Nathan Grayson

Little Dragons Cafe is the latest game from Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada. It’s about running a cafe and raising a dragon—you know, normal small-town life stuff. Wada’s recent track record hasn’t been super hot, but this one at least looks nice. It’ll be out on PS4 and Switch this summer.

Tips For Playing Pharah From An Overwatch Pro

In Overwatch, I’m a Pharah main, but I have a problem: I’ve ridden her signature jetpack boosts all the way to my personal ceiling. So naturally, when confined in a small room with a person who, at times, has been called one of the best Pharahs out there, I had to ask: what should I…

Overwatch Pro Says He Wishes His Dramatic Reprimanding Hadn’t Been Filmed

After a hot-and-cold season with Overwatch League team the LA Valiant, DPS player Brady “Agilities” Girardi found himself in a rainy In-N-Out burger parking lot with team CEO Noah Whinston. And a camera person. The resulting official “Inside LA Valiant” video segment, in which Whinston informed Agilities that he had one last shot at making…

Track: Bloodmeat | Artist: Protest The Hero | Album: Fortress Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Overwatch Players Want To Queue For Roles, Blizzard Says It’s Complicated

Imagine, for a moment, a world in which Overwatch allowed you to select a role—tank, support, DPS, etc—and hop into a match expressly for the purpose of playing that role. No more squabbling over who does what. Peace. Quiet. Serenity. People have asked, but Blizzard hasn’t delivered. Here’s why. During an interview with Jeff Kaplan…

All The Items For Sale At The Overwatch League Gift Shop, Ranked [UPDATE]

Blizzard’s arena in Los Angeles, California is the real deal. And by that, I mean it has a gift shop, the surest marker of any worth-its-salt sporting enterprise. I have investigated the gift shop; here is a definitive ranking of the items for sale in it, from worst to best. [This post originally ran on…

Overwatch’s next in-game event is called Retribution. It’ll include a four-player PVE mission in which you play as Blackwatch, Overwatch’s rebel maverick squad, in Venice. The hero lineup will be Reaper, McCree, Moira, and Genji, but as with last year’s Uprising event, there’ll be an all-heroes mode as well. Retribution runs from April 10-30.

Far Cry 5 Players Have Already Made Some Decent Battle Royale Maps

Mere days after Far Cry 5 came out, it already had its first player-made battle royale maps in Arcade mode. A week later, there are now heaps of them. They vary in quality, but I’ve come across a few that are legitimately cool. Far Cry 5 Arcade is a map creator and multiplayer arena outside…

Blizzard Is Trying To Teach Computers To Spot Overwatch Jerks

Despite arriving too late to prevent what some might call a full-blown crisis, Overwatch’s anti-toxicity efforts seem to be bearing fruit. The next step in the battle, says game director Jeff Kaplan, might be having computers, not humans, find the bad actors. “We’ve been experimenting with machine learning,” Kaplan told me during an interview at…

D.Va Makes Life Difficult For Overwatch‘s Developers

Between her mech and her true, Dorito-munching gremlin form, D.Va is basically two characters in one. That’s led to problems behind the scenes of Overwatch. A lot of problems. During a roundtable interview at Blizzard HQ yesterday, Overwatch assistant director Aaron Keller explained that, of all 27 of the game’s current heroes, D.Va is definitely…

An Overwatch Battle Royale Mode Would Be Tricky To Make, Jeff Kaplan Says

Unless you haven’t looked out the window or spoken to Drake recently, you’re probably aware that battle royale mania is sweeping the nation. Jeff Kaplan, director of Overwatch, certainly is. He’s seen the requests for a battle royale mode in his own game, and he’d love to make it happen. It is, however, a taller…

Blizzard tried to embed a giant axe in the side of their office building. The developer commissioned a massive replica of Gorehowl, from World of Warcraft, for an ad display. Afterward, it considered plunging the axe into its building in Irvine, California as decoration, I learned while visiting for an event today. Unfortunately, the Irvine…

Vandals is a turn-based graffiti game. You sneak around cities like Tokyo and Paris while avoiding cops, dogs, and other authorities who hate it when walls look cool. The game will include works from over 40 real-life street artists and teach players how they’ve influenced culture. It’ll be out next month.

CSGO Skin Traders Dumping Their Inventories After Valve Announces New Rules

Despite Valve’s crackdown on CSGO gambling sites that use Steam in 2016, there’s still an active cosmetic skin trading (and yes, sometimes gambling) scene around the game. A recent set of trade limits from Valve, though, has skin lovers selling off their collections for fear that the scene is on its deathbed. “CSGO is over!”…

Track: (Fuck A) Silver Lining | Artist: Panic At The Disco | Album: Pray For The Wicked  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Not Tonight is a “dark comedy RPG” set in a Britain on the verge of collapse. You play as a bouncer exiled due to his heritage after Brexit talks fell apart. You can opt to join the resistance or keep your head down. There are elements of time management too, invoking Papers Please. It’ll be…

Overwatch League’s Worst Team Drops One Of Its Best Players

The Overwatch League’s losing-est team really can’t catch a break. In a move that’s invited a host of speculation, they’ve let go of one of their most talented players without offering an explanation. The Shanghai Dragons, despite their best efforts (and a brutal practice schedule), still haven’t won a single game during Overwatch League’s first…

In Open-World Fantasy Eastshade, You Don’t Kill, You Paint

To hear other villagers tell it, the man was an abusive father. He stood in the middle of his dimly-lit cottage with a jar stuck on his head, and I knew it was time to strike. He’d never see it coming. I pulled out my canvas, and I began to paint. Eastshade, coming to PC…

Eight Things You Should Not Say When You’re Losing In Overwatch

[Extremely “I’ll die a thousand times before switching off Hanzo” voice] “Somebody go tank RIGHT NOW.” Losing sucks. It’s a slow, painful descent into a bottomless pit of negativity and blame. This goes double when you’re playing a team-based game like Overwatch. You can do everything in your power to win, but it’s not enough.…

Why aren’t more black kids going pro in esports? Latoya Peterson digs into this question in a piece on The Undefeated and reaches the conclusion that the PC/console divide has also become a racial divide—one with big implications in terms of how much money players can make. “This divide isn’t sacrosanct,” she writes. “Clearly there…