Nathan Grayson

Very good roguelike Metroidvania Dead Cells is leaving early access on August 7. It’ll launch on PC/Mac as well as Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. 

Fortnite Is Better Than Overwatch At Telling An Evolving Story

Cracks in the sky. Rifts on the ground. Fake burger-restaurant mascots in real deserts. All eyes are on Fortnite’s map right now, and with good reason: It’s the main character of a story that could go just about anywhere. Fortnite’s battle royale mode barely has a story in the traditional sense. Little is known about…

Gone Home But You’re A Car

At this point, 2013’s Gone Home has pretty much joined the canon of formative video games as a progenitor of the now-ubiquitous (if poorly-named) walking simulator genre. Gone Vroom, then, poses an interesting philosophical question: do cars walk? Gone Vroom is a brief but faithful recreation of Gone Home’s muted, mysterious opening, except you’re a…

Fortnite Burger Disappears From Map, Reappears In Real-Life Desert

Last weekend, Fortnite’s sky cracked like a giant, star-spattered egg. Now, smaller rifts are appearing all across the game’s map, and they’re sucking up everything in their path. This includes beloved landmarks like the Tomatohead mascot in Tomato Town and the Durrr Burger in Greasy Grove. Where have they gone? Well, the latter apparently ended…

Guild Wars 2 Writers Fired For Calling Out Fan On Twitter

After a Twitter spat erupted into a mob of fans going after a narrative designer for Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet, the developer said that it has fired two employees: Jessica Price and Peter Fries. On July 3, Price, a writer on Guild Wars 2, published a Twitter thread on the challenges of creating a…

Albums Are Getting Patches Now

In video games, updates are such old news that it’s weird when a game isn’t consistently tweaked for months or years on end. Other mediums, however, are only just catching on to the magic of patches—and patch notes. Earlier this week, fans of professional rapper, sadboy, and Ninja Fortnite duos partner Drake noticed that his…

Valve Shuts Down New Way Of Estimating Game Sales On Steam

In April, Valve made changes to Steam that bolstered user privacy while hammering a few nails into the coffin of unofficial sales tracking monolith Steam Spy. The service is not 100 percent dead, but developers have been searching for alternatives. Last month, they found one. Now it’s been shut down, too. Tyler Glaiel, a developer…

Call Overwatch‘s Hamster Hammond, You Cowards

Hammond is one of the better hamster names in history, miles ahead of Squeaks, Furball, or whatever else children name their pets. Despite this, the Overwatch team insists on officially calling the game’s newest hero “Wrecking Ball,” a name that sounds more befitting of a GI Joe action figure or a good (fight me) but…

Overwatch Is Getting Wackier, And That’s Great

Yesterday, Overwatch added a hamster. The hamster’s name is Hammond, or Hammy for short. In a game about cyborg ninjas, strained mother-daughter relationships, and terrorist groups with edgy-ass names like Talon, here’s Hammy the Hamster. It’s just one more example of how Overwatch is embracing its wacky side. I’m not sure if Overwatch ever fell…

Fan Calculations About Fortnite‘s Big Missile Event Were Off By A Day

Fortnite is no stranger to countdowns and theatrics, but this weekend’s mysterious (though probably missile-related) event is a little different. It’s happening just once. Fans thought they’d pinned down exactly when, but today Epic announced the actual date: one day before fans had calculated. This much is certain: Something is about to happen. In-game TVs…

Track: Over Again | Artist: Mike Shinoda | Album: Post Traumatic Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Sounds like Sombra will be the next Overwatch character to receive major changes. In a forum post, lead designer Geoff Goodman said that her stealth and translocator will soon have infinite duration, but stealthed movement speed will take a hit, and she won’t be able to cap points while invisible. Still, quite a buff!

Fortnite Player Destroys Tilted Towers In A Single Shot

Fortnite’s notorious Tilted Towers—a high-risk, high-reward landing spot once described as “tryhard central” by erstwhile Kotaku editor/genius Patricia Hernandez—have been a target of players’ grimmest imaginings ever since rumors that they’d be obliterated by a comet started swirling in March. But still they stand. So one player took matters into their own hands. A Fortnite…

Deadly Standing Is The Next Masterpiece From Genius Developer Kojumbo

Hideo Kojima? Never heard of him. Now, Hodeo Kojumbo—that guy’s a legend. This is what I would say if the only video game I’d ever played was Deadly Standing, an unbelievable but somehow extremely real mobile game that’s clearly parodying the upcoming game Death Stranding You might be thinking to yourself, “But wait, how can…

It seems like Fortnite is gonna have a missile launch in the near future. Players have been setting their clocks forward to July 1 and finding that in-game TVs display the word “launch,” among other telltale signs. If leaks are any indication, the missile could modify the map, like the comet at the start of…

Overwatch’s long-awaited Symmetra overhaul is now live. The game’s latest patch, which spent most of this month in testing on the PC PTR, also includes new social features like a looking for group tool and a slew of balance tweaks.

Getting Bored And Walking Away Is How Most Games End For Me Now

Last week, I realized I have a problem. I’d just finished browsing the Nintendo Switch’s entire eShop for a second time in search of a new game. That’s a weird thing to do, especially considering that I still haven’t finished Breath of the Wild. I should finish it, but I can’t bring myself to do…

I Regret To Announce That I Am Canceling NathanCon

When they said to me, “Nathan, trying to cram 17,000 people into a single Waffle House just outside the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex of northern Texas might not be the greatest idea,” I scoffed. “The show must go on!” I exclaimed in response. Just like DashCon, Fyre Festival, and—just last weekend—TanaCon before it. Perhaps, though, I…

Popular Twitch Streamers Temporarily Banned For Playing Copyrighted Music

Today, more than 10 popular Twitch streamers tried to kick off their streams, only to find a nasty surprise waiting for them: they’d been kicked off Twitch for 24 hours. The reason? They played copyrighted music during their streams. Streamers xQc, Sinatraa, Daequan, Alfie, Avxry, KittyPlays, Pokelawls, Sneaky, Castro1021, Nico, Symfuhny, and Solluminati have all…

Players Are Cheating The Steam Summer Sale Game, But They’re Not Sure Why

For the first time in years, the Steam summer sale has a limited-time game attached to it. It’s called Saliens, and it’s, well, not very good. That hasn’t stopped dedicated groups of Steam users from trying to exploit the gooey-green alien crap out of it, though. Saliens is, at its core, a simple tower defense…