Stephen Totilo

A new patch is adding two tougher difficulty levels to Ni No Kuni II, a JRPG our reviewer liked a lot but thought was too easy. Problem solved? We’ll be giving it a shot. More details on the patch here

Which games had the best E3? The data folks over at Thinknum (a site, full disclosure, run by my friend Josh Fruhlinger) have some charts showing how game companies and their games did. The biggest trailers were for Cyberpunk, Fallout and The Last Of Us; the worst backlash was to Command & Conquer.

I Don’t Know If Nintendo Won E3, But They Are Winning June

The traditional way to view game companies when it’s E3 season is to look at what they announce for the future. In that regard, Nintendo had a so-so E3. During its pre-recorded presentation, Nintendo announced relatively few games, most of them safe sequels and a line-up for the remainder of the year that’s a little…

Skull & Bones Is More Of A Pirate Version Of Destiny Than It Initially Appeared

For the last year, I’ve been confused about Ubisoft’s upcoming pirate game. Perhaps you have been as well. Skull & Bones, to be released in 2019 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, debuted at last year’s E3 as an apparent offshoot of the pirate adventures in 2013’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, except without the…

Nintendo’s Two-Switch Combo Is A Neat Digital Magic Trick

At an E3 where Nintendo and its partners largely played it safe with big Smash Bros. and Pokémon sequels, the company tucked a clever new Switch development in a trailer for a new Mario Party. Blink and you’d miss it: the sight of two Nintendo Switch screens connected into one oddly-shaped game board. On the…

Ghost Of Tsushima‘s Director On The Risks Of Making Something New

In an room in need of air conditioning in the Los Angeles Convention Center last week, game developer Nate Fox held out his left hand, palm down, paused and then slapped the top of it with his right. “Do you know—[slap]—that?” he asked. He wasn’t sure the name of the playground game he was referencing,…

With E3 now open to the public, the show has a lot more things in it for people to buy. The most conspicuous were all the carboard boxes people carried around. These boxes contained mysterious amounts of loot and were all the rage. Plenty of comparisons and contrasts to be drawn about that. 

Lego DC Super-Villains‘ Custom Characters Have A Lot Of Potential

At Lego DC Super-Villains’ E3 Demo, I spent a little too much time in the character select screen. The game is all about you creating a ne’er-do-well of your own and I thought… do they have a purple hat and black overalls in this thing? Could I really be any bad guy I could dream…

Three Small Ways Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Is Changing Things

Rise of the Tomb Raider, released in 2015, was an excellent game, so it’s no surprise that the new Shadow of the Tomb Raider being demoed at E3 looks and plays a lot like it. There were, however, three small changes that delighted me during the press demo I watched. In Shadow, Lara Croft’s got a…

Take-Two’s E3 Booth Has No Red Dead And Is Incredibly Chill

The Take-Two booth at E3 makes all other publishers look sweaty and sloppy. No insult to the others, really, because they’re just doing what game publishers do. They’ve got their games and their logos and their trailers and lines of people wanting to play stuff. Take Two’s got four walls of serenity. Compare that top…

Ubisoft’s Starlink Is Surprisingly Cool, With Or Without Star Fox

Starlink: Battle For Atlas isn’t a Star Fox game. Nintendo’s furry pilot and his famous Arwing fighter are in the Switch version and—I hope you’re sitting down—not in the Xbox One and PS4 versions. It’s not even fully a toys game, a la Skylanders or Disney Infinity, because it turns out you don’t even need…

Overcooked 2 Lets You Crash A Restaurant Into Another Restaurant

The co-op cooking game Overcooked 2 was one of the featured third-party announcements during Nintendo’s E3 presentation this year. After playing it, I understand why. While others on the Kotaku team have been praising the first Overcooked for a while, I hadn’t had the time (or, sniff, the friends) to play it. At E3, after…

We Talked To The Last Of Us Part II‘s Director About The Game’s Violence (And More Treacherous Stealth)

LOS ANGELES—Neil Druckmann, creative director on the The Last of Us Part II, was nervous going into E3. “When you’re in it, when you’re working on something for so long you lost the forest from the trees,” he told me as we chatted at Sony’s PlayStation booth here at the LA Convention Center. He’d played…

The Donkey Kong Expansion For Mario + Rabbids Is Tricky And Apparently Very Long

Donkey Kong can throw allies and enemies around, making for some interesting new tactics in the expansion to the Mario +Rabbids Switch crossover coming out near the end of the month. I played it and have footage of an early level for you all to watch. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle players are going to…

Yoshi Game For Switch Is Skipping This E3

The Yoshi side-scroller for Switch that Nintendo announced a year ago and let people play at E3 is missing in action at this year’s show, despite being originally slated for a 2018 release. After noticing its wasn’t in the company’s E3 Nintendo Direct, we inquired about its absence with Nintendo of America director of product…

Capcom’s remake of Resident Evil 2 will be out on January 25, 2019. A new trailer for the game ran during Sony’s E3 PlayStation press conference. The game is coming to PS4 for sure, and possibly to other platforms as well.

The Division 2 Feels Like An Apology To Those Burned By The Last Game

It’s clear the developers of The Division 2 have a long list of the grievances people had with first game, even though many of those problems were patched out during the game’s radical post-launch improvement. That wasn’t enough, and now they’re really pouring on the charm while making a sequel that is impressive to play…

Everything We Learned About Assassin’s Creed Odyssey After Playing It

The next Assassin’s Creed is going to turn heads. That won’t just be because it’s set in ancient Greece, nor simply because it lets you play as a man or a woman. It’s also changing the series’ combat yet again, offering more options for stealth, and even fleshing out the modern-day stuff that’s been lacking…

EA’s Impressive New PC Subscription Service Won’t Degrade Its Old One

EA’s Origin Access service is already one of the best deals in gaming, so the announcement of a more expensive version got us wondering if there was a catch. After checking with EA, it doesn’t seem there is. Announced on Saturday, the new EA Origin Access Premier service costs $15 a month or $100 for…

New Command & Conquer Mobile Game Is Getting Mauled Online

Can you tell what kind of message is being sent to Electronic Arts with the YouTube voting on the gameplay trailer for the newly-announced Command & Conquer Rivals mobile game? 244 upvotes. 7,900 downvotes. The strategy game’s “reveal” trailer isn’t doing much better. A thousand up. Nineteen thousand down. It’s about as easy to point…