Gita Jackson

John Wick Hex Puts You Inside The Complex Mind Of An Assassin

In the John Wick movies, the titular character is not superhuman. He is bound, like all of his enemies, by the laws of physics. When he gets hit by a car, you see the effects of it on his body. By the end of fights, he is often limping and bleeding. When he gets stabbed,…

Goodbye From Josh and Gita

Today, Joshua Rivera and Gita Jackson are both leaving Kotaku. They sat down to talk about what they love about this place, as well as the state of games journalism and its diversity, worker solidarity and herbs. Joshua Rivera: There’s not a lot of opportunities for this.There’s a good reason for that. We’re not supposed…

I Can’t Wait To Fight Pokémon Shield‘s Nerdy New Psychic-Type Rival

The upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield DLC, The Isle of Armor, will feature two new rivals exclusive to each of the games. Sword will get Klara, who specializes in poison type Pokémon, while Shield will get Avery, a Psychic-type gym trainer. I have Shield, and while Klara is demonstrably cuter than Avery, I can’t wait…

Apocalypse Now, And Again, And Again

In video games, I have watched the world end countless times. I have also seen what comes after. Right now, I feel like I am going to die all the time. It’s not just depression: when I look at the news, I also feel like death is imminent. In the past week, the United States…

Pokémon Sword and Shield Expansions Add Over 200 Existing Pokémon

Unlike previous games in the series, Pokémon Sword and Shield won’t be getting a new version of the game a year later with an extra adjective. Instead, Pokémon Sword Expansion Pass and Shield Expansion Pass, DLC for Pokémon Sword and Shield, will allow you to play new stories in Galar using the save data—and pocket…

The Sexiness Of Control

When I guide Jesse Faden through the Federal Bureau of Control, I summon a slab of concrete the size of a small desk, hovering it effortlessly over my right shoulder as I shoot, dodge, fly. I feel the crackle of the energy she can unleash on every object around her. The weighty rock yields to…

The Sims Is Officially Getting Tiny Houses

In a move capitalizing on a longtime Sims 4 trend, the next expansion, or Stuff Pack for the game will be focused on tiny homes. I cannot, cannot wait. The Sims 4 has three tiers of expansions, and Stuff Packs are the most minimal. At best, they come with some new furniture and clothes and,…

Get A Load Of Crocky And Other Ridiculous Pokémon That Didn’t Make The Final Cut

YouTuber Dr. Lava has been documenting cut content from Nintendo games for years on his websiteand YouTube channel. More recently, his Twitter account has become a treasure trove of creatures cut from Pokémon games. Every day, Dr. Lava posts a tweet with his Lost Pokémon of the Day. He’s been doing this since at least…

Escape From Tarkov, A 2-Year-Old War Game, Is Suddenly The Biggest Thing On Twitch

Escape From Tarkov is currently the third largest category on Twitch, with over ninety thousand viewers as this article is published. This gritty shooter has a Twitch event to thank for its big glow up. Escape From Tarkov, a military shooter currently in open beta, is about as hardcore as it gets. It’s the kind…

Grand Theft Auto V Is On Game Pass Now

Grand Theft Auto V is available on Xbox Game Pass today. In other news, I kind of regret not having an Xbox now? Xbox Game pass is a subscription service that allows players to pay for monthly access to hundreds of games. Grand Theft Auto V is now part of that catalogue. For players who have…

The ‘Mother 4’ Fan Game Is Now Called Oddity, Still Looks Amazing

The Mother 4 fan game that I was hoping to play in the winter of 2014 and stopped being a Mother 4 fan game in 2017 has finally announced its new title: Oddity At the beginning of the last decade, I, an EarthBound fan starved for content, stumbled upon an incredibly professional looking fan-made sequel…

The Sims 4 Unexpectedly Captures The Best Part Of New Year’s Eve

I have a fondness for New Year’s Eve that I find hard to explain. When I drank, the appeal was absolutely the drinking, which makes sense. After experiencing my first non-drinking New Year’s Eve last December, though, I realized there’s something more to the night before the calendar rolls over than just partying. It’s about…

Video Game Fashion Disasters Of The Decade

Video game clothes are usually either very good—like every single thing Bayonetta wears, or all of Jesse Faden’s boss bitch suits in Control—or they are very, very bad. This is a celebration of the decade’s fashion blunders in video games. May they all rest in piss. Low Rise Pants In The Sims 4 Low rise…

My Boyfriend Keeps Pranking Me With The Theme From Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

There is no greater pleasure than owning one’s significant other. Here’s how Assassin’s Creed Odyssey helped me do that this holiday season. My dad, an extremely normal guy, got himself an Echo Show this Christmas. Last night as my Jewish boyfriend and I were making latkes, we started fooling around with it—mostly screaming at it…

Gita Jackson’s Top Ten Games Of 2019

I hate writing top ten lists. At the end of a year, I’m so exhausted that I can barely remember which games came out that year. I’ll start writing a list and then realize that half the games on it came out in 2012. Luckily, I played a lot of great games that stuck in…

Adam Sandler Decides He Wants To Act Today

The experience of watching Uncut Gems left me feeling like I was teetering on the edge of a cliff, not knowing when I would fall. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. Yes, I’m talking about the Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler in it. There’s an artist I like named Bruce Nauman who has an…

No Man’s Sky Now Lets Players Make Music And It’s Wild

No Man’s Sky players have been using the newly added ByteBeat machine to make their own tunes, some of which truly whip ass. Who knew what No Man’s Sky needed to get people’s creative juices flowing was a sophisticated synthesizer? The ByteBeat machine is a fun little holiday present from Hello Games to No Man’s…

One Way To Beat This Upcoming Puzzle Game Is To Wait 400 Days

In 2012, the game developer Anselm Pyta visited a cave in Germany. This tangle of caverns, lakes and grottos, called The Barbarossa Cave, is tied to a legend of a former emperor who sleeps there until he awakes to become the King of Germany once more. In the legend the king had a servant who…

The original art of Johnny Five Aces from the hilarious and failed steampunk video game venture The Zybourne Clock has sold for $5,100 Remember to keep any of the dumb bullshit you put on the internet just in case you think you’ll be able to use five grand in the future.

Life Is Strange 2 Is About Finding The Meaning Of ‘Family’

Life Is Strange 2 is a game about finding your family, as well as figuring out what “family” means. “It’s a question that I, myself, don’t have an answer to,” Dontnod lead writer Jean-Luc Cano told Kotaku over the phone. “But [the game] is showing that family is where you love to be.” In Life…