Jason Schreier

This Is The Silliest Hearthstone Card Yet

In the digital card game Hearthstone, there’s a common card called Thoughtsteal that is a core part of many Priest decks. For three mana, this card will let you copy two cards from your opponent’s deck and add them to your hand. How… quaint. This weekend, Blizzard revealed Archbishop Benedictus (via Phil Kollar), a new…

Podcast: Persona 5 And Video Game Dialogue

Today’s episode of Kotaku Splitscreen is all about high school kids and high school squids. First Kirk and I talk about Splatoon 2 (pardon my grumpiness, which was triggered by an hour’s worth of audio issues) before getting into the news of the week (19:15) including the disaster at Pokémon Go Fest, speedrunner refresh rates,…

Battlegrounds Player Banned For Allegedly Looking At Another Player’s Stream [UPDATE]

Moderators for the popular shooter Battlegrounds banned a player this week for what they said was “stream sniping,” or watching another player’s stream to identify his location. The banned player denies any wrongdoing, which raises a fascinating question: How do you prove that someone is watching someone else’s stream? Yesterday on Reddit, a user named…

Dragon Quest XI Coming West Next Year

Dragon Quest XI comes out today in Japan, and to celebrate, creator Yuji Horii announced plans to bring it to English as Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Elusive Age. There’s no word on which platforms it’ll hit, but publisher Square Enix says it’ll be out in 2018. “The game is currently being localized into…

We’ll Be Able To Play Final Fantasy XV‘s Multiplayer Expansion Next Week

It’s not clear why Final Fantasy XV, a game about the power of male friendship and good hair, is getting a multiplayer expansion. But it’s happening, it’s called Comrades, and next week you’ll be able to get a taste of it. The Comrades DLC, which has no release date yet but will enter a “closed…

The Lord of the Rings has a complicated history with race, and the upcoming game Shadow of War will feature the series’ first black character. “I don’t think we thought twice about it when we were writing the story and when we wrote Baranor,” Monolith’s Andy Salisbury told Waypoint. “It was just kind of an…

Destiny 2‘s Patrols Are Way More Interesting Than Destiny‘s

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the upcoming shooter Destiny 2 is how developer Bungie is approaching the open world—specifically, how many interesting activities they’re sticking into patrol zones. In a video published yesterday that’s part of IGN’s monthlong Destiny 2 trickle, Bungie showed off some of the features that the sequel will bring to…

Video Game Review Scores, Ranked

1) 7/10 2) 8/10 3) 2/10 4) 5/10 5) 3/10 6/7 (Tied) – 4/10, 6/10 8) 9/10 9) 1/10 10) 10/10 This piece originally appeared 12/18/13.

Lost Sphear, the next JRPG from the makers of I Am Setsuna, will be out on January 23, 2018, publisher Square Enix said today. It’ll get a simultaneous launch on Steam, Switch, and PS4. From what I’ve seen, it looks rad

Video Game Publishers Sure Like ‘Extending’ Betas

Yesterday, Bungie announced a two-day extension for the Destiny 2 beta, continuing a long-running video game industry tradition of announcing the same surprise news again and again. It’s as sure a thing there is in video games: If there’s a beta, it will be extended. In video game parlance, a “beta” is a near-final version…

Bungie Promises Destiny 2 PvE Improvements To Grumbling Beta Players

If there’s a general consensus on the Destiny 2 beta, it’s this: Player vs. Player (PvP) makes you feel great; Player vs. Environment (PvE) makes you feel underpowered. Bungie is hearing all of those complaints. The studio says to expect changes when the game launches for real in September. Over the past three years, one…

Podcast: The Destiny 2 Beta Makes Us Want Destiny 2

It may not surprise you to hear that Kirk and I have THOUGHTS on the Destiny 2 beta, which is leaving us cautiously optimistic for the full game. Today on Kotaku Splitscreen, let’s discuss. First we talk a bit about the robots running our lives before talking about some of the other games we’ve been…

Telltale has three new game seasons in the works, the company said today. There’s a new Batman starting in August and sequels to The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead coming in 2018. Here’s hoping they’re… different.

Watch Us Play The Destiny 2 Beta [UPDATE: Done]

It’s time for a taste of Destiny 2, a video game that I am definitely not feeling insanely pressured to write really good pithy one-liners about. Come watch us play! We’ll be streaming for a while starting around 1:30pm ET, and if we’re lucky, maybe our good buddy Kirk Hamilton will come join us and…

BioWare GM Aaryn Flynn is leaving the studio, replaced by Mass Effect trilogy director Casey Hudson, who rejoins BioWare after three years at Microsoft. Hudson was the original director of Anthem, BioWare’s upcoming Destiny-like game.

The Crash Bandicoot Remasters Really Are Tougher Than The Originals

Today, the developers of the Crash Bandicoot remastered trilogy confirmed what many players had suspected: The physics are very different now. And it makes the game more difficult. Speaking through Kevin Kelly at the Activision blog, the folks at Crash Bandicoot: N.Sane Trilogy developer Vicarious Vision explained that their remastered version of the game has…

Kingdom Hearts III Director Says It’s Square’s Fault The Game Is Taking So Long

Kingdom Hearts III director Tetsuya Nomura says the extended development cycle is “out of his hands.” The third Kingdom Hearts is taking this long, he says, because of technology changes and decisions made by higher-ups at Square Enix. Speaking to my good buddy Mike Rougeau over at GameSpot, Nomura blamed a switch to the third-party…

Kingdom Hearts III Coming 2018, Has A Toy Story World

In 2012, longtime Kingdom Hearts director Tai Yasue told us his dream world would be Toy Story. Now it’s happening. Buzz Lightyear, meet Sora in Kingdom Hearts III, which finally has a release window: 2018. Of course, knowing series director Tetsuya Nomura, “2018″ could turn into 2024 pretty quickly. Kingdom Hearts III, the third mainline…

Final Fantasy XIV Besieged By DDoS Attacks

The biggest threat to Eorza isn’t the Garleans, or some other villain that I don’t want to look up because I haven’t even finished Heavensward yet. It’s Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which have been hitting Final Fantasy XIV since June and show no sign of stopping, according to the developers at Square Enix.…

Podcast: Vaan Really Sucks

“I just wish [Final Fantasy XII]’s main character weren’t this pretty boy shithead,” says Kirk on today’s big Q&A episode of Kotaku Splitscreen We start off the ep by talking Final Fantasy XII (6:20), Grand Theft Auto IV (20:12), and Red Dead Redemption (26:58) before opening up the mailbag (33:15) and answering your questions about…