Nathan Grayson

The Proud Underdogs Of Pokemon Go‘s Team Instinct

Team Instinct is, by most available metrics, the smallest of Pokemon Go’s three factions. They are, if nothing else, numerical underdogs. It’s a role many of its members have embraced. The reaction to Instinct’s recently revealed leader, Spark, is the latest chapter in the team’s come-from-behind saga. People are calling him a doof, a slob,…

Overwatch‘s Lucio Quietly Got A Big Buff

Game updates are weird. Sometimes developers don’t mention major changes because… well, I don’t really know. Depends on the game and the change. In Overwatch’s case, Lucio is now much better at both being a skater boy and saying see you later boy. As ProfessorGanymede demonstrates in the following video, Lucio’s skating got a big…

Necropolis, a Souls-inspired dungeon romp that I didn’t love, is getting overhauled. In the next couple weeks, the developers plan to make the game more intuitive, and in the coming months they’re gonna add more enemy and level variety and make the game more challenging. Fingers crossed that the game becomes, you know, good!

Meet The Proud Creator Of The Worst Game On Steam

On Steam, Bad Rats is infamous. It’s a janky physics puzzle game that people gift to their enemies. Earning all of its achievements is considered a masochistic badge of honor. It’s the butt of joke after joke. And yet, seven years after the release of the original, it just got a sequel I’ve always wondered:…

What Happens After An Indie Game Fails On Steam

Brigador took five years to create. It’s a mech game with a great retro-chic look, a standout soundtrack, and fully desctructible everything. The developers jokingly call it a “Kool-Aid Man simulator.” On Steam, it has a 94 percent positive rating. Despite all that, it flopped. In the wake of a small handful of reviews and…

The Wild Things That Can Happen In RimWorld, Steam’s Latest Hit

I watched a man tearfully avenge his dear old dog, freshly murdered by a dastardly raider, and then cook and eat it immediately afterward. What the fuck, RimWorld? What the fuck? RimWorld is a sci-fi colony sim with dashes of Dwarf Fortress, Firefly, and The Sims, but that description doesn’t really do it justice. It’s…

Pokemon Go Helped Me Cope With My Social Anxiety

The first time I played Pokemon Go, I was terrified. Charmander appeared on my neighbor’s garage door, and as I approached, I could hear sounds coming from inside. Music. People chatting and laughing, socializing. Signs of life. As I frantically flicked Pokeballs in a nervous outline around Charmander, images rushed through my head of what…

A Few Small Problems With Overwatch‘s Ana

Ana is now available for everyone on PC to play, and like I said in my original assessment, she’s great. After playing her for a bit today on live servers, though, I do have a few issues. Ana is a support sniper. She does the heals and the keels. My biggest issue with her doesn’t…

Overwatch’s new hero, Ana, is now live for PC players. A new patch just dropped, bringing the recent round of major PTR changes over to regular servers. For more on what’s next, check out my recent interview with Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan

RimWorld Steam Key Deal Spoiled By Fraudsters

The developer of RimWorld, Steam’s new hotness (and a Dwarf-Fortress-ish game with dashes of Firefly that I’m really digging; full impressions soon), was running a pretty cool deal for the game’s Early Access launch. Then fraudsters decided to get involved. When RimWorld first released on Steam last week, developer Tynan Sylvester made a request: “If…

Overwatch‘s Director On Competitive Mode, Controversies, And The Future

Overwatch has been out for a couple months now, and the honeymoon period is over. Competitive mode is a divisive subject, and game balance has been a rollercoaster. Meanwhile, there’s been controversy around things like hero skins and, er, porn. I quizzed game director Jeff Kaplan about all of it. Kotaku: Competitive has been out…

Track: Mr. Invisible | Artist: Thank You Scientist | Album: Stranger Heads Prevail Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

How Free DLC Helped Turn A Small Steam Game Into A Hit

Keeping DLC mostly free has worked well for big developers like CD Projekt with The Witcher 3, who can garner reams of publicity from players used to being nickled-and-dimed to death by other big-budget releases. What happens, though, when a Steam indie takes a similar approach? Thea: The Awakening is a turn-based 4x strategic survival…

How Blizzard Is Trying To Fix Overwatch‘s Toxicity Problem

When Overwatch first launched, people were remarkably non-shitty to each other as they joined hands/mecha gorilla paws and entered a world of bright color and positivity. Now that the game’s been out for a bit, however, things have taken a turn. In my experience, Overwatch is still significantly less infected by The Toxic Plague than…

Columnae is an adventure game in which your choices determine the order of its chapters. Your decisions influence the future and the past. It takes place in a world devastated by environmental catastrophe. Also I guess some kind of calamity turned everybody into silhouettes? The game is currently on Kickstarter

Some Quick Tips To Help You Be Better With Ana In Overwatch

Overwatch’s sniper mom supreme, Ana, has been on the game’s public test servers for a couple days now. That might not seem like a ton of time, but for players obsessed understanding Overwatch’s every last in and out, it’s plenty. People have been experimenting with Ana’s abilities, pushing them to their limits in hopes of…

Necropolis, Steam’s Latest Hit, Is Not Very Good

Necropolis is a cool-looking game from cool developers that looks cool sitting atop Steam’s top sellers list. It’s got the feel of a surefire hit. It’s also really not very good at all. I’ve played a few hours of Necropolis now, and I hate to say it, but I’m bored. The game’s a third-person action…

Valve Says They’ll Start Cracking Down On Gambling Sites That Use Steam

During last week’s big Counter-Strike gambling scandal (and really just in general, where gambling is concerned), Valve remained conspicuously silent. Now, though, they’ve said they’re gonna start telling gambling sites to cease operations entirely. In a statement on Steam, Valve business authority Erik Johnson wrote: “These sites have basically pieced together their operations in two-part…

The Internet Reacts To Overwatch‘s Badass New Sniper Mom

Overwatch’s new hero, Ana, is a lot of things we don’t typically see in video games. She’s a sniper who heals people, an older woman, and a mother of a lady who lobs rockets at people’s faces for a living. Overwatch fans already adore her. In Overwatch’s lore, Ana is the mother of Pharah “justice…

Overwatch‘s New Sniper Hero, Ana, Is So Much Fun To Play

Mother knows best. Overwatch’s new hero, Ana, is currently on the game’s public test servers. I’ve spent the past hour-and-a-half trying her out, and while this should hardly be taken as an in-depth appraisal, she is, so far, damn fun to play. Ana is a support sniper. The basic idea—a sniper who shoots people in…