When I first met Genshin Impact’s mascot character, Paimon, I had serious second thoughts about playing any more of the game. This was an issue, because she first shows up approximately two minutes after the game begins. Many things about Genshin Impact, the free-to-play Breath of the Wild-inspired JRPG that’s blown the absolute heck up…
Only two episodes in, the new Kotaku Splitscreen has already gone to hell. It was bound to happen, but I never thought we’d get there so fast. This week, we journey to the heart of hell and perform a dissection, picking apart the vaunted warm place’s past and present as it pertains to games. Do…
According to Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Steam page, the long-awaited RPG’s early access version consists of “approximately 25 hours of self-contained content,” but you can tackle it pretty much any way you want. Most diehard fans take a completionist tack, trying to stretch the still-incomplete game as far as it will go. Not Cary “Professor Palmer”…
It’s not uncommon for horror games to take off on Twitch. Usually they’re flashes in the pan: The janky P.T.-alike du jour grabs eyeballs for a few days and then quickly descends back into the poorly-lit pits of obscurity. Phasmophobia is different. Sure, it’s inspired by P.T., and yes, it’s janky as all get out,…
My time with Baldur’s Gate 3 can best be summed up by what it made me do: After spending all of Saturday playing it, I re-downloaded Divinity Original Sin 2, a game I previously played for over 100 hours Original Sin 2 is one of my favorite games, so BG3 deserves serious credit for reigniting…
The past few years have made us all pretty numb to the depths of human depravity, but large swathes of people still remain shocked that anyone would dare cheat at a party game. First, it was Fall Guys. Now it’s the even less win/lose-focused Among Us Among Us is a game about players teaming up…
When you’re playing a game whose layout is randomized, you might not immediately think all that much about level design, or even assume the levels were designed in the same sense as, say, a fully linear game or a series of finely tuned multiplayer maps. And yet, in games such as Hades, developers meticulously assemble…
Mods come in all shapes and sizes. Some turn you into Shrek. Others turn your enemies into Shrek. A few add Donkey, but they’re (sadly) rarer. There are also political mods. Or at least, on top mod site Nexus Mods, there were. Now they’re banned until at least early next year. The site announced its…
Fact: No chat user in the history of Twitch has ever believed they were justly banned. But generally speaking, a streamer or moderator did, in fact, ban them for a reason. Despite this, Twitch has introduced a new feature that allows viewers to appeal their bans and get a new lease on their life of…
Hades is my game of the year. It’s also the game of the year. I don’t mean to say that Hades is objectively the best, because that’s an impossible metric (and also Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t out yet). Rather, developer Supergiant’s Greek mythology-flavored action roguelike is, improbably, the game that best characterizes the year 2020.…
Twitch is introducing a new feature that gives streamers access to rights-cleared music. “Soundtrack by Twitch” will circumvent the DMCA takedown issues that have plagued streamers for years (and especially recently) by giving them access to Twitch-curated songs that the company actually has the rights to include in broadcasts. The feature also separates music into…
If you’ve ever harbored a quiet fear that all your friends are deceiving you, well, bad news: They are. Among Us, the sci-fi deception sensation that’s sweeping space stations across the nation, has definitively proven it. Steam users are loving it, even as they realize they can’t trust anyone—especially not Cyan. To call Among Us…
Earlier this month, Twitch temporarily suspended a channel called Patriots’ Soapbox. The channel is not enormous, generally pulling 20-50 concurrent viewers over the course of its 24/7 talk show-style streams, sometimes spiking into the 100 range. But Patriots’ Soapbox is notorious: Some credit the organization behind it, which has bases of operation on many different…
In most games, roadside villages are respites—hard-earned rests for weary travelers. In Pendragon, a narrative-driven turn-based strategy game about the fall of Camelot that just came out on PC, they are a wakeup call. Unlike many other turn-based strategy games, Pendragon plays out like a roguelike; you make multiple runs through a series of randomized…
Among games in which you can pet the dog, Hades faces a unique challenge: The dog—Cerberus, the eternally fearsome hound of hell—has three heads. You might think this would make him thrice as good as the average good boy. You would be correct. However, you can only ever pet one of the heads. It is…
Remember how Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre developer Supergiant promised that its Greek mythology-themed roguelike would leave early access sometime this fall? Well, it lied. The autumnal equinox isn’t until September 22, but Hades is officially out on PC and Switch today. Staff writer Ash Parrish, service and advice writer Ari Notis, and I (senior reporter Nathan…
Today, during its PlayStation 5 showcase, Sony teased a new God of War for PlayStation 5. A vanishingly brief trailer displayed the God of War logo with runes in it. You could then hear (but not see) Kratos saying “You must prepare yourself.” After that, the words “Ragnarok is coming” appeared on the screen in…
It’s been unclear, for a few months, whether or not Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the cool-looking expansion/not-expansion to 2018’s Spider-Man would be coming to PS4. Well, it’s clear now. It’ll be joined by two other PS5 “exclusives”—a word that lost all meaning years ago and is now just a sort of incomprehensible shriek video game executives…
I remember it like it was yesterday—even though it was, in fact, several days ago. You were a sprightly mage in a hood, as are approximately 70 percent of Spellbreak players, because the game doesn’t have many cosmetics yet. I was a tall sort of rent-a-hero looking dude. You might remember me because I threw…
The internet is a hell dimension powered by unchecked data collection and advertisements. In an ideal world, ads would be kept to a minimum, allowed only on the backs of magazines people keep in their bathrooms, which nobody actually reads. But even in this fallen world, there’s a point at which ad proliferation becomes ridiculous.…
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