Ethan Gach

The Week In Games: Civilization And Its Battlefields

In the immortal words of Pat Benatar, “love is a battlefield, whoawhoawhoawhoawhoawhoawhoawhoawhooooaaaa!” It’s something I’ll definitely be keeping in mind as I charge through the graveyards of nationalism on my gorgeous, Frostbite-rendered horse later this week. Come for the social commentary on a nearly century old slaughter that amounts to “war is hell” and stay…

Daigo Uses Sixth Sense To Block Sonic Booms, Wins Tournament

Daigo Umehara is a legend when it comes to fighting games. Referred to sometimes as Daigo “The Beast” Umehara, the pro Street Fighter V player didn’t exactly need to win the European Regional Finals to qualify for Capcom’s Pro Tour. He would have gotten in on points alone. But that didn’t stop him from comfortably…

Game Boy Jam Shows Everything That Made The Handheld Special

The fifth annual Game Boy Jam just wrapped up last weekend after receiving over four hundreds of entries. The rules were simple: all assets had to be created during the jam, the screen resolution had to match the original Game Boy, and each game could only include up to four colors. You can currently find…

Adam Levine and Maroon 5 reenact Pokémon Go for their “Don’t Wanna Know” music video in the hopes it might get you to still care about them. Sarah Silverman, Vince Vaughn, and other celebrities also make an appearance. Unfortunately, Kendrick Lamar’s verse from the single is nowhere to be found.

South Korea Still The Best At League Of Legends According To World Championships

There were three teams representing South Korea when the League of Legends World Championships began late last month. Now, a few weeks and many matches later, all three teams have made it through to the semifinals. SK Telecom T1, ROX Tigers, and Samsung Galaxy even did so without seeming to break a sweat, showing just…

Sunday Comics: Skin In The Game

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 12. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published October 10. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…

Technical Difficulties Spark Debate Over Rocket League Tournament Rules

Week three of the Rocket League Championship Series began with a match-up between Revival and NRG. Both teams came into the day with two wins so far this season, and no one expected either side to easily walk away with another. It was Revival, however, who came away empty handed, losing a hard fought series…

A Party Game That Lets You Remix Levels On The Fly

The 2016 IndieCade Festival is going on right now in Los Angeles, which means there’s a lot of weird, cool stuff being shown-off, including a video game console called DOBOTONE The party game uses a combination of two-button controllers and a single Game Remixer that lets one player manipulate different variables with knobs while the…

World of Warcraft’s next patch will arrive on October 25, bringing with it a new Karazhan dungeon. According to Blizzard, “Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan will take you further into the ongoing stories within Legion and bring with it new and exciting challenges.” You can find out more about Patch 7.1 in a recent Q&A

Artist Re-Imagines One Little Corner of Final Fantasy VII

Ben Nicholas is an artist and concept designer formerly with 343 Industries who worked on Halo Wars 2. He’s also a huge fan of Final Fantasy VII, which is why he decided to embark on a project to re-imagine the game’s various interiors, beginning with pharmacy nestled deep inside the Wall Market strip of the…

Pro Overwatch Player Fined For ‘Lewd Comment’ About Interviewer

Timo ‘Taimou’ Kettunen, a member of competitive Overwatch’s Team EnVyUs, was fined by the South Korean esports network OGN for making “a lewd comment” in a Twitch chat about one of its interviewers. Taimou made his sexist remarks during an interview with Thomas “Morte” Kerbusch of REUNITED after the latter was defeated 3-0 by Team…

The Weekend In Esports: Capcom Pro Tour And League of Legends Quarterfinals 

While the rest of the competitive gaming world is relatively quiet this weekend, things are heating up in League of Legends with the Worlds 2016 finals quickly approaching at the end of the month. The Capcom Pro Tour is also going strong, with a ton of action kicking off in Italy as Milan Games Week…

Why The Super Mario Bros. World Record Has Been Broken So Many Times Recently

As late as 2013, the record for finishing Super Mario Bros. was held by andrewg1990 at 4:58. In April of this year, it was 4:57.427, and held by Darbian. Last weekendthe record was tied by Kosmic at 4:57.244. He then broke it with a new time of 4:57.194. But only a few days later, Darbian…

Dota 2 Player Accuses Former Team Of Mishandling Prize Money

Earlier today, Jack ‘EternaLEnVy’ Mao published a nearly 7,500 word blog post accusing leadership within Team Secret of being, well, secretive about how it handled prize money, sponsorship deals, and a whole host of other financial matters. His remarks were archived here after the traffic they originally generated crashed his blog EternaLEnVy joined up with…

The Week In Games: Virtual Fatality

As another wave of virtual reality technology breaks along the shore of humanity this week with PSVR, it’s only a matter of time until someone becomes the first person to die as a result of virtual reality. “We made some core decisions early on that we weren’t going to kill people.” That’s what Piers Jackson…

Professional Smash Bros. Continues To Grow With Luminosity Gaming’s Latest Signing

Pro Super Smash Bros. for Wii U player Yuta “Abadango” Kawamura has signed with Luminosity Games, according to an announcement made by esports organization last night. The news comes in the middle of the The Big House 6 tournament currently going on in Michigan and after a string of other recent signings over the past…

League of Legends Pro Suspended During Worlds For Toxic Chat, Will Be Fined $2,000

Yesterday, Riot, creator of League of Legends, announced a ruling suspending pro player Hankil “Road” Yoon for one match and fining him $2,000. The ruling came after it was discovered that Road had been verbally abusing other players in the game while solo-queuing for ranked matches in order to practice. This leaves I May, Road’s…

Sunday Comics: Icicles Of Death

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 7. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published October 3 as part of the 24-hour comic event. Read more of Awkward…

Darkest Dungeon Ruins Its Endgame

I love Darkest Dungeon, which is why I decided never to finish it. It’s the only reasonable response to a game whose gruesome charm fades so drastically overtime. Its cruel world and Lovecraftian savagery rival games like Sunless Sea and Don’t Starve, but stay too long and you’ll eventually see its grizzly nightmare transformed into…

Samsung Galaxy Punishes TSM In Second Meeting At Worlds 2016

After a tough fought forty five minute match that left everything on the table, South Korea’s Samsung Galaxy came out on top against North America’s Team Solo Mid. Every time TSM looked to have accumulated a meaningful advantage, Samsung would slowly dismantle it. Every time Samsung looked like they had the game under control, TSM…