Ethan Gach

Ubisoft’s Personal Gaming Assistant Is A Great Idea That’s Not Quite There Yet

Ubisoft’s personal gaming assistant, previously only available in Canada, is now out worldwide. Its name is Sam, a nod to Sam Fisher of Splinter Cell fame, although Michael Ironside doesn’t do the voice (sorry, Stephen). Embedded in the Ubisoft Club app, Sam sounds like any other AI that might reside on your phone, although instead…

Switch Monopoly AI Refuses To Lose

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being about to win a video game and then having your opponent disconnect to deny your proper victory. It’s been going on in games for so long that we even have a special name for it: rage quitting. As humans, our emotions can get the better of us,…

Far Cry 5‘s first DLC, Hours of Darkness, arrives June 5 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You play as Wendell Redler back during the Vietnam War, tasked with saving his fellow squadmates. The two others, Lost On Mars and Dead Living Zombies, are set to release in July and August respectively.

We Just Got A Good Star Trek: The Next Generation Video Game

This week Star Trek: Bridge Crew got a big expansion called The Next Generation DLC. As a diehard TNG fan, I love it. The base game did a good job simulating the duties associated with serving on a starship in the Trek universe, and The Next Generation DLC adds a few improvements. The Next Generation…

It’s Now Easier To Tell Where Gunshots Are Coming From In PUBG

PUBG gets patched pretty frequently, but Bluehole isn’t always great about detailing all of the minute changes to the game. In an effort to be more transparent, the studio laid out examples of how the most recent update changes bullet sounds to help players more easily track where enemy fire comes from. As a 100…

Nexus Mods’ new donation system letting creators at the site get paid for their mods is now live. As Kotaku reported last year, the program awards points (redeemable for cash) to users based on the number of unique downloads they get. Nexus Mods has committed $100,000 for the program’s first year.

Wizard Of Legend Lets You Play As A Magical Jedi

Wizard of Legend is straightforward: go in a room, unleash your awesome spells to kill everything in it, and then collect the spoils before moving onto the next. There’s no armor to upgrade or stats to manage, just a ton of magic-fueled carnage. It’s all very repetitive, but the game’s action feels so satisfying I…

Gwent’s May balance patch is now live. As CD Projekt Red explained last month, this will be the Witcher-based card game’s last major update until its single-play campaign, “Thronebreaker,” comes out in the fall. It changes several cards and reworks the “swap” and “create” abilities. The full patch notes are here.

One Man’s Quest To Climb To The Top Of Rust

You can do all sorts of stuff in Rust, like collect rocks, role-play as small civil societies, or more commonly just go around mugging people and stealing their clothes. And then there are the players who just want to build weird monuments just because they can. Teun Kornuit, who goes by Mr. Princess in the…

I Cry Every Time A Legendary JRPG Series Goes Mobile

Over the weekend, Square Enix held a live Star Ocean event in Japan that brought together fans of the RPG series with creators and voice actors for a day of livestreamed festivities. Fans hoping to get news on a new Star Ocean for consoles had their hopes dashed, though, as the spotlight was firmly pointed…

The Xbox Has Quietly Gotten Some Cool Features

This week, Microsoft revealed the Xbox Adaptive Controller, a new peripheral to help make gaming more accessible. It includes two large, programmable buttons and works in conjunction with a mix of joysticks and other devices like the Quadstick, a controller designed specifically for people living with different forms of paralysis. It’s just the latest in…

For Honor’s Season Six update is now live. It adds some new skins and weapons to collect as well as reworks to the Orochi and Peacekeeper classes. There’s also a new map, Beachhead, and more importantly, a new event called The Rite of Champions that runs until May 31.

I Love Complaining About Destiny 2 While Playing Destiny 2

I love the feeling of getting back into Destiny. No matter how long I’m away, picking it back up again is like slipping my hand into a well-worn baseball glove. After hundreds of hours exploring planets and killing everything in sight, things like the light double-click of the jump button to glide while sprinting as…

I Don’t Know How Many Digital Games I Own

I collect games like I do books: stacking them on shelves or in boxes, never quite finding the time to finish them but always enjoying simply having them around. Owning physical games provides a sense of history and future possibility and makes me feel like I have some sort of handle on this unwieldy hobby…

Wild Homebrew Console Looks Straight Out Of Fallout

The Ocelot is one of the most bizarre homemade consoles I’ve ever seen. It looks more like a piece of scientific equipment than something you’d play video games on. In all honesty there’s no reason for it to exist at all, but thanks to its determined builder, console modder Matthew Carr, it does. The machine,…

Things Are Finally Looking Up For The Witcher 3 On PS4 Pro After Its Latest Patch 

The Witcher 3 got a PS4 pro patch today. People can finally play in 4K with High Dynamic Range (HDR) support without having to navigate seas of vegetation magically popping in as they travel. CD Projekt Red’s attempts to update The Witcher 3 to take advantage of the PS4 Pro have been troubled. The game…

The first part of Minecraft’s Update Aquatic is out today on Xbox One, PC, mobile, and various VR platforms. Announced at last year’s MineCon, the update overhauls the game’s water sections and will release in two phases. Today’s portion adds swimming, shipwrecks and buried treasure.

Two of publisher Deep Silver’s planned 2018 releases, Metro Exodus and Shenmue III, have been delayed until 2019. In both cases, Deep Silver cited the need for more time to polish each game. It’s another reminder that nebulous, year-long release windows almost never end up being accurate.

Nintendo Hacker Is Trying To Make A Virtual Console For His Switch

Nintendo might not have plans to bring Virtual Console to Switch, but that doesn’t mean somebody else won’t. In light of new details about how Nintendo Switch Online will work and the company’s plans to bring NES games to the handheld via a subscription service, at least one hacker and longtime Nintendo fan is trying…

The Race To Stop The Best Mario Kart 64 Player From Securing Every World Record 

For five years now, Matthias Rustemeyer has been on a quest to nab the world record for each individual track in Mario Kart 64. With only one record left for him to break, other Mario Kart 64 speedrunners have risen up to try to stop him. The track in question is D.K.’s Jungle Parkway. It’s…