Kirk Hamilton

Destiny 2’s New Grind For 400-Level Armor Is No Joke

Destiny 2’s Solstice of Heroes event debuted last week. Until it ends on August 28, you can relive the glories of the past while earning powerful new armor… as long as you have a lot of time to spare. The Solstice is the last of Destiny 2’s timed special events before the much-anticipated Forsaken expansion…

My Obsession With CPU Cooling Is Becoming A Problem

Everyone chases some kind of low-key but elusive white whale, a casual desire or goal that remains forever out of reach. For some, it’s finding the best possible cup of coffee, or the perfect pair of jeans. For me, it’s getting my PC CPU to run below 70 degrees Celsius while under load. This goal…

Dead Cells: The Kotaku Review

In my first game of Dead Cells, I died after about four minutes. In my most recent one, I lasted almost an hour. The time difference between those two attempts says a lot about how Dead Cells evolves as you play it, and how you evolve alongside it. That first game went something like this:…

The Two No Man’s Skys

For two years, No Man’s Sky has been one of gaming’s great Rorschach tests. View it one way, and it’s a beautiful adventure through an endlessly fascinating parallel universe. Tilt your head, and it’s a janky hunk of junk built on a bed of LIES. That’s been the case since I reviewed the game in…

Five Ways Video Games Make Failure Matter

Video games are constantly trying different ways to make you feel like the game you’re playing has exciting, tangible stakes. Some are more creative about it than others. Without some sort of stakes or risk, victories in a video game feel hollow and unexciting. That can be fine for a low-stakes, low-impact game, but can…

The new 1.52.1 PC patch for No Man’s Sky fixes base reclamation, among other things. I spent uh, a while trying to scare up a base location over the weekend, so I’m glad to finally be able to continue progress in the base building quest. Hello Games says the fixes are coming to other platforms “as soon…

Destiny 2‘s Whisper of the Worm quest is active once more, and will be until Monday at 10 AM Pacific. Time to go get that thing.

Monster Hunter: World Plays Well On PC, If Your Rig Can Swing It

I’ve been replaying Capcom’s fabulous beast-em-up Monster Hunter: World on PC over the last few days, and am pleased to report that it’s running (and looking) noticeably better on PC than it did on PS4 Pro. However, getting it running smoothly required some tweaking, even on my powerful machine. Per the game’s Steam page, for…

Anatomy Of A Brutal God Of War Boss Fight

Weekends are a great time for relaxing, reading, or spending time with loved ones. Or, if you’re me, you can spend an entire weekend trying to beat the Valkyrie Queen in God of War Valkyrie fights are among the more straightforward of the many challenges in Sony Santa Monica’s fantastic Nordic murder-fest. Each one is…

A tweet from Bungie last night indicates that Destiny 2‘s gnarly Whisper of the Worm quest is now temporarily closed, and that it’ll return “next week.” I’ve asked Activision if they can clarify the precise timing. For now, safe bet is it’ll return this coming weekend. I’ll be there when it does

Destiny 2 Players Find Wild Secret Quest, With A Familiar Reward [UPDATE]

Today, intrepid Destiny players uncovered a hidden mission that appeared during an otherwise ordinary patrol event. After a few hours of widespread experimentation and failure, a group completed the challenge, unlocking a powerful weapon that’ll be familiar to anyone who played the first Destiny It all started earlier this afternoon when Redditor blurryferret posted a…

The Five Worst Enemies In Hollow Knight

There are more than 150 different enemies in thefantastic Hollow Knight. While each one is entertainingly awful, some are more awful than others. A few notes up front: I’m talking about regular enemies in this article, not bosses. Also, while I’ve reached 101% completion (out of 107% made possible by DLC), there are still four…

Hollow Knight’s final free DLC expansion, Gods and Glory, will be out on August 23. Described as the “final chapter” for the Knight, it’ll add new bosses, NPCs, music, and quests to the already enormous game. Check out the Team Cherry blog for more

Hollow Knight: The Kotaku Review

In Hollow Knight, looks can be deceiving. A sad little lamplit town may hide the entrance to a beautiful buried kingdom. A towering knight might turn out to be a sad, small thing in outsized armor. An onrushing green beast may actually be a wee creature disguised by a pile of leaves. And a simple-looking…

How To Fix Your Switch Pro Controller’s D-Pad

Over the last year, the Nintendo Switch has built up an impressive collection of 2D side-scrollers and classic arcade games. Unfortunately, those games rely heavily the D-Pad, and the D-Pad on the Switch Pro Controller can be frustratingly unreliable. Last weekend I fixed mine, and you can, too. I’ve been obsessively playing Hollow Knight over…

Tips For Playing Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is finally out for Nintendo Switch, which means a lot more people are playing it than when it hit PC last year. People like me! I’ve put almost 40 hours into the game, and I have some tips for anyone starting out. For the most part, Hollow Knight is straightforward. Explore the buried…

What Game Designers Love (And Don’t Love) About Souls Games

Put ten game designers in a room together and there’s a pretty good chance someone will bring up Dark Souls Lots of people like From Software’s Souls games, but few love them in quite the same way as the people who actually make video games. With the studio’s release of the terrific horror opus Bloodborne…

Help, I Can’t Decide Which Octopath Traveler Character To Start With

I’m in a pickle. The new demo for the upcoming JRPG Octopath Traveler lets you play the first three hours of the game a few weeks early. Instead of making three hours’ worth of progress, I’ve spent that time trying to figure out which main character to choose. Octopath Traveler is out on Nintendo Switch…

Cayde-6’s Death Has Destiny Players Fired Up

For the past week, Destiny fans have been furiously posting to message boards and making Reddit threads, venting, posting theories, and working out how best to focus their anger. They’ve been doing that for months, of course, but what’s different now is that they’re mad because the developers at Bungie want them to be. Cayde-6…

PSA: Back Up Your Dark Souls: Remastered PC Save

You know what would really suck? Playing a bunch of Dark Souls: Remastered and then losing all your progress due to a corrupted save. As you play Dark Souls, the game is constantly saving. Your save is tied to your progress and equipment, of course. It’s also tied more invisibly to your reputation in the…