Ethan Gach

In Japan, The Nintendo Switch Is Streaming Games That It’s Not Powerful Enough To Run

The oddest announcement from Nintendo yesterday wasn’t on the Nintendo Direct that aired in the West. It happened on on the Japanese Nintendo Direct stream when the company revealed that. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will be playable on the console when it releases October 5—thanks to streaming. This cloud-based version of the game will only be…

Lucas Pope, the developer behind Papers, Please, says his new game, Return of the Obra Dinn, should be completed this fall. It takes place in the early 1800s and revolves around managing insurance and solving murder mysteries. There’s a brief new trailer as well. Currently, it’s being developed for PC and Mac.

But Seriously Who Is Peachette

Nintendo dropped a bombshell during its Direct yesterday that has added a fascinating and perplexing new layer to our collective understanding of the expanded Mario universe: By placing a gold crown on her head, Toadette can become Peach. Or, more specifically, Peachette. Does this mean Peach has really been a Toad all this time? And…

Nintendo Switch Is Getting NES Controllers

The Switch is getting NES controllers for the library of NES games releasing on September 18 as part of the console’s monthly online subscription service. They’ll come in packs of two, including both a right and left controller, for $60. They charge by being placed on either side of the Switch, just like the Joy-Con…

PS4 Owners Feel Trolled By The New 6.0 Update

Sony released a new firmware update for the PlayStation 4 today—a nice round number, 6.0. Such point-zero updates often mean big new changes for a platform, which is what fans were hoping for. This wishlist possibly even included name changes, because PSN users are nothing if not imaginative dreamers. Unfortunately, the update did not bring…

Beating Dead Cells Fast Is Mostly About Running Away

Behold someone who has clearly played a ton of Dead Cells kicking the game’s ass in record time and making it look easy. Motion Twin’s side-scrolling rogue-lite came out just last month, but before that it spent a year in Early Access on Steam. That’s given a lot of players plenty of time to master…

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.