Nathan Grayson

Nine Games We’ll Never Uninstall

In a world where each passing day seems to bring some new revelation about how rickety the support structures underlying our lives are, I’m not certain of much anymore. I can, however, say one thing with absolute conviction: I’ll die before I delete Undertale from my PC. In this age of Steam accounts and cloud…

Fortnite Streamer Goes For Glory, Faceplants, Wins Anyway

There’s a fine line between dedication and madness. Typically, people only decide which side of it you’re on after the fact, depending on whether you succeeded or ate shit. Popular streamer Shroud managed to do both. Shroud, an immensely skilled ex-CSGO pro who’s now dipping his PUBG-calloused toes into Fortnite’s waters, recently teamed up with…

Overwatch Pros Introduce Themselves By Singing Frozen In Korean

Overwatch League’s minor league, Contenders, kicked off with a bang over the weekend. Also, karaoke. Overwatch Contenders tournaments will be running for the next couple months in seven regions, one of which is Korea. As part of an official segment showcasing the competitors, two players from a team called Foxes belted a stirring rendition of…

Overwatch Pro Stomps Former Team That Benched Him

It’s been a good day for Chan-hyung “Fissure” Baek. The tank player, who spent stage one on the bench as part of London Spitfire, came roaring out the gate with his new team, LA Gladiators, and stomped London, likely giving their management some things to think about in the process. From start-to-finish of today’s Overwatch…

Track: Yellow Eyes | Artist: Between The Buried And Me | Album: Automata I Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Dark Souls Expert Beats Entire Series Without Getting Hit

Back in 2016, streamer The_Happy_Hob pulled off the world’s first no-hit run of Dark Souls, a feat that left series director Hidetaka Miyazaki in a state of disbelief. Now he’s topped himself—three times over. After 12 months of work and some crushingly painful setbacks, The_Happy_Hob has completed Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3 back to back…

How Fortnite Streamer Ninja Suddenly Took Over Twitch

When Tyler “Ninja” Blevins hit 100,000 subscribers on Twitch, he could barely form words. The streamer, sporting his trademark yellow headband, broke out into a fit of incredulous laughter before howling at the top of his lungs. But he had every right to lose his shit: after all, he’d just broken the all-time overall subscriber…

Overwatch League’s Dallas Fuel Is Not Having A Good Time Right Now

It’s been a rough past few days of a rough month of a rough first season for Dallas Fuel, the Overwatch League’s most star-studded team. Today alone, one member, Timo “Taimou” Kettunen, finally apologized for using a homophobic slur on stream, while another, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, said he might quit the team entirely. Taimou used…

Track: Meant To Be | Artist: Marmozets | Album: Knowing What You Know Now  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Modders Are Trying To Salvage Chrono Trigger On PC

I’m not sure it’s possible to make Chrono Trigger, one of the greatest RPGs of all time, actively bad, but Square Enix’s surprise PC port is definitive proof that you can make it tough to look at. Modders—bless their noble, Frog-like souls—are trying to fix it. There are a number of mod projects in the…

Overwatch‘s Nicest Players Are Giving Me Anxiety

“Hey Orisa, awesome tanking!” one of my Overwatch teammates typed into chat after we lost a match a couple months ago. “Our Mercy was great, too!” The first time I saw this happen, I was pleasantly surprised. These days, though, I find myself overcome with a different emotion when confronted with an egregiously kind Overwatch…

Top Overwatch League Teams Are Figuring Out How Specifically To Dismantle Each Other

Who’s the best team in the Overwatch League right now? It’s not really clear, and that’s a good thing. After a first stage that, at times, felt like a feeling-out process, Overwatch League teams are now showing a much better understanding of what makes each other tick. It’s not just about which team is doing…

Some Overwatch Players Think Brigitte’s Face Looks Too Much Like Mercy’s

Ever taken a long, hard look in the mirror and seen a face that doesn’t feel like your own? Overwatch’s latest hero, flail-slinging support Briggite, is having that problem in a very literal sense. For the past few days, Overwatch fans have been passing around images and videos showing how similar Brigitte’s in-game face is…

Twitch has updated its controversial set of new policies surrounding community moderation and dresscode. In a new blog bost, the company clarifies that, among other things, dresscode will be judged contextually (so, say, a swimsuit will be OK if you’re at a beach), streamers should act as “role models” for their communities who should never…

Kingdom Come Owes Its Popularity To ‘Realism’ And Conservative Politics

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has sold more than one million copies in less than a month. Its all-time concurrent player peak is higher than The Witcher 3‘s. So why is a janky role-playing game set in the Holy Roman Empire so popular? Because, on the surface, it rejects tired fantasy RPG tropes, but underneath it all,…

Fortnite Player Lands Game-Winning Sniper Shot While Surfing On A Rocket

There are lucky shots, and then there’s absolute nonsense. This preposterous Fortnite win is the latter. During a recent stream, BullNizzle found himself just one kill away from victory in a squad match, but he couldn’t quite flush out his target. So he asked a teammate to shoot a rocket at him, like you do.…

Star-Studded Tournament Can’t Transcend PUBG’s Esports Problem

The relative entertainment value of all sports can, believe it or not, be boiled down to a single question: are competitors playing to win, or are they only playing to not lose? PUBG’s tournament rule set, unfortunately, leaves a lot of room for the latter, which put a damper on a recent tournament full of…

Sixteen Steam Features You Probably Don’t Know About

Like the thousands upon thousands of games it hosts, Steam has secrets. [This post originally ran on March 30, 2015. Update 9/18/15: Added more features. Update 2 2/28/2018: Added EVEN MORE features.] Steam is more feature-rich than just about any other gaming platform on the planet. However, as it’s expanded over the years, it’s become…

Overwatch‘s Newest Hero Is Torbjorn’s Daughter

After a week of teasing, Blizzard has confirmed that Overwatch’s newest hero is Brigitte Lindholm, daughter of bearded turret lover Torbjorn. Brigitte is a support hero who uses a rocket flail to deal damage, sometimes to multiple enemies at once. Her passive ability, Inspire, heals allies over time, and she can supplement that by dropping…

The Internet Is Using Fortnite To Test Their Relationships

You’re playing Fortnite. You’ve made it to the final ten, and the pressure’s on. Suddenly, there’s a buzz from your phone. It’s your significant other. You can either continue your dogged push toward victory, or respond to keep the dwindling flames of your romance alive. Which do you choose? Our hyper-connected future society brings with…