Ethan Gach

Blizzard Wants To Know If Google’s DeepMind AI Can Conquer StarCraft II

Although competitive StarCraft is in decline, Blizzard is still trying to breathe some new life into its decades old RTS series. During the company’s keynote presentation yesterday at BlizzCon 2016, Blizzard’s president, Michael Morhaime announced, announced new co-op missions and a new co-op commander would be added to the game on November 22. More unexpectedly,…

Blaster Master Zero will release on the Nintendo 3DS eshop in Spring 2017 according to an announcement by Inti Creates. The company acquired the license to the original game from Sunsoft and has been working on remastering and expanding it, adding new levels, enemies, etc.

The Weekend In Esports: BlizzCon 2016 And Smash Bros. Galore

BlizzCon 2016 is in full swing. So in addition to things like new Overwatch characters and the announcement of the Overwatch League, there’s also a ton of actual tournaments going on for each of Blizzard’s major competitive games. Details on when and where to catch all of the action are below. Overwatch It all comes…

This Week In The Business: “Less Poking, More Stroking”

QUOTE | “My motto is less poking, more stroking.” – Funomena CEO Robin Hunicke addressing the problem of the “power grip” configuration in VR controllers like Vive and how there needs to be a more relaxed, finesse or “precision grip.” QUOTE | “In a way, The Last of Us really got us thinking about systems.”…

The Week In Games: If These Sprites Could Talk

Owlboy is finally coming out. Like for real. This week. It’s here. The game has been in development for ten years. Originally intended to ship in 2011,development became a long and winding road of what-ifs and some-days. Life is complicated. The team wanted the game to live up to the hype. So instead of coming…

Steam Runs Out of Keys For A Game, Keeps Selling It Anyway

The Splinter Cell series for PC went on sale this weekend on Steam. Every game was discounted at 75% off, including Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the most recent game which Kirk Hamilton called in his review a sort of “greatest hits” collection borrowing the most successful parts from each previous game. There’s only one problem. Apparently…

Steins;Gate 0 will finally release in North America on November 29. The visual novel will be available next month on PS4 and Vita according to a post on the PlayStation blog by localization lead, Adam Lensenmayer. The game is a sequel to Steins;Gate. You can read our review of the imported Japanese version here

Perfect Rocky Moment Makes League Finals That Much Better

Samsung Galaxy fought great, but SK Telecom T1 was hands-down the better fighter. And after adding a third championship to their name in just four years, it’s safe to say they are the best team in League of Legends history. That outcome seemed just as inevitable before last night’s finals as after them. Of course…

Pro Overwatch Player Demolishes Opponent In Three Simple Steps

Ana is everybody’s favorite Overwatch sniper mom, and what better way to show off those motherly instincts than by telling Genji to gtfo when the ninja pops in uninvited. In yesterday’s Sweden vs. Brazil group stage match for the Overwatch World Cup, Sebastian “chipshajen” Widlund did just that against a very outmatched James “soulive” Luigi.…

Some Skyrim: Special Edition Improvements You Might Have Missed

Whenever a game gets remastered or upgraded, it’s not always immediately obvious what makes the new version so much better. While a couple side-by-side screenshot comparisons can show surface level improvements in lighting and textures, more nuanced improvements can usually take a while to pick out. That’s especially true for a game as massive as…

Sunday Comics: You’ve Got Titans

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published October 26. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published October 24. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…

The League Finals Are Playing Out On Top Of A Giant Projection

The Staples Center in L.A. is home to the Lakers, Kings, and a number of other teams. It’s also where the championship finals for League of Legends are being held this year. Even though the game plays out on a digital map stored in cyberspace, the organizers behind the event clearly felt the teams needed…

The League of Legends 2016 World Championship Finals Are Tonight, Here’s What You Need To Know

Tonight, one team, SK Telecom T1, chases its third-ever League of Legends World Championship win, while another, Samsung Galaxy, shows us if it has any tricks left up its sleeve to prevent that from happening. Matches will begin at approximately 7:30PM EDT, held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. You can watch them…

You can download a free, ad-supported version of Sonic CD from the App Store for a limited time. That’s according to a tweet from Sonic himself. A $1.99 IAP will remove ads, which apparently were showing up even for people who had already purchased the game after a recent update. This problem now seems to…

The Overwatch World Cup Is Going On Right Now

Everyone has been waiting for Blizzard to sponsor a large-scale Overwatch tournament in the mold of League of Legend’s Worlds or Dota 2’s The International. So there was some disappointment when the company explained its plans to host a World Cup-style tournament for its new competitive shooter at this year’s BlizzCon. But Blizzard has also…

Bethesda Says It’s Going To Fix Skyrim: Special Edition‘s Audio Problems

If you’ve been playing Skyrim: Special Edition on PC or Xbox One, you might have been a little surprised by what you heard in the game. According to a Reddit user by the name of LasurArkinshade, that’s because the audio files for these new versions of the game use a compressed format that makes them…

The Weekend In Esports: End Of The Worlds

This weekend is jam-packed. Not only do the 2016 League of Legends World Championships wrap-up later tonight, but with BlizzCon just around the corner, the best and brightest from around the world will be competing in everything from Overwatch to World of Warcraft: Arena, with group play in many of them taking place this weekend.…

The Week In Games: Say Hello To My Little Friend

Step aside Pokémon, there’s a new kid in town, and he’s got a big ass sword. A creature collecting game set in the Final Fantasy multiverse? Sign. Me. Up. It’s been too long since the last Kingdom Hearts and I need another ridiculous spin-off derived from someone’s post-Final Fantasy VII LiveJournal fanfic like a dog…

A Brief Look At Nintendo’s Obsession With Putting Handheld Gaming On Your TV

By all accounts, the Nintendo Switch looks like the sort of portable-console hybrid that many were speculating about ever since initial rumors about the new hardware first started to circulate. It’s weird to think of Nintendo moving forward without releasing a new, strictly stationary console. For many of us, the first time we ever played…

Battlefield 1 Players Are Encountering A Spectacular Airship Glitch

If you’ve been playing Battlefield 1 this weekend, you might have seen the game’s gorgeous zeppelins do something unexpected. A video uploaded earlier today to Imgur shows a Zeppelin from the latest Battlefield glitching after it’s hit by a plane and transforming into a glorious, flaming tornado of death. A YouTube user by the name…