The Arkham games are Batman at his best, combining intense action sequences against an iconic gallery of villains with exploration elements via his detective skills. The dark knight isn’t just about brute force, but uses his intellect to gain an advantage over criminals. I loved soaring through Arkham City and reliving Batman’s past through Arkham…
The first time that Cyberdreams producer David Mullich showed author Harlan Ellison a page of the dialogue he’d written for the 1995 game based on his short story “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream,” Ellison asked, “Who wrote this shit?” When Mullich replied that he had, Ellison got visibly embarrassed and apologized. “No,…
When I think back on the games I played growing up, the Ultima series stands out as one of the most unique and compelling. These open-world fantasy RPGs helped define and establish many of the standards of the genre through nine main installments and multiple spin-offs on a variety of platforms. My first Ultima game…
Howdy Kotaku! Ben and Peter have returned to run Kotaku for the 4th of July. It’s a day of fireworks and rest. It’s also a day to bust out food and drinks we’ve been saving for special occasions, unlike in gaming where we always find ourselves hoarding special items that we end up never using.…
Every console has had amazing RPGs. I’m still making my way through Persona 5 for the PS4, but it’s one of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played (Nier:Automata was no slouch either). The Last Story on the Wii was incredible, Lost Odyssey for XBox 360 is one of the best Final Fantasy games not named…
Sometimes, sharing a game can give you a whole new perspective on it. The titles have varied, from Grand Theft Auto V and Final Fantasy VII, to more recently, Dragon Quest Builders and Super Mario Odyssey. While Angela and I prefer multiplayer games when possible, the majority of games we play together are single-player ones…
My favorite Final Fantasy game is VII. But it’d been over a decade since I last played FFVII and I wondered how it would hold up. I downloaded the PS4 version and played through the entire game again. This time, Square gave players endless limit breaks, the option to avoid random battles, and the ability…
Shining Force was the game that made me fall in love with tactical JRPGs. Everything from its anime visuals to its catchy music and its grid-based battle system had me hooked. My love for tactical games back in the 90s was limited to traditional PC style strategy games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, with…
Asura’s Wrath is cathartic. One moment, you feel like the most powerful being in the universe. The next, smaller than an ant in a hurricane about to get crushed. Then you come back stronger than ever, overcoming the odds to gain your vengeance. Released in 2012 and published by Capcom, it’s a uniquely blistering experience…
Super Mario Odyssey did a fantastic job melding a nostalgic love for the older retro Mario titles and its more modern 3D games. Its levels are inspired, creatively designed to balance a sense of wonder with a good challenge. Minor Spoiler Alert New Donk City’s Traditional Festival is the perfect example of that. Mario takes…
I’m blown away by Horizon Zero Dawn’s breathtaking landscapes, dinosaur-mecha battles, and its emotionally powerful story. In my closing article for today’s run as guest editor, I thought I’d get into why I’m loving my time with Horizon Zero Dawn and how I almost skipped over one of the most surprisingly touching moments in the…
There are moments in Bayonetta 2 that are such a visual feast, I wished I could slow everything down with Witch Time. Fighting an onslaught of demons and angels with hundreds of explosions assaulting the screen, I loved how Bayonetta always keeps her cool. What I didn’t expect was that the convoluted story, with some…
When I think back on the NES era, the Ninja Gaiden series stands out for having gorgeous cinematics, tough as nails gameplay, and amazing music. The first game had one of the most engaging stories of the 8-bit era. And while the second wasn’t as strong in the narrative department, it introduced a lot of…
Symphony of the Night took the best elements of the Castlevania series, injected in RPG elements, and created one of the most compelling games for the original Playstation. A platform-adventure action role-playing game, it was developed by Konami and released in 1997 for the original PlayStation. A couple weeks back, Ben asked what our favorite…
A horror game from South Korean developers ROI Games and Gachyon Soft, White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is notable in being one of the few games released in the States I know of that has the Korean War as its backdrop. It also has the reputation for being one of the most terrifying games…
The end of the world is here, and I never thought it’d sound so beautiful. Nier: Automata was one of the most intriguing games of 2017. With machines fighting androids over stakes grander than either could imagine, I was riveted by the story and its characters. The music accompanying the journey was sublime, but also…
Good morning Kotaku! I’m Peter Tieryas and I’m your guest editor for MLK Day. Do you remember your very first video game? Back in the 80s, I had long seen the Nintendo at friend’s houses. When I finally got my own console, I was given the choice of picking out any additional game I wanted…
Food is such an important part of our lives, so I’m always curious about its portrayal in games, especially the stranger dishes. This piece originally appeared 11/23/17. I’ve had a lot of strange food (like the earlier mentioned Resident Evil 7 Brain Cake from the Capcom Cafe), seen weirder ones that I was too scared…
There are some cultures that believe taking a photograph captures a part of your soul. Your job in Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly is to fight horror by recording it. This piece originally appeared 10/26/16. Playing as Mio Amakura, you and your twin sister Mayu unravel the mysteries behind the gruesome apparitions haunting Minakami Village.…
High school is tough and Persona 3 did a masterful job capturing the complexities of student life. Easily one of the best JRPGs I’ve played, the game gave players an extremely difficult choice near its end that still haunts me. With the New Year here, I thought it’d be interesting to revisit that choice and…
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