Heather Alexandra

Super Mario Bros. Speedruns Are One Step Closer To Best Possible Time

Super Mario Bros. speedruns are almost as perfect as humanly possible. The swift sprint through the Mushroom Kingdom has only seen incremental gains over the last few years, with runners besting times by fractions of a second. Runs of the game have become so optimized that it seemed impossible to do any better. Last night,…

Revisiting Dead Space’s Perplexing Final Boss Fight

Dead Space brims with apprehension and panic—its tight spaceship corridors provide little place to run as monsters challenge the player to adapt quickly or get torn to shreds. The game’s final boss, a giant zombie slug, throws all of that out. Dead Space’s final boss fight is a loud, bombastic battle that clashes with the…

Paintball Game Brings Out Your Inner Artist

Joy Exhibition is a freeform art game in which the player must communicate with a mute alien race by painting. They are given a blank canvas, a massive arsenal of procedurally generated paint guns, and free rein to create whatever art they can think of. Created by game developer Strangethink, Joy Exhibition is a celebration…

We’re streaming Dead Space right now on Twitch. Our plasma cutters are loaded and the last few levels are ahead of us. It’ll be easy, right?

Metroid Prime Speedrunners Spent Nine Years Figuring Out How To Skip A Boss

Metroid Prime is a massive game, but speedrunners bypass most of it with complicated glitches and special tricks. A new trick just before the final boss cuts off nearly a minute of the game and helps solve the nine-year mystery of how to skip directly to the final battle. Crater Tunnel B is one of…

I Love Deadly Premonition, But The Villains Are A Mess

We recently finished playing Deadly Premonition on Kotaku’s Twitch channel. In Deadly Premonition, FBI detective Francis York Morgan tries to find the murderer behind a series of serial killings in the town of Greenvale. Greenvale is full of colorful residents with daily schedules and humanizing side-stories. Its villains are complicated and human, but once their…

Gwent’s next game mode will be Gwent Arena. Players will have three lives to complete nine matches using crafted decks that ignore faction restrictions. You should probably start building your absurd dream team now.

The official Metal Gear Twitter account states that Metal Gear Solid V’s recent nuclear disarmament was a false alarm Servers were sent false numbers that concluded there were no nukes. Looks like you need to invade a few more FOBs, soldier!

We’re continuing our playthrough of Deadly Premonition right now on Twitch. We’ve almost cracked the case. You’ll help us solve the rest. right Zach?

BioShock Infinite Speedrun Scene Revitalized By Mutual Agreement To ‘Cheat’

Under ideal conditions, BioShock Infinite’s speedrun should be a short rush full of shotgun blasts and level skips. Instead, it’s often a dice roll to see if runners get an item that saves them time. Fed up with random chance ruining their attempts, speedrunners have agreed on a solution to remove the problem: cheat. One…

A Twitter Bot Is Searching For More Lost Games

Preserving video game history can be a tricky affair as time marches on and older games become unplayable. A game preservation organization recently restored lost artwork from forgotten games with the unlikely aid of a Twitter bot. @gifs_bot is a Twitter bot that post images from the GIFs Galore CD-ROM, a massive collection of images…

The Shadow of the Colossus Remake Isn’t Quite The Same

The Shadow of the Colossus remake brings the PS2 classic to a new group of players, boosting up the graphics and changing the controls to make things a little less clumsy. For some, those changes will improve the experience but even small changes can have unexpected consequences. Transcript: The original Shadow of the Colossus released in…

Shadow Of The Colossus Players Solve The Remake’s Big Mystery

Since Shadow of the Colossus’ remake released, intrepid treasure hunters have been locating new collectable coins throughout the world. No one knew what the coins did, but a hint within the game’s credits led players to search for a total of 79 well-hidden coins. The final coins were discovered last night, unlocking a hidden area…

We have updated our story on Billy Mitchell’s recent internet radio appearance with comment from Jeremy Young. Young removed Mitchell’s scores from a prominent fan forum after video analysis suggesting they were performed in an emulator. Young has responded to claims that he received a doctored tape from Twin Galaxies scoreholder Dwayne Richard. In an…

Twitch Gets New Policies For Sexual Content and Harassment

Twitch is taking extra steps to clean up their community and combat harassment on the platform. A revised set of community guidelines focuses on harsher penalties and cracking down on sexual content with measures including permanent bans and off-site harassment moderation. In a blog post today, Twitch revealed changes to their community guidelines that seek…

New Game Lets You Create Unholy Monster Mashups 

If you’ve ever idly wondered what it would be like if the Predator and the Terminator had a child, Monster Breederis the perfect game to scratch that highly specific itch. Monster Breeder is an in-browser critter-collecting game by musician Neil Cicierega. Cicierega is best known as the creator of Flash animation The Ultimate Showdown of…

Billy Mitchell Breaks Silence About Donkey Kong High Score Controversy

Last week, a popular Donkey Kong website announced that it would be removing former champion Billy Mitchell’s scores from its list after an analysis that it said showed his playthroughs of the game were achieved on the emulator MAME and not on original arcade hardware. Yesterday, Mitchell made what is so far his only response…

If You Like Metroid, Play Dandara

Dandara is an action game where you can’t run. Your character leaps from wall to wall across massive maps while battling bosses and collecting power ups. It takes the exploration of Metroid and adds a ton of style. Created by Brazilian developer Long Hat House, Dandara tells the story of a warrior who must save…

Shadow Of The Colossus Players Try To Solve The Mystery Of The Golden Coins

Shadow of the Colossus’ remake does more than spruce up the game’s graphics, it also adds an entirely new collectible for players to find. Players hunting down these hidden trinkets believe they are on the path to a new secret but there’s a hurdle in their path—they don’t know how many exist or what will…

Monster Hunter’s Animations Make You A Better Player

Success in Monster Hunter: World isn’t just about knowing what each monster can do, but knowing what you can do. There are 14 different weapon types in the game, and each has its own series of animations. This has always been a staple of series, and these animations force the player to stick with their…