Stephen Totilo

The State Of The PlayStation 4 In 2017

Nintendo might have gotten more buzz in 2017, but Sony’s PlayStation 4 just had a quietly excellent year. In fact, it was arguably the system’s best run since it came out. Throughout 2017, Sony’s approach to the PS4 was a mix of reliable and experimental. That’s a good combination. The company delivered a pile of…

The Division’s Free 1.8 Update Is Better Than Its Paid Expansions

After numerous multiplayer-centric patches and expansions, The Division finally got a big improvement for solo players this week. The new update is shockingly large and shockingly good. It seems designed to make every type of Division player happy. Update 1.8 adds two new, enemy-filled zones called West Side Piers to the game’s Manhattan-based map, throws…

Shadow of War‘s New Online Mode Makes It Clear: They Want You To Play This Game Forever

Five of my orcs died in Shadow of War yesterday. I callously dropped them, one by one, into the game’s new online fight pits. They didn’t make it out. Rash Skull Bow, a feral marksman with little skulls for shoulder pads, got killed in 20 seconds after Ghash The Bloated struck him in the stomach…

Deciding to go up against Destiny 2‘s first expansion for some reason, The Division’s huge and excellent-sounding free 1.8 update will be out tomorrow. Check out detailed patch notes (including radical changes to Underground). The game and its DLC will be free this weekend.

Dear Video Games: Please Stop Immediately Telling Me What To Do

The original Super Mario Bros., which was a pretty well-liked video game, didn’t tell players the button commands for climbing up vines. It certainly didn’t pause to tell them how to jump on the turtles or remind them that they could enter a big green pipe if they’d like to. I’ve been playing some of…

The Division’s free, ambitious 1.8 update will hit the game next week, date TBD (likely Tuesday). It will expand the map with a new region that adds twists to the game’s PvE. It will also offer a horde mode called Resistance and a PvP mode called Skirmish. Oh, and it’ll overhaul the rogue system in…

Many Assassin’s Creed Origins Players Aren’t Ready For The Game’s First Post-Release Boss Battles

A couple times over the past few weeks, a giant Egyptian deity has sprung up in Assassin’s Creed Origins for players to fight. In early November, it was Anubis, god of the dead. Around Thanksgiving it was Sobek, the crocodile god. The gods weren’t accessible when the game launched in late October and they each…

I Love This Unrealistic Assassin’s Creed Origins Boat

I play a lot of video games, but I don’t see many great glitches. Say what you will about modern gaming’s abundance of patches, but major glitches are still fairly rare. I fall through the floor of a third-person action game maybe once every two years. I played all of Red Dead Redemption and never…

Metroid Prime: The Kotaku Review

When she shoots, Samus Aran doesn’t miss. That’s one of the fundamental truths of the original Metroid Prime, the first-person sci-fi game that came out on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. You lock her gun onto a target and fire. She hits it every time. (This post originally ran on March 10, 2016. We’re bumping…

The nominees for 2017’s edition of The Game Awards are out, and you can check out a full list here. Will Mario and Zelda split the Nintendo vote for Game of the Year? Staff from our competitive gaming site Compete were on the jury for the esports categories of the awards. Alas, our fighting game…

This Week’s Giza Pyramid Discovery Was Already Built Into Assassin’s Creed Origins

Earlier this week, news broke that scientists had discovered a previously undetected open space in Egypt’s 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza. The new Egypt-set adventure game Assassin’s Creed Origins actually won’t need an update adding the chamber, because as the game’s creators explained to me, they already thought to put one in. In Origins, you…

Nintendo Is Still Tight-Lipped About The Switch’s Tribute To Satoru Iwata

One of the most heart-warming stories in video games this year was the discovery in September that the Nintendo Switch console contained a secret tribute to the beloved Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who died in 2015 at the age of 55. But Nintendo doesn’t want to talk about it, and it’s not clear why. This…

More Evidence That Assassin’s Creed And Watch Dogs Are Set In The Same Universe

There’ve been hints in the past that Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs exist in the same fictional world. A fun new easter egg in the new Assassin’s Creed Origins sure offers more support for that theory. What follows is a spoiler for Assassin’s Creed Origins, of course. So don’t scroll down past this picture of…

Zelda: Breath of The Wild’s Second Expansion Is Still On Track For This Year, Nintendo Says

Despite Nintendo’s recent, conspicuous quiet on the topic, the second expansion for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is still coming soon, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told me this afternoon during a quick chat in midtown Manhattan. We talked about that and a host of other topics, including the demise of…

Basically the same video game.

Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Microtransactions (Mostly) Just Get You Things You Can Earn While Playing, Ubisoft Says

There are microtransactions in Assassin’s Creed Origins, as there have been in the last two big installments of the series. The game’s publisher, Ubisoft, says that most of what you can spend them on can be obtained just by playing the game, though it’s a little more complicated than that. Origins’ in-game store, which is…

Super Mario Odyssey’s Not-Quite-Optional Motion Controls Are Aggravating In Handheld Mode

The motion controls in the new Nintendo Switch Super Mario game are largely optional, but one key collectible early on indicates that the developers expect you to use them. Those motion controls are far easier to input when the Switch is connected to a TV than when it’s running in handheld mode. The push for…

We’re streaming Assassin’s Creed Origins. Join us in virtual Egypt as we play on the PS4. We’ll be avoiding spoilers and just showing the basics.

The Newest Layton Game’s 3DS Pricing Is An Unsolved Mystery

Here’s a puzzle: Why does a game that, DLC included, costs $39 on mobile in July cost $48 on 3DS in October? Background: The game in question is the puzzle-filled Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire’s Conspiracy. It’s the seventh major game in what used to be considered the Professor Layton series. Since this…

On the left, wallpaper from The Evil Within 2. On the right, the infamous carpet from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Coincidence or homage? You decide.