Ethan Gach

Struggling Halo Team Replaces Players With Last Year’s Champions

Imagine it’s the end of the month. The new NBA season is about to start just days later, but right before that, a majority of the Los Angeles Lakers’ owners decided to cut their losses with the team and sign a new one. With a once proud legacy firmly in the rear-view mirror, they’d had…

Halo 5 Forge Maps Get Some Polish With New Update

According to 343 Industries, Halo 5‘s Big Team Battle (BTB) community refresh is now up and running The update is a collaboration with Halo 5‘s community to improve a number of different multiplayer maps made in Forge, the game’s level editor. Those of you who have been around since the early aughts will remember that…

Gorgeous New GTA V Mod Is The Work of One Person

Grand Theft Auto V, already one of the prettiest, most immersive sandbox games to-date, now has a mod that turns everything up to 11. The GTA 5 Redux mod not only improves things like lighting and contrast, but also little, slightly more morose details like how NPCs act as they’re falling to the ground after…

FIFA YouTuber Prosecuted Under New Gambling Law

NepentheZ is a popular YouTuber known for his FIFA videos featuring things like “#Top20 Fastest Players in #FIFA #17″ and “FUTGALAXY – FIFA BETS, FIFA PACKS & FIFA 16 COINS!” where he does breakdowns of player abilities, stat comparisons, and also promotes gambling sites. Now, he could become well known as being one of the…

The Weekend In Esports: Hearthstone Summer Championships

It feels like only yesterday I was sitting down to embark on Hearthstone’s latest adventure, One Night in Karazhan. Just over a month later and the scene is completely lit. Blizzard announced it would remove 45 cards from the game’s arena mode to try and restore some semblance of balance to the otherwise rigged casino,…

Playable Version Of Cancelled Warcraft Adventure Game Leaks After 18 Years

Did you know that Blizzard was working on a point-and-click game called Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans back in the late 90s, but then canceled the project after two years in development? Well the project recently surfaced again when a user by the name of Reidor located in Russia posted a download link for…

The Week In Games: Num Num Num 

According to the thermometer I totally keep by the window in my office, it’s 91 degrees outside and definitely still summer. According to the list below, however, fall is definitely upon us. I mean, not just one, but TWO Vita games are coming out this week? Then again, according to the 3DS, and the remake…

After Getting Kicked Off His Team, Counter-Strike Pro Returns To Help Them Win

In Kiev, Ninjas in Pyjamas are victorious after beating G2 Gaming in a swift, 2-0 series. The Swedes went 16-7 on the first map, Cache, followed by a much closer, 22-18 nail-biter on Overpass which found the Frenchmen unable to stop the bleeding. NiP’s commanding finish was helped in no small part due to Mikail…

Halo 5 Player Makes Map Out Of Ocarina of Time Boss

This is CaptainDireWolf’s take on Zelda. It’s called Bongo Bongo, and he made it in Halo 5 Bongo Bongo was created using Halo 5: Forge, the game’s level builder which just recently became available free on Windows 10 as well. As a result, players can now create Halo levels and then test them without ever…

Smash Player Wins Tournament, Is Awarded Bag Of Rice

Kamemushi, who came in second place at EVO 2016’s tournament for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Smash 4 for short), swept through the 25th Umebura tournament in Tokyo yesterday thanks to his lightning speed and brutal combos. His prize? One pair of headphones and a 66 pound bag of rice. After some 25 matches…

How You Can Watch Today’s Counter-Strike Finals And More

The StarSeries Season 2 finals are happening later today! What does that mean? Well for one it’s the first major in-person Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament since the mid-summer break, with teams ready to prove their roster changes were the right ones and hopefully gain some steam heading back into the second half of ESL Pro…

The Story Behind Hue‘s Brilliant Soundtrack

Two years ago, Alkis Livathinos had no idea he’d eventually be working on a small puzzle game called Hue. The game’s creators, Henry Hoffman and Dan da Rocha, who had already begun working on the project, didn’t know either. In a way though, the match had already been made. After licensing some of Livathinos’s music…

Picking Apart A Single Frame In DOOM 

Ever wonder what exactly goes into rendering each painstakingly detailed frame in a game like DOOM (2016)? Well, Adrian Courrèges, a software Engineer based in Tokyo, has you covered Taking an in-depth look at one particular screenshot, Courrèges explains step-by-step all of the different processes and considerations at play: Unlike most Windows games released these…

Destiny Player Discovers Rise of Iron Ghost Fragment

It’s September which means back to school for some, pumpkin spice lattes for others, and for a deranged few, obsessively combing through the world of Destiny in search of new items and secrets. With Rise of Iron just around the corner, Bungie is paving the way for the game’s third year with a patch that,…

Rule of Rose Is Now 10 Years Old And Still Savagely Twisted

I was young when I saw the not-at-all good 1990 adaptation of Lord of the Flies, but the scene where Piggy dies is still etched into my memory. It’s the first time I can remember seeing kids kill other kids on screen. Since then, Battle Royale and The Hunger Games have made the concept much…

Focus Wins Over Flair In This Morning’s StarCraft II Tournament

“ByuN” Hyun Woo took home just under $35,000 after winning the GSL (Global StarCraft League) Season 2 finals earlier today in South Korea. You can watch him almost completely dominate his hot-shot opponent, Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin, across five separate matches below. The technologically advanced Protoss, helmed by sOs, took on ByuN’s brutish space marine…

Steins;Gate is now on Steam. Richard Eisenbeis called the game “simply a fantastic visual novel” when he first reviewed it and I have to agree. So go send emails into the past and watch the diabolic horror that ensues, if you’re into that sort of thing. The follow-up, Steins;Gate 0, is already out in Japan

Hey Kotaku, It’s Me, Your New Weekend Editor

What keeps you up at night? The fear of failure? The fear of success? Bills to pay? That one exotic engram you can never seem to find? It’s a weird question to ask so early on a Saturday Morning, I know. I began this introduction the night before. I thought it would be easy to…