Nathan Grayson

Russian Subway Dogs is a game about, er, Russian subway dogs. The game is a cartoony, action-based take on a real phenomenon. Stray dogs have figured out how to navigate the subway system in search of food and, perhaps on some level, a home. The game is currently on Kickstarter, and it’s set to release…

The Myst Team’s New Game Obduction Starts Strong

I still don’t really know what’s going on in Obduction, the new game from the folks behind legendary adventure game Myst, but I’m extremely intrigued. Obduction is a spiritual successor to the likes of Myst and Riven, and it shows. You can watch me play the first 15 minutes of it in the above video.…

Please, Blizzard, please, give us this as an alternate option for Reaper’s ult in Overwatch. TwistedGrimTV reimagined the bane of your existence and mine with a bit less grimdark edge and a bit more fabulous flash. It really is raining men. Hallelujah.

Ten Years Later, Owlboy Is Finally Coming Out

The first post aboutOwlboy on evil-billionaire-proof Overwatch fansite Kotaku is from the year 2008. A certain Luke Plunkett tells me there are even older ones that didn’t survive a server change that same year. It’s now 2016, and the gorgeous adventure-platformer about a boy who is an owl (or perhaps the other way around) is…

No Man’s Sky Doesn’t Need To Be ‘The Ultimate Video Game’

If you couldn’t tell by now, No Man’s Sky is not the game a lot of people wanted it to be. But what is that game, exactly? I think we’ve all, at some point or another, wished for The Ultimate Video Game. The idea of a game that caters to everyone with a deft mix…

Track: Andrew’s Song | Artist: I The Mighty | Album: Oil In Water EP Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

The Guy With The Lowest Possible Rank In Overwatch

It’s possible to hit rank zero in Overwatch’s competitive mode. Dale “Bacontotem” Brown knows. He’s done it. There’s a caveat, though: it takes a hell of a lot of work. Overwatch’s first competitive season’s skill rating system graded people on wins/losses and their personal performance. Each player received a number somewhere between 1 and 100.…

No Man’s Sky Mod Lets You Crash Into Planets

Taken on its own terms, No Man’s Sky can be a relaxing, if somewhat hollow experience. But even I, the sort of person that chin-stroke-y tree admiration simulators were built for, get totally bummed out every time an invisible barrier stops me from ploughing my ship into a planet. The Lowflight mod by modder Hytek…

What video game castle level in the year 2016 would be complete without a Dark Souls reference? Overwatch’s new Eichenwalde map contains a pretty obvious homage. Good thing Blizzard just put sitting emotes in the game, too. Here’s the full thing, clearly an overt reference to Dark Souls’ checkpoints, courtesy of alcatrazcgp: If you want…

Overwatch’s New Map Is Easy To Defend, Hard To Attack

Overwatch’s new map, Eichenwalde, is now live on the game’s public test server. It’s set in a village next to a big ol’ German castle. The map, however, is smaller than it looks. I’ve played a handful of matches on Eichenwalde now, and I’ve found it to be a briskly paced payload map that favors…

UFC 202 Isn’t Conor McGregor’s Show, It’s Nate Diaz’s

This weekend at UFC 202, Conor McGregor takes on Nate Diaz in a rematch of their first slobberknocker, which McGregor lost in dramatic fashion even though Diaz took the fight on extremely short notice. Last time, the lead-up was all McGregor. This time around, it couldn’t be any more different. This fight is a strange…

After Yesterday’s Overwatch Video, People Hate Bastion A Little Less

Yesterday, Blizzard released a cinematic video about Overwatch’s Bastion, a killer robot built for the specific purpose of annoying everyone to death. It told the heartfelt story of a budding bird/bot relationship. And also PTSD. Bastion isn’t exactly Overwatch’s most popular character. In the game’s early days, especially, he was the bane of everyone’s existence,…

Valve Forbids Coaches From Helping Out During Pro Counter-Strike Matches

As time has passed, coaches have become increasingly invaluable parts of pro Counter-Strike teams. During matches, some keep track of strategies, monitor the in-game economy, and call plays. Valve has decided this doesn’t gel with their goals for Counter-Strike In a move that took many by surprise, Valve has banned coaches from communicating with players…

Thanks To New Emotes, Overwatch Players Are Sitting Through Matches

In Overwatch, sitting and laughing are totally OP. Just like in real life. Yesterday’s new test patch didn’t just nerf Genji, make Gremlin D.Va canon, and stuff smelly socks down the throats of bad sports. It also added a ton of new sitting and laughing emotes. Here are all of them, courtesy of Seba: It’s…

New Overwatch Test Update Filters Popular Insult Into Polite Confessionals

If you’ve just wrapped up a hard-fought multiplayer match, it’s polite to say “gg” to all involved as a show of sportsmanship. Jackasses, however, have taken to corrupting it by adding “ez” to the end, essentially saying, “Beating you losers was a piece of cake.” As of yesterday’s new test server patch, Overwatch now filters…

Gremlin D.Va Is Now Overwatch Canon

Gremlin D.Va, one of Overwatch’s most beloved fan creations, is canon now thanks to a new emote on the game’s test server. She’s got her Doritos, Dew, and a custom stream overlay. She’s the hero we deserve and need right now. (Thanks, David!) Here’s a video, courtesy of Seba: This is the most overt instance…

Biggest Counter-Strike Betting Site Drops Betting

After Valve’s cease-and-desist letter, the owners of CSGO Lounge held out as long as they could. They even tried to get an official gambling license. It apparently didn’t work. They announced the pendulous pivot in an update post: “Today we are announcing that we are closing our virtual items betting functionality with immediate effect. Depositing…

Overwatch Test Patch Nerfs Genji, Buffs Mei And Mercy 

Overwatch’s competitive season two patch just hit the public test servers, and it’s a doozy. Nerfs, buffs, laughter, tears of delicious, delicious salt—it’s all here. The centerpiece of this PTR patch is, of course, competitive season two. The skill rating system has been overhauled and divided up into tiers, and sudden death is dead, unloved…

Man Finds ‘Arrow To The Knee’ Joke In Skyrim‘s Big New Mod, Reacts Appropriately

One of the most ambitious mods in Skyrim history, Enderal, is now out in English. It’s really good! But it makes reference to A Certain Inescapable Meme, A Dragon From Our Collective Past, and there’s only one thing that can be done about that. Streamer Cryaotic stumbled across The Gag We All Swore We’d Never…

Why Overwatch Players Hate Genji Now

Some relatively minor tweaks aside, Overwatch’s cyborg ninja dragon blender Genji hasn’t changed much since launch. Over the past few weeks, though, I’ve come across dozens of threads begging Blizzard to nerf Genji so hard he starts throwing rubber ducks instead of ninja stars. What happened? In hero-based games like Overwatch, there’s always a “nerf…