Ethan Gach

The Weekend In Esports: Lights, Camera, Counter-Strike

After a slight lull last weekend, almost every big game you can imagine is back today with tournaments and matches playing in cities near and far. While the Counter-Strike and League of Legends headline the action with Intel Extreme Masters tournaments, Smash Bros., Dota 2, and few others return as well. Details on when and…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Mask-uerading

What can I say? Dishonored 2 has me at a bit of a loss honestly. Watching Corvo don the mask again simply didn’t have the same effect on me as it did in the first game. In fact, it felt kind of…ridiculous? I mean, after murdering that many people and more or less completely changing…

The Week In Games: Who Watches The Watch Dogs?

Only in the glorious and all-too-bizarre world of video games could something be named Watch Dogs, and then eventually get a sequel called Watch Dogs 2 I guess it’s not altogether different from calling your movie Must Love Dogs, a phrase which, out of context, makes no sense and left me feeling more than a…

The NES Classic Carries Over Classic Glitches

If you were one of the few people lucky enough to get your hands on the recently released NES Classic, than you’ve probably already been relishing its retro aesthetic and extensive library, even as you curse its short controller cords But what you might have forgotten is that, because the NES Classic simply acts as…

League Of Legends Teams Call For Changes In New Letter To Riot

A rift between the developers at Riot Games and the competitive scene around their game, League of Legends, has been growing for some time. A new letter addressed to the company and signed by 18 different professional League teams shows it’s only getting worse. According to the letter, obtained yesterday by Slingshot, several team owners…

Dark Rose Valkyrie, Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds, and Mary Skelter: Nightmares are all coming West in 2017 according to an announcement earlier this week by developer and publisher Idea Factory International. Word came alongside some nifty new trailers for each game

Shaq’s Rocket League Team Wins North American Championship

Yesterday evening, NRG eSports took a best-of-seven series 4-2 against rivals Orbit eSports to become the North American Rocket League champions. The win cemented their bid for top-place seeding at the global championship later this fall in Amsterdam, as well as earned them $13,500 for their talents at using rocket-propelled cars to smash giant inflated…

Sunday Comics: Look Carefully!

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 November 10. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published November 7. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…

Watch The King Of Catherine Tournament Going On Right Now

Atlus released Catherine over five years ago on Xbox 360 and PS3. The game was never ported to PC or the current generation of consoles, and the 360 version still isn’t backwards compatible on the Xbox One. Despite all of those obstacles, however, there’s still a thriving competitive community around the game. In fact, there’s…

New concept art shows what a successor to The Swindle might look like. The original game was about thieves trying to break into Scotland Yard. Imagining a “not-a-sequel” to that game, Dan Marshall worked with artist Gareth Davies to create some concept art for a more sci-fi take on The Swindle’s core concepts.

Fans Race To See Who Can Beat NES Classic Games The Fastest 

The Best of NES routinely gets some of the most veteran speedrunners of old NES games together to have them compete against one another and share their love of old games. At the end of October, it hosted a three day marathon, and before that, a back-to-back race through 20 different NES games. Last night,…

Kotaku Shop Contest: Sombra’s Day Job, Winners! 

In the latest Photoshop contest I asked for images of Sombra from her day job before getting the call up to join the rest of her Overwatch comrades.. The contestants apparently took this very literally. As the game’s hacker extraordinaire, she no doubt probably spent at least a few of her days refreshing Newegg while…

The Weekend In Esports: Rocket League Regional Championships Are Here

With both BlizzCon and Worlds 2016 behind us, there’s finally a free weekend to catch our collective breath. (Breathes in, breathes out, breathes in, breathes out). Ah, that was nice! With the world championships for Blizzard and Riot’s biggest games behind us, a number of others are here this week to pick up the slack,…

Dishonored, A Stealth Game For People Who Hate Stealth

I’m terrible at stealth games. I lack the patience, the focus, and the discipline to unravel the knot at the center of each level. Don’t get me wrong, I love sneaking around in the shadows. I just don’t like getting caught. And I always get caught. But while some games punish this sort of behavior,…

The Week In Games: Dishonorable Mention 

It’s time to return this week to Bethesda’s macabre steampunk heaven where the sun is only ever rising or setting and probably no one ever takes a shower. I can’t wait to embark on yet another stealth adventure with all of the best intentions in mind only to abandon my “perfect” play-through the minute something…

Winning The World Of Warcraft Arena World Championship Is Sweaty Business 

Professional competitive gamers are often derided as fake athletes. After all, who could possibly compare sitting in front of a computer screen mashing buttons on a keyboard and mouse to running several miles on a soccer pitch or ramming into the linesman opposite you play, after play? But intense competition of any kind is grueling…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Sombra’s Day Job

Sombra is finally here! After a months long, arduous ARG campaign from Blizzard teasing the latest Overwatch character’s reveal, the punk hacker will be available to play this week. She was greeted with a mixture of joy and sorrow, laughter and crying, and jokes…and more jokes So what took so long? What was Ms. Purple…

Rick Fox’s Esport Teams Can’t Stop Losing

It’s been almost a year since retired NBA player Rick Fox purchased Gravity Gaming for $1 million. Choosing to rename the organization and expand it beyond its humble origins, Echo Fox was born, a burgeoning esport enterprise that seemed, in part, to signal a new era for competitive gaming. If Fox, who claimed earlier this…

South Korea’s Ballistix are the new World Champions of Heroes of the Storm after defeating Europe’s Fnatic HotS 3-1 in a best-of-five series at BlizzCon 2016. They had beat Fnatic 2-o in a series from earlier in the tournament. The win was worth $300,000 in prize money.

Sunday Comics: Make The Frontier Great Again

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 November 5. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published October 31. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…