Stephen Totilo

Kirby: Planet Robobot: The Kotaku Review

Kirby is approaching Mario and Sonic in terms of ubiquity. The little guy has starred in three games in as many years, all without a drop in quality. The newest game, the Nintendo 3DS’ Planet Robobot, is the best of the three. In the new game, the usually overpowered Kirby is even mightier. He can…

A Note To Readers 

The news is out that Gawker Media, our parent company, is up for sale as part of a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This was due to an unprecedented legal assault financed in secret by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. What does that mean for Kotaku? Thankfully, not much. We aren’t going anywhere. For…

Sony Confirms PlayStation 4.5, Says More Powerful Console Won’t Be At E3

Sony has finally acknowledged that it is indeed building a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4, as Kotaku first reported in March. PlayStation chief Andrew House told the Financial Times that the codenamed Neo is “intended to sit alongside and complement the standard PS4″ and that “”We will be selling both [versions] through the…

Beat Cop Is A Cop Game About Difficult Decisions

While other studios craft games about fighting robot dinosaurs or piloting spaceships, a small group in Poland is making one about being a cop in 1980s New York City. It’s called Beat Cop, and it has you pointing and clicking to make a police officer patrol a few blocks of Manhattan. He walks past a…

Sonic, E.T., Gollum, Batman and Adventure Time Are All Going To be In The Same Video Game

Is this the greatest video game roster of all time? The folks behind the Lego Dimensions just unveiled the characters and series they’re featuring in the game’s second year, starting in September: Sonic the Hedgehog, Adventure Time, Mission Impossible, the A-Team, the Goonies, Knight Rider, the Powerpuff Girls, Gremlins, Beetlejuice and ET. All in one…

GTA Online’s newest big free add-on is out today. Further Adventures In Finance and Felony adds the ability to serve as an in-game CEO as well as a “trading places” PvP mode that swaps you and the person you kill from one team to the other–if you were in the losing team. Sounds crazy! More…

XCOM 2 Coming To Consoles In September

The excellent turn-based strategy game XCOM 2 will be PC exclusive no more later this year. Publisher 2K announced this morning that the game will be coming to Xbox One and PS4 on September 6. Veteran studio The Workshop is handling the port of the Firaxis game.

Chat With The Kotaku Staff About E3 And More

People, it’s less than a week until the big E3 press conferences begin and you just might be in the mood to talk about the big show. Or maybe you just want to talk about games that are out now or about Kotaku. Got questions? We’ll do our best to answer! Fire away in the…

Edge of Nowhere: The Kotaku Review

Your head controls the camera floating just behind 1920s adventurer Victor Howard, star of the new virtual reality Antarctic action game Edge of Nowhere. The white wilderness is all around you. You control Victor with a controller that you cannot see, because you play this game with the Oculus Rift VR headset strapped to your…

What We Like About Uncharted 4‘s Multiplayer

We’ve talked about Uncharted 4‘s single player a lot. It’s time to discuss the game’s multiplayer. We like it, respect it but don’t quite love it. Patrick, Jason and I chatted about it earlier today. We’ll go first, but I’d also love to hear from those of you who’ve been playing it down in the…

Regarding A Fake Kotaku Article

An article concocted to attack one of our writers and our publication as a whole several years ago continues to make the rounds, most recently in a video that’s garnered more than 500,000 views on YouTube in the last two days. To make it clear to those not able to figure this out on their…

Watch Us Play Soft Body, A Puzzle Game About Doing Two Things At Once 

Soft Body is a new(ish) puzzle game for PS4 and Steam from game developer Zeke Virant. It’s a $13 test of your ability to control two blobs through a field of bullets and barriers, each steered with a different analog stick. One blob is weak but can paint walls. The other can take a bullet…

The Most Popular Fallout 4 Mods On Xbox One

Xbox One owners can now download mods for Fallout 4. There are 885 available already and the servers for the game’s creators at Bethesda seem to be struggling to keep up . The most mod for the game on Xbox One is a cheat menu that lets you add caps, stimpacks and more. That’s currently…

Harsh Life Lesson From Kirby

Some stats in life matter. Some don’t. In the kill-or-be-killed world of Team Kirby Clash, the co-op mini-game in the upcoming 3DS side-scroller Kirby: Planet Robobot, your stamina, attack, recovery and team meteor stats matter. But the game’s got jokes and/or hidden profundity. When you level up in the mini-game, the game mentioned upgrades to…

Alienation Developers Patch In Quiet Memorial To Colleague Who Passed Away

One bullet point stands out in this week’s 1.01 patch for PS4 action shooter Alienation: “added memorial area for Antti Kallioinen.” Kallioinen was the game’s art lead and passed away at the age of 42 in February, just two months before Alienation’s release. Now, this very loud action game from Finnish studio Housemarque has a…

First Two Batman Arkham Games Coming To PS4, Xbox One In July

Visually enhanced versions of the last-gen single player hits Batman Arkham Asylum and Batman Arkham City are getting bundled and sold for $50 as Batman Return To Arkham, according to the game’s publisher, Warner Brothers. Warner is promising “improved graphics, as well as upgraded models, environments, lighting, effects and shaders” as well as all of…

Nintendo has clarified what it does with answers users give in its Miitomo app, saying in part that: “the answer information our consumers provide through the Miitomo app [is] only used to provide a better experience for Nintendo consumers and to support the application. Neither Nintendo nor any of its partners sells or shares that…

Highlights Of Two Uncharted 4 Levels, One Traditional And One Full Of New Tricks

Above, a video we capped of Uncharted 4‘s ninth level, which plays similarly to many Uncharted levels of old. Below, a video we capped of Uncharted 4‘s 10th chapter, which shows the game opening up, allowing more variety in exploration and combat. Note how open the level is. It includes a number of optional side…

Uncharted 4: The Kotaku Review

For a worrisome amount of time, Uncharted 4 feels like little more than a familiar, obligatory sequel, existing the way Mario Karts and Halos do to continue bolstering one faction in the ongoing console wars. Excellent, fresh ideas for these kinds of automatic sequels are not a prerequisite. Thankfully, after nine chapters, Uncharted 4 dramatically…

The Creators of Burnout Are Making A Game That’s Even More Chaotic

“We just call it a mess simulator,” the ever-quotable game developer Alex Ward was saying as his colleague Chris Roberts (the other Chris Roberts) was playing their upcoming game in Kotaku’s New York City office during a visit last week. That chaotic game, Dangerous Golf, is indeed about making messes… by using a golf ball…