Nathan Grayson

We Talk About The People We’ve Reported In Overwatch

On the latest episode of our semi-regular Overwatch show, Cecilia, Heather, and I discuss the game’s new hero, Orisa, debate whether or not Blizzard hurts their game by giving in to fans’ demands too much, and ponder whether new reporting tools will be enough to stop cheaters and toxic players. We also share stories about…

Months Later, OneShot Gets A New Ending

In OneShot, the main character knows about you, the player, and the two of you form a bond that’s really friggin’ sweet. It’s a very meta game, full of puzzles that sometimes escape the bounds of the game world entirely. Case in point: a puzzle that was, for months, the one thing players couldn’t figure…

Track: Catalyst | Artist: Stolas | Album: Stolas Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Overwatch Pro Sends His Team To The Finals With Huge Reinhardt Play

The second season of the big APEX pro Overwatch tournament has produced all sorts of surprises, but none have landed with as much oomph as Ryu “Kaiser” Sang Hoon’s Reinhardt. Kaiser’s team, an unheralded org called RunAway, completed their improbable march to APEX’s grand finals by hammering down APEX S1 standout LW Blue. With the…

Steam’s Latest Hit Is A More Tactical, Less Chaotic Battle Royale Game

Huddled beneath the stairwell, I could hear rain pounding outside as my heart beat its way out of my chest. It was nearly pitch-black inside the radio tower, and somebody else was in there with me. I knew I had only one chance. My trap set, all I could do was wait, trusty frying pan…

Can Learning To Make Video Games Help Rehabilitate Jailed Kids?

“What they teach you in juvenile halls or in youth offender facilities is not about education,” researcher Dana Ruggiero told me during a recent phone interview. “It’s not about making better choices. It’s literally just a rhetoric, and then they put you back into the same system you came out of.” She started Project Tech,…

Yooka-Laylee Ditches JonTron’s Voice Acting Over His ‘Personal Viewpoints’ [Update]

Recently, popular YouTuber Jon “JonTron” Jafari made some damn extreme comments about race, which set off a chain reaction of, well, reactions across the internet. The latest consequence of Jafari’s ugly remarks: upcoming N64-era platformer revival game Yooka-Laylee is removing his voice acting. “We recently became aware of comments made by voice artist JonTron after…

Overwatch‘s Anti-Abuse System Is Getting An Overhaul

In competitive games, a handful of bad eggs can stink up the whole basket. Even Overwatch, a shooter designed with teamwork and a degree of positivity in mind, can’t dunk them directly into the trash fast enough. Blizzard’s solution? Better tools. During an interview last year, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan told me that toxicity…

First Pro Player To Pick Overwatch‘s Newest Hero Immediately Gets Stomped

Overwatch’s quadrupedal African robot Orisa is so new that she’s not even allowed in the game’s official competitive mode yet. Despite that, a team decided to pick her in a pro match yesterday evening, hours after she came out. It did not go well for them. The team? Renegades. They were up against Complexity as…

Everything: The Kotaku Review

For large portions of Everything, I wasn’t sure how to feel. By the end of it, I cried. A lot. Everything is a game about everything. In this new game from the developer of experimental game/virtual pet Mountain, you can take control of every object in the game world, from ants and buildings to solar…

Overwatch‘s Newest Hero, Orisa, Is Now Live

After an especially lengthy stay on the PTR, Overwatch’s newest hero, “anchor tank” Orisa, is finally live. She’s accompanied by major changes to precious heal boy Lucio, a new tiebreaker system for competitive matches, and balance changes that span multiple heroes and maps. First announced a few weeks ago, Orisa is meant to occupy a…

Modder Brings Unreal Tournament‘s Best Map To Counter-Strike

Welcome back to 1999, a year when phones were bigger, jeans and cars were the same size (as each another), and men larger than phones or jeans or cars were prancing around in outer space. Facing Worlds is one of the best maps to come out of the Unreal Tournament series, and arguably one of…

Rhythm Doctor is a trippy rhythm game that aims to invisibly teach you complex music and rhythm theory. It’s about doctors who save patients with sweet beats, culminating in “glitchstep boss battles” against a resilient virus. It looks cool and sounds great. It’s on Steam Greenlight right now.

Blizzard Cracks Down On Overwatch Ties, Polarizes Fans

Draws are the bane of competitive Overwatch players’ existence. All that work, and instead of the sweet taste of victory or the bitter agony of defeat, you get the sour milk breath of anticlimax. Late last week, Blizzard took the first steps to fix that. Some players, though, think they might have gone too far.…

EVE Player Gets Revenge On Griefer Four Years Later

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. In EVE Online player Darvo Thellere’s case, it was cold as the uncaring vacuum of space. Darvo’s story, which I verified via EVE war records as well as lengthy chat logs Darvo provided me, began back in 2013. He was just taking his first steps in…

Steam Group Helps Players Prevent Carpal Tunnel

PC games can confer all sorts of positive benefits: improved spatial reasoning, a sense of community, the best video games (don’t @ me), etc. They can also destroy your damn wrists. Carpal Tunnel Prevention is a handy Steam group dedicated to keeping your precious digits in working order. They send out regular alerts reminding people…

Little-Known Overwatch Team Is Tearing Up The Apex Tournament With Bizarre Strategies

Before the latest season of the big APEX Overwatch tournament series started, few knew the name Meta Athena. Now people are watching their matches with balled fists and clenched jaws, wondering what sort of diabolical trick they’ll come up with next. Meta Athena is a pro Overwatch team made up mostly of high-school aged Korean…

Counter-Strike Players Are Skeptical Of The Game’s New Map

Yesterday, Counter-Strike received its first new Valve-developed map in quite some time. It’s called Canals, and it’s based on a (conspicuously unnamed) “historic Italian city” that is definitely Venice. The initial reaction, however, has not exactly been love at first sight. Canals, you see, is not a typical CSGO map. It’s got multiple weird routes…

Track: Defeatist | Artist: Eisley | Album: I’m Only Dreaming Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Tale of Ronin is a slick-looking samurai RPG. Described as “a game about the human side of the samurai,” it’ll allow you to explore a dynamic world and make your own story via dialogue and turn-based combat. Even if you die, your world persists, and you rejoin it as a different samurai.