Mike Fahey

Crystal Dynamics Claims Relief In Sight For Bored Avengers Players

It’s been a little over a month since Square Enix launched Marvel’s Avengers, and players are getting tired of running the same missions with the same characters ad infinitum. We need new content. New enemies. New game mechanics. Crystal Dynamics studio head Scot Amos says more content, including new mission types, a new hub, and…

The Solitaire Conspiracy Makes Card Games Look Cool AF

I’ve never been more enthralled by virtual playing cards as I have been playing The Solitaire Conspiracy, the latest game from Bithell Games, of Thomas Was Alone and Volume fame. Once the cards finish falling, it’s a clever twist on the classic solo card game with a heaping helping of video game personality Greg Miller.…

The Inevitable Funko Pop! Match-Three Mobile Game Is Here

Available as a free download today on iTunes and Google Play, Funko Pop! Blitz is a fast-paced match-three game in which players collect pop culture icons and play with their heads. So far it’s got characters from Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Kung-Fu Panda, Universal Monsters, and Shrek. Eventually, it will have all the…

Let’s All Cry Because Final Fantasy IX Is Over

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re going to talk about Final Fantasy IX’s ending theme, an audio sponge that sucks up 40 hours of emotion-packed Japanese RPG and squeezes it out all over every time you listen. Opening themes set…

20 Years Ago Digimon: The Movie Premiered, And It Wasn’t Great

Two decades ago today Saban Entertainment and Fox Kids released Digimon: The Movie in theaters across the U.S. An extremely edited mash-up of three different Japanese Digimon short films, it wound up a mess of a movie with an awesome soundtrack. Let’s all get digital. In the late ‘90s, following the success of the first…

I Can’t Wait For Yakuza: Like A Dragon‘s Goofy Minigames

With singing, racing karts, playing arcade machines, practicing batting, and vocational tests to perform, it’s amazing down-and-out Yakuza scrapper Ichiban Kasuga gets anything else done in Yakuza: Like A Dragon. The game’s latest trailer demonstrates all the ways I’ll be driven to distraction come November 10. Give me fun side activities over actual game progression…

ESRB Rates Wolfenstein, Prey, And Dishonored Collections For Xbox Series X/S

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board website is a fun place to discover unannounced game compilations for next-generation hardware, like the Wolfenstein Alt History Collection and Dishonored & Prey The Arkane Collection, a pair of game bundles recently rated for the Xbox Series X/S. It looks like Bethesda, recently purchased by Microsoft for a cool $7.5…

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered Rides In November

2010’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is one of the finest non-Burnout racers made by the speed demons at Criterion Games. It’s making a comeback next month as Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered, bringing enhanced visuals and cross-platform play to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on November 6 and Switch on November 13.…

Every Game Needs A Dedicated Pass-And-Play Mode

Every video game supports pass-and-play multiplayer. Just find a stopping point, hit pause, and hand the controller to a friend. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time’s pass-and-play is the same sort of thing, only the game’s got built-in prompts and per-player summaries at the end. I appreciate the hell out of that. Welcome to Kotaku’s…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

This weekend is for rummaging around my closets to see if I have anything I can sell only so I can afford the PlayStation 5 I pre-ordered. It’s also for starfighting in starfighters. Yeah, I’ll be playing Star Wars: Squadrons all weekend long. Might even break out my Thrustmaster flight stick. Why didn’t EA license…

Ar Tonelico‘s Music Chants Discordantly, Whispers Seductively

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re going to attempt to look past how blatantly horny the Ar Tonelico series is so we can focus on how good its music is. I wish us all luck. Created by Gust, the Japanese…

Torchlight III Goes Live October 13 With Exclusive Fairy Pets

The big news here isn’t so much that Torchlight III—once intended to be a free-to-play spin-off, now a full numbered sequel—goes live on October 13 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, with a Switch version coming later this year. It’s the exclusive-per-platform fairy pets. They’re all glittersprites, just in different colors. I’m pretty excited.…

Pokémon Sword And Shield‘s Second Expansion Arrives On October 22

We’ve mined the Isle of Armor for all it’s worth in Pokémon Sword And Shield, now it’s on to the Crown Tundra. The second half of Sword and Shield’s expansion pass arrives on October 22, giving players the opportunity to explore a mysterious frozen land, with the chance to capture every legendary Pokémon that’s appeared…

Launching on Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, PlayStation 4, and PC on November 10, Yakuza: Like a Dragon isn’t coming to PlayStation 5 until March 2, 2021. The good news is PS4 players with the digital version of the game will get a free upgrade to the PS5 version when it drops.

As 2020 Ends, So Does FarmVille

While it looks like most of the problems of the past year will follow us into the next, there is one comforting thought. Whatever 2021 brings, FarmVille is not coming with. The original super-annoying Facebook social game is closing its doors for good on December 31, 2020. Launched in 2009, FarmVille was the first big…

Hasbro’s Bringing Back Transformers: Beast Wars, Which Are The Best Wars

Rumored for what felt like years and officially revealed this weekend during the virtual Hascon event, the third stage of the Transformers’ War for Cybertron line is Kingdom, revisiting the glory of late ‘90s spin-off Beast Wars, in which robots transform into wild animals. The 1996 CG-animated series Transformers: Beast Wars and its accompanying toy…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

Remember when we could all hang out on busy city streets with our time-displaced friends in 1985 Japan? That’s what I’ll be doing this weekend. How about you? It’s time for me to finish the fight in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. I’ve got the English language patch installed, I’ve got plenty of snacks, and I…

Spyro the Dragon Was The First Game Soundtrack I Loved

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool sounds they make. Today we have a special treat: music created by one-third of The Police for an adorable purple dragon. Listen carefully, or you could Spyro out of control. Spyro the Dragon (playlist / longplay), released in 1998…

Amazon Announces Luna, Another Cloud-Based Streaming Game Service

With two new physical gaming consoles less than a month and a half away from release, Amazon announces Luna, a new paid game streaming service aimed at allowing subscribers to play PC games remotely on computers, phones, and tablets. It’s sort of like Stadia with a slightly better controller. By subscribing to Amazon Luna, now…

Games On Xbox One External Drives Will Be Instantly Playable On Xbox Series X / S

Yesterday I wrote about downloading the entire Xbox Game Pass library to one external Xbox One hard drive. According to today’s storage-centric Xbox Wire post, I’ll be able to plug that drive into an Xbox Series X / S come November and instantly access all of those games. Additional super-speedy SSD storage for the Xbox…