Ethan Gach

Enter The Gungeon Is More Forgiving On The Nintendo Switch

Enter The Gungeon released on the Nintendo Switch last week, and they go great together. Despite a few bugs and some little niggling issues with the controls (which are 100% remappable) the overall experience is great. It’s also the most approachable version of the game thanks to some balancing tweaks that haven’t yet hit the…

Kingdom: New Lands got a free DLC expansion called Skull Island today. It adds a new territory to the pixel-animated, side-scrolling medieval strategy game as well as a new win condition apparently. According to the developers it’s also “challenging AF. Yeah, that’s right, capital A F. Fuuuuuuuuuuuu.” 

The World’s Biggest Video Game Mod Site Will Start Paying Modders

Nexus Mods plans to roll out a new donation system and storefront early in 2018 according to a recent post in the site’s news section The fan site was founded in 2001 and now has over 10 million registered users. While it supports mods for hundreds of games some of the biggest include ones like…

Gwent’s midwinter update is out today on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. The Witcher 3-based card game is getting balancing tweaks as well as some new features like adaily quest system and new deck builder interface. The game’s third holiday event, Midwinter Hunt, is also live. You can find the complete patch notes here.  

LucasArts’ 1987 point-and-click adventure Maniac Mansion is now on Steam for the first time. The inspiration for things like this year’s Thimbleweed Park, Maniac Mansion is a witty puzzle game about aliens and 80s teens that’s worth checking out even if you’re not a big fan of the point-and-click genre.

The Week In Games: Life Is A Highway 

As we descend on the end of 2017 it’s time to take a moment and look back at all of the year’s great games. Fortunately, this week’s release schedule won’t distract you from doing that. Another episode of Life Is Strange arrives this week, along with the latest slew of Switch ports. Nintendo’s handheld is…

How To Fix Your Game’s Camera Without Really Trying 

Tokyo 42 came out earlier this year and while its cyberpunk ninja sprawl was both beautiful and exciting to navigate, the game’s camera didn’t always play nice. SMAC Games, the studio behind the game, recently published an update to address the issue and Paul Kilduff-Taylor, a developer on games like Frozen Synapse and Frozen Cortex,…

Track: Halfway Home | Artist: Broken Social Scene | Album: Hug of Thunder Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Mario 64 Experts Discover An Even Shorter Way To Beat Level Without Jumping 

Last year, YouTuber pannenkoek2012, someone who knows more about Super Mario 64 than most people ever will, finally found a way to collect a star on the level Watch for Rolling Rocks without fully jumping. The video blew up both because of how extraordinary and esoteric the accomplishment was and how in-depth pannenkoek’s research was.…

There’s a great article over at Eurogamer about the development of Dendy, Russia’s knockoff version of the NES. It also goes into how the console helped develop a market for gaming in the former Soviet Union and paved the way for Nintendo to begin selling its original hardware.

A Closer Look At Final Fantasy VII‘s Battle Cinematics 

Final Fantasy VII did a lot of things, but one was revolutionizing the idea of how a turn-based battle could look and feel. On the latest episode of Boundary Break, YouTuber Shesez shows what these scenes look like from the outside. The Boundary Break series has become renowned for taking control of in-game cameras and…

Sunday Comics: Over Here!

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published December 16. Read more of Nerf NOW!!  Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published December 11. Read more…

One Of Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s Biggest Problems Comes Straight From Video Games

As of writing this there’s currently an almost 40% disparity between the critics and audience’s response to the latest Star Wars on Rotten Tomatoes. For all of the high moments, satisfying pay-offs, and generally cool Star Wars stuff, a movie that runs two hours and 33 minutes is bound to fall flat in some areas.…

Track: Eggs | Artist: Mndsgn | Album: Surface Outtakes Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

A $300 Shovel Knight Statue The World Definitely Needed

You asked (right?) and First 4 Figures has happily obliged with not just one, but three 15 inch tall replicas from Shovel Knight. I’m not sure why you’d be in the market for one of these but if you are you could probably do much worse. Of all the retro pixel animated games players have…

The Weekend In Esports: Counter-Strike, Pokémon, and Sunshine 

Packed between a major Counter-Strike tournament and Pokémon regionals, there’s a lot of other great tournaments to catch up with this Saturday and Sunday. Tekken 7 might be the year’s best fighting game, and there’s no better way to get an appreciation for it than by watching top players knock the pudding out of each…

Ark: Survival Evolved Players Are Tripping Over The Latest Expansion’s New Mushrooms

Aberration, the paid DLC expansion for Ark: Survival Evolved that arrived this week on PC and consoles, includes a lot of weird, new stuff like invisible flying lizards and a Reaper Queen that can impregnate the player with baby reapers. It also has a new type of mushroom that causes beautiful, dizzying hallucinations. Like all…

Pokémon Crystal is coming to the 3DS eShop on January 26. It’s the third game in the Gold/Silver set (which both became available in September) and will be compatible with the Pokémon Bank as well as have wireless trading and battling with the other 3DS Pokémon games.

The Alliance Alive is coming to the 3DS on March 27. If you haven’t heard it’s the spiritual successor to Legend of Legacy, a 2015 JRPG by former Square Enix designers many of us wished we had liked more. The Alliance Alive will hopefully fix many of that game’s flaws.

Ghost Recon Wildlands Is Getting The Predator For A Few Weeks

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is getting invaded by Hollywood’s decades-old slayer of Aliens, Predator, starting tomorrow, December 14, and running through the beginning of January. And you thought the politics of the game were complicated already. The alien hunter will be part of a special challenge where players, either alone or as groups of…