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CultureE3At E3, SoulCalibur‘s Objectified Women Felt Like A Relic Of The Past
In SoulCalibur 6, Ivy Valentine will be as she always was: wrapped in stringy cloth, balloon-breasted, mostly naked. She wields a snake sword that extends into a whip, a dominatrix’s weapon that’s helped land her in innumerable knock-off porn videos and pin-up images. As one the Soul series’ most recognizable fighters, Ivy has always looked…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published June 18, 2018 -
CultureE3All The Games Ethan Played At E3 2018
I managed to survive E3 2018, my first one in fact, and I can even remember most of the games I saw and played. There’s too many to name them all, but below are the most notable ones I got a chance to check out. I’ve written about some of them already on Kotaku, but…
By Ethan Gach Published June 18, 2018 -
CultureE3Ghost Of Tsushima‘s Director On The Risks Of Making Something New
In an room in need of air conditioning in the Los Angeles Convention Center last week, game developer Nate Fox held out his left hand, palm down, paused and then slapped the top of it with his right. “Do you know—[slap]—that?” he asked. He wasn’t sure the name of the playground game he was referencing,…
By Stephen Totilo Published June 18, 2018 -
CultureE3
How Rare Hopes To Keep Up With Demand For New Sea Of Thieves Stuff
At Microsoft’s E3 press conference on Sunday, Sea of Thieves studio Rare showed off some of the latest DLC coming to its piratey Xbox One/PC game. Later at the show, we talked with the game’s executive producer about how the studio plans to keep that pace up over the months to come. As part of…
By Kirk Hamilton Published June 17, 2018 -
CultureE3
The Surge 2 Doubles Down On Limb Severing
I’ve never been a Dark Souls fanatic, but I appreciate the vibrant new mini-genre of Souls-likes it’s helped inspire. The Surge is one of those, and from what I saw at E3 2018, The Surge 2 looks like it’ll be a big improvement with some new ideas of its own. The Surge’s developer, Deck 13,…
By Ethan Gach Published June 15, 2018 -
CultureE3Seeing The Resident Evil 2 Remake In Action Soothes My Skeptical Heart
When Resident Evil 2 released in 1998, it had to follow up on a game that defined a new genre of horror. Not only did it manage to improve the formula, it went on to be what many people consider the best game in the series. After a long stretch with no new information besides…
By Heather Alexandra Published June 15, 2018 -
CultureE3Castle Sieges Bring A New Level Of Strategy To For Honor‘s Multiplayer
For Honor is getting a free new mode on October 16 as part of the game’s Marching Fire update, and after getting a chance to try it at E3 it’s the only For Honor mode I want play. Inspired by games like Dota 2 and League of Legends, Breach is an asymmetrical siege mode with…
By Ethan Gach Published June 15, 2018 -
CultureE3
How Yoshi’s Island Got Its Beautiful, Hand-Drawn Look
Prior to her interview at E3 this week with Splatoon 2 producer Hisashi Nogami, Kotaku’s Cecilia D’Anastasio asked me if there was anything I wanted to know. “Yeah,” I said. “Ask how Yoshi’s Island got its hand-drawn style.” Nogami, you see, was credited as a character designer on that legendary 1995 Super Nintendo game, which…
By Chris Kohler Published June 15, 2018 -
CultureE3
Take-Two’s E3 Booth Has No Red Dead And Is Incredibly Chill
The Take-Two booth at E3 makes all other publishers look sweaty and sloppy. No insult to the others, really, because they’re just doing what game publishers do. They’ve got their games and their logos and their trailers and lines of people wanting to play stuff. Take Two’s got four walls of serenity. Compare that top…
By Stephen Totilo Published June 14, 2018 -
CultureE3
Podcast: Let’s Talk About Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Did you know Nintendo just unveiled a new Smash Bros. game for Switch, and that it features every fighter in the history of the series? You say you did know that? Oh, okay. At E3 in Los Angeles, my colleague Jason Schreier sat down with Kotaku senior reporter (and Smash expert) Cecilia D’Anastasio to talk…
By Kirk Hamilton Published June 14, 2018 -
CultureE3
The Best Video Game Fashion From E3 2018
