Kirk Hamilton

Our Quest For The Best Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Difficulty Setting [Updated]

I’m enjoying Assassin’s Creed Odyssey so far, but I’ve been struggling to find a difficulty setting that I like. More specifically, I’m struggling to find a setting that I like equally for every activity. My boss Stephen Totilo is about as far into the game as I am, so I figured I’d check in to…

Four Weapons You Should Really Have In Destiny 2: Forsaken

Destiny 2: Forsaken has been out for almost a month. That’s been long enough to get a sense of which weapons are good, which are bad, and which you should go out of your way to track down. A year ago, I joked that the MIDA Multi-Tool was the only good gun in Destiny 2.…

Spider-Man’s Text Message Scene Is Perfect

There are a lot of good cutscenes in the PS4’s new Spider-Man game. My favorite one was all about a text message conversation. Around halfway through the main story, there’s an act break. Spider-Man has caught Mister Negative, a.k.a. Martin Li, and in the process reconnected with his sort-of-ex-girlfriend Mary Jane Watson. In this Spider-Man…

​Fallout 2‘s First Dungeon Isn’t All That Terrible

Fallout 2 released on this day 20 years ago, so we thought it would be fun to relive the opening dungeon of the game through Kirk’s eyes. This piece originally ran on June 20, 2014 I’ve wanted to play Fallout 2 for a long time. The reaction I get from people when I say I…

Podcast: Telltale, PS4 Cross-Play, And The Nintendo Fandom

We covered a lot of ground on this week’s Kotaku Splitscreen, from studio closures to cross-console play to laughably large mousepads. Jason Schreier is off for one more week, so my Kotaku colleague Maddy Myers once again filled in for him. We spent the first part of the show talking about what the Telltale games…

Bungie says it’s planning to tweak Masterwork Cores and Exotic engrams in Destiny 2: Forsaken Masterwork cores are being renamed and there will soon be “more reliable and plentiful Core sources” to make infusing a bit easier. Exotic engrams will soon be more likely to drop something you don’t have, which sure sounds familiar. Also, for the…

A Ton Of Cool New Stuff Has Unlocked in Destiny 2: Forsaken

Shit has finally gotten real in the Dreaming City, as Bungie has made good on its promises to regularly introduce cool new stuff to the latest Destiny 2 expansion, Forsaken Yesterday, the new Dreaming City location changed significantly, with Taken blights opening up all over the place and a couple of challenging missions becoming available.…

Destiny 2‘s Dreaming City looks… different today. It’s all part of the ongoing Taken Curse storyline, which just got a new chapter. Sounds like it’s nearing its conclusion. Today the game also gets the new Breakthrough PvP mode, three new Crucible maps, and, well, who knows? Possibly another secret or two. We’ll see.

Help, I’m Drowning In Destiny 2 Gear

Would you like to see a sidearm called “The Last Dance”? How about four? How about yet another set of Tangled Web Grips? Maybe a pair of Vigil of Heroes hunter boots… or six? Thanks to how Destiny 2 now handles loot, I’ve got all of those and many, many more. A lot of the…

If you read Stephen Totilo’s’s preview of Red Dead Redemption 2 but want to hear more about it, check out this bonus episode of Kotaku Splitscreen. Maddy Myers and I grill him about train robberies, horse balls, and plenty more. Splitscreen is also on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and other major podcast services.

We’re Worried The New Tomb Raider Is Getting Overshadowed

This week on Kotaku Splitscreen, we raided some tombs. Jason’s on vacation, so I was joined in his stead by my colleague Maddy Myers to talk about the PlayStation Classic, Nintendo’s new Switch Online service, the exciting Destiny 2 raid, and new safety concerns among professional streamers. Then Stephen Totilo came on to talk with…

Destiny 2: Forsaken: The Kotaku Review

Destiny 2’s new expansion, Forsaken, turns the game into something that people can play as much as they want without running out of things to do. If anything, its tantalizing new pursuits, designed to satisfy the appetites of the series’ most voracious players, may be too life-consuming. Viewed from the outside, Destiny 2 looks largely…

Praise the Queen, Destiny 2‘s Petra Venj is now standing next to the Dreaming City spawn point. She’s got a new quest on offer, and it appears the Hive have begun to take over the City thanks to the curse unleashed by the raid’s completion

Avatar: The Last Airbender Is One Of The Greatest TV Shows Of All Time

One of the best to ever do it

Bungie says it’s aware of reports that Destiny 2‘s Sleeper Simulant “feels too strong in Gambit,” and that the laser rifle might get tweaked to reduce its dominance. Bungie’s Josh Hamrick added that they’re avoiding nerfs whenever possible in favor of other methods of tweaking the game, and promised to be judicious in applying nerfs when…

Everything Announced During Today’s Nintendo Direct

Today Nintendo hosted its first Direct presentation in a while, announcing a lot of Switch and 3DS ports, teasing next year’s Animal Crossing, and announcing that Luigi’s Mansion 3 is in development for Switch. It was a fast-paced info-blast, and easy to miss the actual news among the stuff we already knew about. Let’s break…

Bungie says they’ve found a fix for the bug that cost some Destiny 2: Forsaken players their weekly powerful rewards over the weekend. The fix will go out in a new hotfix on Thursday, and players who were affected will get the gear they missed, just in time for the raid.

Tips For Winning Destiny 2’s Gambit Mode [Updated]

Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion introduces a lot of new stuff to the game, but the most significant addition is a new hybrid competitive/cooperative mode called Gambit. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, once you know what you’re doing. Note: This article originally ran on 9/04/2018. I’m bumping it up with some new tips…

Destiny 2: Forsaken Definitely Has Its Share Of Bugs

Every Destiny expansion launches with some bugs. That’s been doubly true of the new Forsaken expansion, which for all its many improvements has also introduced an unusual degree of uncertainty and frustration thanks to bugs and other technical problems. Since Forsaken’s launch last Tuesday, Bungie has been documenting known problemssmall andlarge on the company website.…

It’s Easy To Miss One Of Spider-Man’s Coolest Audio Details

In the PS4’s very good new Spider-Man game, Peter Parker spends a lot of time web-swinging through Manhattan in pursuit of truth, justice, and collectables. As he flings himself about, he frequently gets calls from friends on his radio, and he responds differently depending on whether or not he’s exerting himself. I bought Spider-Man when…