Stephen Totilo

Nintendo’s New Sushi Game Is Wonderful, If You Don’t Mind The Controls

Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido, a new Nintendo puzzle game, is an excellent, challenging adventure set in a silly anime world where sushi is illegal. But it’s a shame that players who are intrigued by that will have to decide between a 3DS version that controls better or a Switch version that looks better.…

There Are Finally New PixelJunk Games, And They’re Both Terrific

For a lovely few years during the heyday of the Playstation 3 we got a steady drip of new PixelJunk games. They were usually really good. Now, after a seven-year (mostly) dry spell, we’ve got two more. In the last couple of weeks, the Kyoto-based Q-Games has released PixelJunk Eden Obscura for cell phones and…

Insomniac isn’t just making a new Spider-Man game. The studio is also working on their fourth VR game, which, like the others, will be for Oculus. It’s called Stormland. The Oculus blog describes the 2019 game as having “an open-world structure and an ever-changing environment bristling with unexplored islands, dangerous strongholds, and rare technology.”

The Division’s next big patch, 1.8.2, will be out on June 14, the developers said today in a livestream. It adds two legendary versions of missions, “reactivation caches” that contain three non-classified gear sets and “shields” which unlock things inThe Division 2 but won’t be unveiled until E3 next week. Also: “No weird doors have…

Buying Video Games Should Not Always Be Such A Mind Game

The problem is bigger than just GameStop, but let’s start with GameStop. On a sweltering early evening last Friday, as I finished up work, I went to a GameStop to buy an extra PlayStation 4 controller. Few gaming purchases should be as simple. Just pay for the piece of plastic and be done. Yet as…

New Post-Apocalyptic 3DS Game Is Nintendo At Its Weirdest

Maybe you’re waiting for more Zelda or Animal Crossing, but I tend to get the most excited for Nintendo’s stranger, less well-known games. Their new one is pretty strange. Consider these true facts about it: It’s called Dillon’s Dead-Heat Breakers and is actually the third game in a 3DS series that launched in 2012 with…

Sometimes, You Just Have To Complain About A Video Game Boss To Beat It

At 9:48pm last night, I despaired. I had encountered a video game boss I was sure I couldn’t defeat. “This Stefano boss fight in The Evil Within 2 is quite the difficulty spike,” I wrote on Twitter. “Not sure my character is equipped for this.” Four minutes later, I beat him. “Oh wait,” I wrote…

Shadow Of War‘s New Expansion Should Be Its Own Game

When the video game Shadow of Mordor was released in late 2014, its most marvelous trait was its Nemesis System. This superb chunk of design and programming ensured that any evil grunt that killed the player would be elevated in the game’s bad guy hierarchy and would stalk the revived player, perhaps becoming the game’s…

God Of War, One Month Later

The new God of War didn’t need downloadable content or multiplayer to remain interesting throughout its first month. It had patches, easter eggs and even a big social media controversy. God of War came out on Friday, April 20, same day as Nintendo Labo, but reviews started running a week earlier. Many, including ours, were…

I Think I Like Game Patches Too Much

Upon turning on my PlayStation 4 most days, I hope to hear the telltale trill that one of my games has been updated. A patch! My game has changed! Hopefully for the better. I have bought into the idea that games are not unchanging things. I have embraced the concept that the games I buy…

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Picked Up By NBC, No Longer Canceled

In news that I expect will thrill my comedy-loving colleagues, comedy cop show Brooklyn Nine-Nine has been rescued by NBC, which is bringing the series back for a sixth season. The comedy was a cult favorite for five seasons on Fox, but was cancelled on Thursday, to the despair of a lot of fans, including an…

So Many Sequels, I Can’t Keep Up

If I ever get back to my 3DS, I might get back to a 2016 Mario & Luigi game that I still haven’t finished, in part because, when it came out, I still was in the middle of playing the 2013 Mario & Luigi that came out before it. I used to be on top…

Shadow Of War‘s Expansion Adds Some Of The Best Zelda-Style Items

The ship may have sailed on Shadow of War, a messy sequel received angrily by fans and a game that has taken six months to start removing its controversial microtransactions. But, hey, this game just got a new expansion that adds a hookshot and a glider. That’s cool at least. As a fan of weird…

Photo Mode Needed

I have been spoiled by Mad Max, Horizon Zero Dawn and Assassin’s Creed Origins. I have come to expect that I can unhook the camera in the beautiful game I’m playing and take some shots. I am impatient for God of War to get its photo mode. What we know of the photo mode is…

Puzzle Game Solved

Maybe it was the tweets I saw promoting the game’s launch on Android. Maybe it was the reminder to myself about unfinished games that I put in my bio beneath my articles. Maybe it was just the fact I was sick last week and looking for a distraction, but I finally finished The Room: Old…

God Of War Sure Has Been Getting A Lot Of Patches

God of War is a very good game that has been getting an unprecedented number of title updates. The PS4 exclusive launched on April 20 and in its first 11 days of release has been updated eight times. The most recent patch, which upgraded the game to version 1.17, was released on Friday, ending a…

The Division’s Developers Keep Fixing ‘Weird Doors’

If you looked closely at the patch notes for a Division update from way back in November 2016, you would notice an odd sentence: “Fixed a Weird Door.” It would become a trend for Ubisoft’s enormous action-RPG, which would receive many more updates over the coming months. The following May, in Division patch 1.6.1, the…

Watch Dogs 2 Had Some Creative DLC For Those Who Stuck Around

Big game gets hype. Big game comes out. No one seems to care. Big game flops. Life moves on. Except, these days, when all that happens, the big game still usually has a few months’ worth of DLC to drop. If that DLC is good, it’s a shame that so few people will play it.…

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy Has One Of Action Gaming’s Most Peaceful Moments

In between the big, satisfying skirmishes in the new God of War, players can put gruff protagonist Kratos and his scrawny son Atreus in a boat and paddle across a lake while the father tells his boy a fable. The moments in the boat are among my favorite in the game. They reminded me of…

An Update On Mike Fahey And His Road To Recovery

If it’s felt like something has been missing from Kotaku for the last month, that’s because someone wonderful has been away. As many of you have noticed and inquired about, our beloved colleague, senior writer, and Hatsune Miku aficionado Mike Fahey has not been writing for the site he’s called home for the last dozen…