Jason Schreier

Let’s Take A Trip Back To 2006

Do you remember 2006? The president of the United States was George W. Bush, a website called Twitter was about to launch for the first time, and in the video game world, everyone was excited for a revolutionary project called Spore Now that The New Yorker has opened up its archives—which are full of great…

Nine Things You Should Know About The Next Final Fantasy VII Spinoff

In June, Square Enix quietly announced a new mobile game called Final Fantasy VII G-Bike, based on the mini-game from their iconic RPG. The general reaction was a resounding “uh, what?” But the trailer was cool, as is the concept, though we haven’t heard much more about what we’ll get to do in G-Bike, or…

This Robot Is Probably Better Than You At Hearthstone

Last season in Hearthstone, Blizzard’s digital card drug, I hit rank 14 or 15—an impressive feat, I thought, considering I hadn’t bought any card packs since I started playing back in April. Here is video footage of a robot that just got to rank 4. 🙁 [via Reddit]

Fans Furious At Steam Game For DRM, Bugs, Lack Of Single-Player

Today, the developer Trendy Entertainment released Dungeon Defenders: Eternity, a revamped version of the original Dungeon Defenders that promises new improvements, including graphical tweaks and dedicated servers to prevent hacking and cheating. But fans are furious at the new release, which also adds a clunky new interface and online DRM to Dungeon Defenders, a tower…

Battlefield: Hardline Delayed To 2015

The next Battlefield game will no longer be out this fall—EA announced today that they’ve delayed Hardline to next year. Developed by Visceral Games, the studio best known for Dead Space, Battlefield: Hardline is centered around police warfare. It was originally scheduled to be out this fall for PC and current- and last-gen consoles (minus…

One Of The Best JRPGs Comes To PC Next Week

If you read Random Encounters with any regularity, you have probably seen me obsess over The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, a wonderful role-playing game that came out for the PSP back in 2011. Excellent news for anyone who somehow missed it: Trails will be out on Steam and GOG next Tuesday, July…

Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas is live! You can download the new Hearthstone add-on on PC and iOS today. The first wing will be free for the next month, so get it now.

How A Successful Kickstarter Lost Half A Million Dollars

The world of crowdfunding is full of projects that never quite deliver what they’ve promised, but how often does a half-million-dollar Kickstarter simply disappear? Yogventures, an ambitious video game project helmed by a group of YouTubers called The Yogscast, raised over $567,000 back in 2012 to make what they called “the game you’ve always wanted.”…

Hearthstone‘s New Expansion Has Some Insane Cards

Blizzard’s addictive digital card game will grow ever more life-consuming tomorrow, as Curse of Naxxramas, the game’s first single-player expansion, starts opening up to players all over the globe. As something of a teaser, Blizzard has released screenshots of all of the new cards you’ll be able to collect as the expansion goes live. You…

Final Fantasy Fan Translation Has Become A Fiasco

Last week, the creators of an unofficial English translation for the role-playing game Final Fantasy Type-0 announced that they were taking down the patch and all blog posts associated with it. “Unfortunately I’m forced to remove my posts and pages related to the popular Final Fantasy Type-0 fan translation project,” wrote the project lead, who…

‘You Want Goku? Have Goku’

(Fake Sakurai Miiverse post via Nentendo)

Weird Al’s New Video Is A Brilliant Grammatical Smackdown

Al “Weird Al” Yankovic has been making music for 38 years. His newest CD—and probably his last traditional album—drops today. Here’s Word Crimes, the wonderful video for his great send-up of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. “You should never / write words using numbers / unless you’re seven / or your name is Prince.” Hear that,…

24 Recap: It’s All Over

PREVIOUSLY ON 24: Cartoon villain Cheng Zhi gets his hands on an override device that can take over the world; U.S. president James Heller tells Jack to go find it before World War III breaks out; Cheng turns out to be working with the Russians; Jack and Mark Boudreau work together to raid the compound…

The Internet Reacts To Smash Bros.‘ Fire Emblem Party

This morning, Nintendo dropped three Smash Bros. bombshells named Lucina, Robin, and Captain Falcon. The Internet was quick to react. For starters, you must check out this new art by Kozaki Yusuke (via TinyCartridge): Of course Twitter was quick to respond to the big reveals with jokes: There’s some concern that Lucina is just a…

Someone Already Beat Zelda: Link Between Worlds In An Hour And A Half

It’s been eight months since The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds came out for 3DS, and already, speedrunners have pretty much hacked it apart. Here’s a new World Record run, set by speedrunner Anwonu. He beats the game in an hour and 31 minutes—and that’s with a few mistakes that could’ve shaved off…

Three More Characters Announced For Super Smash Bros.

Nintendo promised one new Smash Bros. character reveal this morning and instead gave us three: the returning Captain Falcon and two characters from Fire Emblem Awakening—Robin and Lucina. Chrom also made an appearance in this morning’s trailer, but sadly, he appears to be an assist trophy or Final Smash for Robin, not a playable character.…

Nintendo’s about to reveal a new character for Super Smash Bros.—you can watch the news right here, or just refresh Kotaku for breaking news as it happens.

Sources: Crytek Still Facing Issues As Homefront Director Resigns

As Crytek continues to face financial difficulties, we’re hearing of more departures at the troubled company. This week, Homefront: The Revolution game director Hasit Zala resigned from his position at Crytek UK, according to three people familiar with goings-on at the studio. Zala was also franchise director for the free-to-play shooter Warface Crytek UK development…

Here’s Our First Good Look At Final Fantasy Explorers

Square Enix’s newly-announced action-RPG might get some Monster Hunter comparisons, but really, it looks a lot more like Phantasy Star Online. It looks good, too. Via GameXplain, here’s some new footage from Final Fantasy Explorers, which is out for 3DS this fall in Japan. This segment was posted during a Japan-only Nintendo Direct this morning.…

Let’s Talk About Chrono Trigger

Welcome to the Summer of Old JRPGs, where we’re playing classic role-playing games and talking about them every week. Check out the full schedule here Alright, folks—you’ve had two weeks to spend some time with Chrono Trigger, a video game about a time-traveling frog. Did you get a chance to play it? What’d you think?…