publisher GungHo Online announced on Facebook Both are JRPGs from Sega Saturn and Dreamcast eras respectfully defined by a unique turn-based battle system that incorporates active movement around the battlefield. Grandia II is currently already available on Steam

Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night has been delayed until 2019 and its Vita version cancelled. The game was expected last year but got delayed in March of 2017, at which time the Kickstarted project similarly announced a cancellation of the Wii U version, so this all feels a bit like déjà vu.

Sony Finally Gets A Little Weird With Its New DualShock 4 Colors

Sony has announced four new color variations for the Dualshock 4, including a couple of spunky two-tone ones that look fun as hell. Berry Blue and Sunset Orange are two DualShock 4 color schemes that seem loosely inspired by weird, melted Slurpee flavors. Berry Blue is aqua and burgundy, while Sunset Orange is traffic cone…

Nintendo Announces A Bunch Of Switch Indie Game News

To kick off Gamescom, the biggest gaming convention in Europe, Nintendo announced a ton of news about indie games on Switch, including release dates, ports, and even some surprise releases for today. Slay the Spire, Children of Morta, and more are coming to Switch in the next several months, among many other announcements. A lot…

Valve Launches Steam.TV, Which Could Be A Twitch Competitor [UPDATE]

Today, Valve quietly debuted what appears to be a new video game streaming platform, which could be a direct competitor to Twitch, called Steam TV Earlier today it came to light that the company had registered the domain Steam.tv after it was first spotted by Pavel Djundik, the curator of the third-party website Steam Database.…

The Weekend In Esports: Call Of Duty World Championship And More

Stay inside, turn on the air conditioning and watch gamers pwn one another to your heart’s content over the weekend, because there are a crap ton of high profile esports tournaments going on. Call of Duty: WWII Call of Duty’s annual championship takes places this weekend in Columbus, Ohio at the Nationwide Arena. For those tired…

Court Blocks Maker Of GTA Online Cheating Programs From Selling Them

Yesterday, a federal judge for the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York issued a preliminary injunction against a man distributing cheating software for Grand Theft Auto V. In other words, he’s prohibited from making or selling any more cheat programs for the game until the court can definitively sort out whether…

The Dota 2 International’s First Day Marred By Technical Issues

The International 2018 officially got underway yesterday and, surprise, there were a number of problems with various streaming feeds going down in the middle of the Dota 2 matches. Valve sent out a tweet last night apologizing for the outages, but given how big and lucrative the event is, it still feels like the company…

Halo 5: The Kotaku Re-Review

Each new Halo game since 2007’s Halo 3 gets some praise, then fades, and then is pointed to as a sign that the Xbox’s once-unstoppable franchise is hitting a wall. Halo 5, released in 2015, deserves a different reputation. The first new Halo game on Xbox One got the accolades three years ago, then faded as…

Warhammer: Vermintide 2‘s first DLC is called Shadows Over Bogenhafen and arrives August 28 on PC and Xbox One. There’s no real information other than that it will likely feature Grandfather Nurgle’s minions. There’s still no word on when the game will come to PS4 though.

The Moment I Got Hooked On Dota 2‘s Biggest Tournament

Just before midnight on August 10, 2016, I jumped up from my seat screaming at the top of my lungs about Dota 2. I wasn’t even playing the game myself, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it on the level of the players I watched that night. In a Dota 2…

Speedrunner Finally Ties Perfect Dark World Record, Screams His Head Off

Yesterday Kevin “KevinDDR” Birrell managed to beat Perfect Dark’s Air Force One level in 52 seconds. This made him the second person in history to do so, tying speedrunner Karl “Sim Threat” Jobst’s record, set back in November 2017. From the decibels Birrell let loose upon completion during a livestream, the run was clearly more…