Kirk Hamilton

The Best Scene In Star Wars: The Force Awakens

There are a lot of good scenes in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This one is my favorite. It happens a little over 30 minutes into the movie. Immediately after meeting, nervous ex-stormtrooper Finn and scavenger-with-a-destiny Rey have been thrown into a desperate battle for their lives, first fleeing a TIE Fighter attack on Rey’s…

In an email sent to customers, Oculus has cited “an unexpected component shortage” as the cause of the widespread launch-week shipping delays for their Rift VR headset. To make it up to people, they’re covering shipping costs for all orders made before yesterday. They say everyone’s order status page should be updated with a new…

Really Cool New VR App Wraps Your PC Desktop Around You

I’ve played a lot of VR games this week, but the best thing I’ve done in virtual reality wasn’t a game at all. It was just my computer desktop, blown up into immersive 3D. Yesterday the 1.0 version of Virtual Desktop launched on Steam. Created by a developer named Guy Godin, Virtual Desktop has been…

Podcast: What’s So Special About Quantum Break

On this week’s Kotaku Splitscreen, special guest Stephen Totilo and I talk about new video games, new gaming controversies, and what it’s like to have a bucket of tears strapped to your face. Topics covered: The state of our “best games for Wii U” list, the surprisingly interesting new game Quantum Break, some thoughts after…

Oculus Founder Responds To Late Shipping Complaints [Update]

The Oculus Rift’s big launch week has been dampened a bit by the fact there apparently just aren’t that many headsets to go around. A lot of people who preordered have no real idea when their headset might ship, and Oculus has been mostly silent on what’s going on. That changed somewhat yesterday, when Oculus…

Ubisoft says they’ve identified the cause of The Division’s nasty backpack bug, and while they still haven’t patched it, they say a fix is their “top priority.” In the meantime they advise you “not to attach mods on items you are not using.”

VR Game At A Glance: Playing With My Alien Friends in Farlands

Have you ever wanted to visit an alien planet and make friends with some cute alien creatures? Farlands might be your jam. It’s a neat Oculus Rift exclusive that takes a little Pokémon Snap and a little Animal Crossing and puts it all in virtual reality. Here’s a clip of me playing some of the…

​The Ten Commandments Of PC Gaming

PC gaming is pretty much the best. You get the prettiest, cheapest, most flexible versions of almost every game, along with hundreds of games that aren’t available anywhere else. But despite all that, some of the people who make video games don’t treat PC gamers all that well. This piece originally appeared 12/12/14. We’vereturned to…

A Lot Of People Don’t Really Know When Their Oculus Rift Is Coming [Updates]

After years of anticipation and hype, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset launched on Monday. It’s pretty damn cool! The only problem is that three days later, very few people appear to actually have one. You can’t find them in stores, and Oculus hasn’t done a great job of telling people who preordered when theirs…

VR Game At A Glance: The Freaky Spy Puzzle Game Esper 2

I sit down when I play VR games, so I like it when the character I’m playing is also sitting. Turns out I also like it when the character I’m playing has telekinesis. In the stylish puzzle game Esper 2, you play as a telekinetic spy who sits. Best of both worlds! Here’s a quick…

A Small Way To Spice Up The Division’s Endgame

Lately, my time with The Division has dwindled. That’s partly because I’ve had other games to play, but mostly because I’ve lost interest in the endgame grind. I still fundamentally like playing the game, so I’ve been looking for ways to spice things up. Maybe you’re in the same boat? If so, perhaps you’ve resorted…

VR Game At A Glance: The Surprisingly Good Action RPG Chronos

There’s no official VR version of Dark Souls (yet), which leaves the door open for Chronos, a very cool Oculus Rift launch game that manages to be both a VR showcase and a good game on its own. Here’s a short video of me playing through the first proper level: What it is: Chronos is…

VR Game At A Glance: Leaping And Bounding Through Lucky’s Tale

If you dropped $600 on an Oculus Rift, you’ll get a copy of Lucky’s Tale along with the headset. It’s basically Oculus’s shot at making their own Super Mario 64, and while it doesn’t quite hit those rarified heights, it is pretty cute. Here’s a video of me playing through the game’s first level: What…

VR Game At A Glance: Space Dogfighting In EVE: Valkyrie

The Oculus Rift VR headset is officially out this week, and there are a bunch of games to play on it. One of the most well-known is the outer-space dogfighting game EVE: Valkyrie, which is about as impressive a technical showpiece for virtual reality as I’ve seen. Here’s a video of me playing a round…

The Division‘s Newest Farming Exploit Is Elaborate Yet Effective

The Bullet King may be dead, but that doesn’t mean The Division players have been unable to find new farming strategies to exploit. The latest popular strategy is about as elaborate an approach as I’ve seen. In this video, MarcoStyle lays out what to do: It’s much more complicated than “go and shoot the guy…

One Wild, Occasionally Nauseating Week Of Virtual Reality With The Oculus Rift

For the past week, I’ve been strapping a headset to my face and embracing the sensory overload of modern virtual reality. I’ve watched VR short films and played around 30 VR games, all from the comfort of my own home. I’ve fought off space raiders, monsters, and VR-induced nausea. Let me tell you all about…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

It’s the weekend! The days may be longer and the weather may be warmer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t spend a bunch of time playing video games. This weekend I’ll be playing a buuuuunch of different games. I’m heading up our coverage of the Oculus Rift, so I’ll be playing a bunch of the…

An Unexpected Pocket Of Warmth And Kindness In The Division

The Division is a bleak game for the most part. There’s a nice pocket of coziness and kindness in the game, however, though it can be easy to miss. If you’re go into your base of operations and turn left, you’ll eventually find a living area that city employees and refugees have begun to spruce…

A Nasty Division Bug Is Locking Some Players Out Of The Game

A bummer of a bug has been completely locking some players out of The Division, and the developers at Ubisoft Massive say they’re working on a fix. The cause? Backpacks. The problem seems to involve players who craft high-end backpacks, only to find that those backpacks disappear from their inventory. Before long the players are…

Tom Clancy’s The Division: The Kotaku Review

Tom Clancy’s The Division is exciting enough that I don’t mind how dull it can sometimes be. It’s fun enough that I can usually live with spending most of my time shooting virtual poor people. It’s well enough made that I don’t mind how clumsy and unbalanced it often is. The Division is a shared-world,…