Ethan Gach

This is what it looks like when the Ghost Recon Wildlands open beta launches you across a ravine into a pond. It sounds like the game still has some kinks to work out, but ridiculous rag doll physics are half the fun of any open world game. The beta is available for the rest of…

Dota 2 Pro’s Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

Team Secret’s Clement “Puppey” Ivanov made a great play call only to have the enemy team do him one better. Sometimes, despite a team’s best efforts to win, the esports gods have other ideas. It was that kind of day for Team Secret during the StarLadder Season 3 group stage when, even after outplaying opponents…

Talking To The Composer Behind Night In The Woods

In development for over three and a half years, Night in the Woods came out last week and has been making waves with its unique art style and intimate take on daily life in a small, stagnant town. The game’s soundtrack, which Riley MacLeod called “intensely beautiful” in Kotaku’s review, is a big part of…

The Newly Discovered TRAPPIST-1 Star System Was Hiding In Elite: Dangerous All Along

NASA had some big news this past week. No, it wasn’t aliens. It was the next best thing: the discovery of seven new “Earth-sized exoplanets,” a few of which could be hospitable to life. Now, it turns out that Elite: Dangerous actually predicted the existence of the TRAPPIST-1 star system where they’re located. Elite: Dangerous,…

Odd Tales’ The Last Night gets a new teaser trailer and Raw Fury has signed on to publish it. The work of Tim and Adrien Soret, which originally grew out of the 2014 Cyberpunk Jam, The Last Night is inspired by the brooding sci-fi aesthetics of games like Another World and Oddworld and the pixel…

The Weekend In Esports: Upsets Rock StarLadder While Mexico Hosts Halo 5 Qualifiers

With DreamHack Las Vegas and the Dota 2 Asia Championship qualifiers behind us, all eyes are on the start of 2017’s Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Poland and the conclusion of Dota 2‘s StarLadder Season 3. Below you’ll find where and when you can catch all the weekend’s biggest events in competitive gaming. Let us…

Overwatch Mom Is Really Stoked For Her Son’s Team

It’s not easy being a competitive gamer or a college student at an elite university, and especially not both. Fortunately, Overwatch player SlurpeeThief has the support of both his teammates and an extremely enthusiastic mom to pull from. At the Tespa Collegiate Series finals for Overwatch last night in California, Berkeley put the kibosh on…

Oikospiel Is A Surreal Game About Work And Play From The Composer Of Proteus

If you’ve ever played Dyad, Proteus, or Panoramical, you’ve heard David Kanaga’s work before. He’s one of the smartest people in game design and his latest work, Oikospiel, is his most mind-scrambling creation yet. Book I of the game was released late last week alongside a trailer that left me as intrigued as I was bewildered.…

The Week In Games: Into The Night

The Nintendo Switch is less than two weeks away, but meanwhile here’s a bunch of games that aren’t Breath of the Wild Enjoy the reprieve while you can, and be sure to check out some of the lovelier treasures nestled in the list below before the onslaught of March begins next week. Tuesday, February 21…

In Guilty Gear It’s Never Over Until The Vampire Sings [Update]

Guilty Gear Xrd – Revelator – is just one of the many fighting games being showcased at this weekend’s Anime Ascension 2017, but damn it’s one of the most intense. We’ve all been there. You’re completely controlling a match, out maneuvering your opponent and constantly one-step ahead. Until you’re not. And then, somehow, in the…

Track: Jaded | Album: Reality Testing | Artist: Lone Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Just Dance‘s Best Player Is A 16-Year-Old Kid From Turkey

Just Dance has a new World Cup champion, and it’s not who anyone thought it would be. Somehow breezing past stiff competition from around the globe, high school-aged Umutcan managed the biggest upset in the game’s short competitive history. I know what you’re thinking: there’s a World Cup for Just Dance? Yes, there is. That…

Sunday Comics: Just A Dog

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 February 17. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published February 13. Read more…

Quote Is An Action RPG That Takes Aim At Books

Quote is a game about eradicating knowledge. Specifically the knowledge locked away inside books. Why bother re-writing history when you can just destroy it instead? In Quote you play as a young girl named Novella. She’s the priestess for Bliss, the god of ignorance. In practice, this means exploring different towns and dungeons in search…

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood‘s Second New Job Is Samurai

The Stormblood expansion for Square Enix’s MMORPG will introduce a new continent to the game as well as two new character classes. We knew the first was Red Mage and now we know the second: Samurai. The crimson-clad, katana-wielding warriors will be a damage-based class aimed at unloading on enemies on the front lines of…

Danganronpa V3 And A Bunch Of Other Japanese Games Get Western Release Dates

Danganronpa V3 is coming to PS4 and Vita on September 26 of this year. Upupupu! NIS America, the games North America publisher, revealed the date at a press event last night. The company also announced it will be bringing Ys VIII to the states later this year in the fall and confirmed Disgaea 5 Complete…

The Weekend In Esports: Top Counter-Strike Teams Battle It Out In Vegas

After the ELEAGUE Major 2017 broke Twitch records, the some of the best teams in CS:GO will try to upset European giants Astralis at the DreamHack Masters event in Las Vegas this weekend. Below you’ll find where and when you can catch all the weekend’s biggest events in competitive gaming. Let us know what you’ll…

Final Fantasy VII Remake‘s Director Shows Screenshots Of The Game’s First Boss Fight

This is what fighting the giant scorpion tank guarding the Sector 1 Mako Reactor at the beginning Final Fantasy VII will look like in the game’s remake. If it ever comes out that is. Tetsuya Nomura, the game’s director, revealed two new screenshots for the game at this year’s Magic Monaco 2017 event. The above…

For Honor: The Kotaku Review

I’ve chopped, smashed, and stabbed more medieval bodies in the past few days than I can count. I’ve also been cut open, impaled, and beheaded more times than I care to admit. Kill and be killed—that’s the proposition at the heart of For Honor, a game in which burly men and women swing crafted hunks…

The Week In Games: Knight Simulator

Roses are red, violets are blue, please don’t move while I try and stab you. Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and what better way to spend the night than by whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a loved one as you watch them hack their way through a medieval field of dudes…