Ethan Gach

The Fight Between Switch Hackers And Nintendo Is Ramping Up [UPDATE]

People love their Switches. Some people love them so much they want to break them open and make them do things they’re not supposed to. That means Nintendo has to respond. The back-and-forth between Nintendo and hackers reached fever pitch this week. First, some background: In April, Switch hackers found a way to jailbreak Switch…

Watch The Second Day Of The 2018 Summer Games Done Quick Speedrunning Marathon

Summer Games Done Quick returns for its eighth year with speedrunning performances across a number of classics, starting with Banjoe-Tooie. SGDQ is one of my personal favorite ways to kick-off the season and is always a great distraction from the summer heat and quiet release schedule. Based out of the DoubleTree Hilton in Minneapolis, Minnesota,…

Dota 2 Team Disqualified After Allegedly Testing Positive For Macros

When Juan “Atuun” Ochoa was accused of cheating at Dota 2, he was playing one of its most complicated heroes, a grotesque-looking gnome who can clone himself, trying to help his team win the South American qualifiers for the 2018 International. Ochoa’s actions resulted in his team being disqualified, its dreams of attending August’s $14.7…

Bethesda Sues Makers Of Westworld Game, Saying It Uses Fallout Shelter‘s Code [UPDATE]

Bethesda is suing Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive over the new Westworld video game which it claims copies parts of 2015’s Fallout Shelter, according to court documents filed with the U.S. District Court for Maryland. The lawsuit was filed June 21 and seeks to have money for damages awarded and for Warner Bros. to stop…

Mutant Year Zero Marries XCOM With Talking Animals 

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is pretty long name for a game with a straightforward pitch: what if XCOM but with animorphs? While it’s based off of a pen and paper role-playing game popular in Sweden during the 80s, developer The Bearded Ladies have made it their own by injecting the inspiration’s DNA into…

Every Big Game Coming Out In Summer 2018

Summer is here. Time to chill by the pool, hang out in the park, or post up on the beach for a nice breezy afternoon. Whatever you do don’t stay home because there won’t be many games there, unless you have a Switch, which is getting a surge of ports. I kid. Mostly. There are…

Once upon a time, the makers of Minecraft worked on a card-based strategy game called Scrolls. Today, Mojang re-named it Caller’s Bane and made it free. While the new title isn’t as cool (Bethesda sued over the original) the game is still a unique mix that’s worth checking out.

Fans Are Using Every Clue To Piece Together A Map Of Fallout 76

We know that Fallout 76, the latest in Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic shooter series, will be an always-online multiplayer game set in West Virginia. Beyond that, how the game’s open world will be laid out and what exactly it will look like remains a mystery. But that hasn’t stopped fans from combing through every little detail currently…

Behold Anodyne 2: Return to Dust, the follow-up to 2013’s Anodyne, a delightful Zelda-like. Ditching the gorgeous pixel art of the original, the sequel looks a lot grimier. Coming to PC in 2019, the game will include both 3D areas reminiscent of a PS2 game and 2D segments that look more like the first game.

How The MOBA Crash Led To One Of E3’s Most Punk Looking Indie Games

At first glance, the PC game Black Future ‘88 looks like too many other indie games, with its pixel art, synth music, and neon-infused cyberpunk aesthetic. But below the familiar surface is a well-defined roguelike with a surprisingly distinct identity forged in large part by the sheer force of creative will imposed by its maker,…

Serious Sam 4 Is Aiming For 100,000 Enemies On Screen At Once But It’s Not There Yet

The developers at Croteam, the studio that makes the Serious Sam games, are looking to do the unthinkable with the fourth numbered installment in the series: render 100,000 enemies on screen at the same time. Watching a hands-off demo of the game behind closed doors at E3, I was excited to see that feat in…

Metro Exodus Leaves The Train Tunnels For A Dangerous Open Russia

Our train slowly chugged to a halt. Something was apparently blocking the road up ahead, possibly put there by a rival band of survivors. The captain sent my character out to investigate. Moments later, I was killed by a giant floating orb of static. Post-nuclear Russia is not a place to explore blindly. But explore…

All The Games Ethan Played At E3 2018

I managed to survive E3 2018, my first one in fact, and I can even remember most of the games I saw and played. There’s too many to name them all, but below are the most notable ones I got a chance to check out. I’ve written about some of them already on Kotaku, but…

The Surge 2 Doubles Down On Limb Severing 

I’ve never been a Dark Souls fanatic, but I appreciate the vibrant new mini-genre of Souls-likes it’s helped inspire. The Surge is one of those, and from what I saw at E3 2018, The Surge 2 looks like it’ll be a big improvement with some new ideas of its own. The Surge’s developer, Deck 13,…

Castle Sieges Bring A New Level Of Strategy To For Honor‘s Multiplayer

For Honor is getting a free new mode on October 16 as part of the game’s Marching Fire update, and after getting a chance to try it at E3 it’s the only For Honor mode I want play. Inspired by games like Dota 2 and League of Legends, Breach is an asymmetrical siege mode with…

Team Sonic Racing Could Be A Lot Weirder

There’s a new Sonic racing game coming, one that ostensibly brings an element of teamwork to the action. So why did I feel like I was the only one pulling any weight, during my demo? There is no “I” in team, but there is one in “Team Sonic.” In Team Sonic Racing, set to arrive…

My Friend Pedro Is Like A More Violent, 2D Max Payne

Before I knew anything else about it, I knew My Friend Pedro looked cool. I first came across the solo-developed indie game while going through the Screenshot Saturday hashtag on Twitter several years ago. Among all of the images of games in development shared by their makers was a masked man pirouetting through the air…

Minecraft: Story Mode is being turned into a 5-episode interactive Netflix series. Telltale confirmed that it will arrive on the streaming platform this fall and be similar to Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout, with occasional prompts to make choices for the characters. Telltale is also making a Stranger Things game.

Swinging Through New York City As Spidey Feels Effortless

The New York Insomniac created for Spider-Man is just about everything I’ve hoped for since the 2001 Sam Raimi movie with Tobey Maguire. The buildings are all very tall, divided between glass skyscrapers and old brick high rises. In between, there are alleyways bathed in the warm glow of a setting sun that never seems…

Forza Horizon 4‘s British Setting Makes It Feel Like Racing In A Witcher Game

The Forza Horizon games are great non-racing games. You try to drive really fast along a predetermined path, but they’re not about hugging turns or calibrating tire pressure the way the main Forza Motorsport games are. Forza Horizon 4 is no different, but it’s a little more beautiful. It’s better in some ways, as all…