This year’s E3 looks were all about one thing: cool jackets. The game offerings at E3 this year were kind of slim. While I saw a lot of things I was excited about, it seemed like too few games are actually going to be playable soon, and many of them are hypothetical at best. The…
By Gita Jackson Published June 14, 2018 -
CultureE3
How Cyberpunk 2077 Quests Will Be Different From The Witcher 3
It’s hard to talk about CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 without talking about the studio’s last game, The Witcher 3. And so it came to be that a lot of our E3 interview with Cyberpunk’s quest designer involved discussion of both games. As part of Kotaku Splitscreen’s ongoing coverage of E3 2018, my colleague Jason…
By Kirk Hamilton Published June 14, 2018 -
CultureE3
My Friend Pedro Is Like A More Violent, 2D Max Payne
Before I knew anything else about it, I knew My Friend Pedro looked cool. I first came across the solo-developed indie game while going through the Screenshot Saturday hashtag on Twitter several years ago. Among all of the images of games in development shared by their makers was a masked man pirouetting through the air…
By Ethan Gach Published June 14, 2018 -
CultureE3
Two Long-Lost Nintendo Arcade Games Are Heading To Switch
Nintendo kicked off the final day of Treehouse Live with a huge announcement for fans of its classic games: Two arcade games that have never been officially released on home consoles are coming to Switch’s Arcade Archives: the original Donkey Kong, which is available now, and Sky Skipper, coming in July. Donkey Kong is a…
By Chris Kohler Published June 14, 2018 -
CultureE3A Plague Tale Is A Gross Game About Billions Of Rats
First announced at last year’s E3, A Plague Tale: Innocence is back this year to remind us all that rat fiction is super disgusting. Like, of all the terrible things that happen in The Witcher 3, the tale of a woman who can’t scream because rats have crawled down her throat was easily the most…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 13, 2018 -
CultureE3Ooblets Is Here For The Cute Animal Business
E3’s guns and action and death got you down? Here’s some Ooblets, jacking into your eyeballs with bright colours and cute lil’ animals. I like Pokemon and Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon and so I’ve been looking forward to this game for a long time. I am still looking forward to it. Ooblets is out…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 13, 2018 -
CultureE3Please, More Games Where We Eat Humans Like Snacks
I am absolutely terrified of sharks, among many other things, and that’s always been a hassle when trying to play games with underwater sections. I’m down for Maneater, though, because in this game I am the shark. I know that there have been other games where you can be a shark, but they haven’t looked…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 13, 2018 -
CultureE3Greedfall, A New RPG Where The 17th Century White Man Runs Into Some Problems
French studio Spiders, creators of bad-but-also-good RPGs like The Technomancer, have a new game coming called Greedfall. It’s an alternate universe take on what a 17th century European invasion of the New World would look like if the colonizers ran into magic and giant monsters. It’s aiming for a release on PC, Xbox One and…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 13, 2018 -
CultureE3
Ninja Takes Two-Day Break, Loses 40,000 Subscribers
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins might be on top of the streaming world right now, but even he’s not immune to being yanked back down to earth by the sometimes absurdly demanding realities of the job. For the past couple days, Ninja’s been living it up at E3, retweeting several thousand pictures people have taken with him…
By Nathan Grayson Published June 13, 2018 -
CultureE3Grim Fandango Was Performed Live On Stage, With Jack Black, And It Was Magical
One of the absolute highlights of this year’s E3 has been the idea Double Fine had to perform classic adventure game Grim Fandango live on stage, complete with original voice actors and band. While of course they weren’t acting it out—this is E3, not Broadway—it’s still a beautiful thing to watch, with art shown behind…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 13, 2018