Stephen Totilo

Possibly The Most Pointless Video Game Pre-Order Of All Time

The editorial staff at Kotaku has repeatedly advised readers to not pre-order video games, and today we can reveal two more reasons not to pre-order: radical life changes and transformations to the gaming industry. It’s possible that, when you pre-order the game you are excited about, you might be living in Sweden and the game…

New Pokémon Sun & Moon Trailer, Everyone

Hark! A new trailer for Pokémon Sun & Moon. Featuring some new evolutions and monsters. Two new trainers, as well. On the creature end of things, we’ve got Sivally, a Pokémon that changes type depending on the item it is holding, making it right for every occasion. Hakkomo-o’s evolution to Kommo-o is as impressive as…

Our Favorite (And Least Favorite) PSVR Launch Games

PlayStation VR is now out for the PS4, but after spending hundreds of dollars on the headset, which games should you play? We played lots of them and have some thoughts and some favorites. BATTLEZONE Kirk Hamilton: Cool enough premise—tank wars!—but too much jank for my tastes. I felt imprecise and sloppy when I played,…

PC Game Developers Say Anti-Piracy Tech Would Make Their Game Worse

“We don’t believe in DRM, and we don’t like DRM,” two of the developers behind the new game Shadow Warrior 2 recently told Kotaku in an e-mail, when we asked them about their game’s lack of anti-piracy protection. DRM, of course, refers to digital rights management or anti-piracy systems that are widely used to keep…

Valve Is Making A New Vive Controller [UPDATE]

Valve showed off a new, slicker controller for its HTC-backed Vive virtual reality system at the Steam Dev Days conference today in Seattle. While the event is not open to press, developers in attendance tweeted photos of the device from a slide presentation. The main new feature appears to be the ability to open your…

Ubisoft Is Giving Away Beyond Good & Evil For Free

For the next month, Ubisoft’s ultimate cult classic, Beyond Good & Evil, can be yours for zero dollars if you have a PC and a free Ubisoft Club account. That’s down from $10 on Steam. The mega-publisher is giving the game away as part of a year-long celebration of their 30th anniversary (and maybe boost…

The third episode of Telltale’s Batman game will be out for PC and console on October 25, the studio said today. It’s called New World Order, so hopefully there’ll be cameos by Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and that other guy.

Sports Games Dominate September PlayStation Download Charts, As No Man’s Sky Disappears

They don’t get a lot of press here on Kotaku, but sports games are still a big, big deal, especially in this fairly fallow fall gaming season where there ain’t much else for gamers to buy. Sony’s newly released charts of thetop 20 downloaded games for PS4 in America in September lead with NBA 2K,…

Goldberg Returning To Pro Wrestling To Face Brock Lesnar, Because Of A Video Game

The tail wagging the WWE this fall appears to be the people who just put out the new WWE 2K17 video game. How else to explain why the wrestling company’s top draw, Brock Lesnar, is getting lined up to face 49-year-old, long-retired wrestler Bill Goldberg next month? WWE isn’t exactly acknowledging that Lesnar-Goldberg II is…

Brotherhood Is My Favorite Assassin’s Creed

On the most recent episode of our podcast, Kotaku Splitscreen, I declared Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood to be the best Assassin’s Creed You can listen to my reasoning in the clip above or just read these extremely true bullet points: Great location Great protagonist Great missions, especially the crucifixion one in the Colosseum Great integration of…

Unexpectedly, PS4 Tomb Raider Shows The Limits Of What PSVR Can Track

A surprise feature buried in the new PlayStation 4 version of Rise of the Tomb Raider appears to show just how much of your real-life playing area can be tracked by Sony’s new PS VR set-up. An option called “Visualize Play Area” makes the game’s VR-compatible Blood Ties expansion display green grid lines if the…

Rise of The Tomb Raider‘s New ‘Blood Ties’ Expansion Is A Brief, Melancholy Family Story 

The part of 2015 Xbox One game Rise of the Tomb Raider that will be new to all gamers this week is Blood Ties, an expansion being bundled with Tuesday’s PS4 release of the game and being offered as paid $10 DLC (or part of the season pass) for Xbox One and PC. It’s mostly…

New VR Mode Changes Game’s ESRB Rating, Even For Players Who Don’t Get The New Mode

Many PlayStation owners received a system notification on Thursday that the frenetic arcade-style shooter Super Stardust Ultra is getting bumped up from an ESRB rating of E to E10+. A video game’s rating doesn’t usually change after it’s been released. In this case, strangely, the rating will change even though, for some people, the game…

The Overwatch Outfits At Our Cosplay Ball Blew Us Away

Hey look, it’s the guy from Hotline Miami! Great outfit, huh? But what probably actually drew your eye in the above shot is another awesome, massive Reinhardt outfit, which stole the show at our recent io9/Kotaku Cosplay Ball. Not that there wasn’t other terrific Overwatch cosplay, because of course there was. We had a Zarya…

EA’s $30/year EA Access program on Xbox One and PC will get three major additions to its vault of accessible games by year’s end. Last year’s Star Wars Battlefront and this spring’s Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and UFC 2 will be added later this year, according to an EA press release.

The Super Mario Bros. speed record is broken again. Old champ Darbian has reclaimed the throne with a 4:56.878 run. The previous record, set earlier this week, was Kosmic’s 4:57:194

Watch Us Play Four PlayStation VR Games And Freak Out Over A Fifth

The screaming in our office yesterday was one of our video guys, John, trying a shark attack demo in PlayStation VR. You can see and hear that glorious moment at the tail of of our video here showcasing several of the launch PSVR games in action. The video is an archive of a livestream we…

Batman Arkham VR: The Kotaku Review

The hero of Batman: Arkham VR is a little clumsy. His hands shake from time to time. He sometimes drops his Batarangs. He doesn’t drive his own Batmobile, and he spends a lot of time standing in place as other people move around him. This Batman is not the aspirational, acrobatic crusader game creators usually…

Speedrunner Claims New Super Mario Bros. World Record By .05 Seconds

Super Mario Bros. speedrunner Kosmic seems to have shaved the record time for completing the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System classic by three frames, based on a video and Tweet he posted early this morning. Kosmic said on Friday that he beat the Super Mario Bros. world record held by ace player Darbian by a single frame.…

Newest Madden Puts Sun On Wrong Side Of The Sky, EA Vows To Fix

The makers of Madden NFL 17, the most realistic football game on Earth, have confirmed to Kotaku that their latest game puts the sun in the wrong part of the sky. During evening games in Los Angeles, the sun appears to set in the east, a problem that probably won’t be fixed until next year’s…