E3

Looks like E3’s West Hall had a temporary power outage, which caused this amusing Zelda II-themed “technical difficulties” screen to pop up during the Nintendo Treehouse Live stage show. Nice planning ahead, Nintendo!

Trials Of Mana Looks Much Better Than The Secret Of Mana Remake

Disappointed by last year’s 3D remake of Secret of Mana? Well, Trials of Mana, the upcoming remake of its sequel, looks nothing like it. Nintendo and Square Enix showed off the Switch game on today’s Treehouse Live stream, and it looks like a completely new, modern game design based on the Super NES original. The…

The Internet Reacts To Zelda’s New Haircut

All it took was two minutes and one surprise trailer for Nintendo to turn a sleepy E3 to an explosive bonanza—but that’s what happens when you announce a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, perhaps the most beloved game in recent memory. The trailer cryptically hinted at something extremely dark and…

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 Brings The Satisfying Superhero Lineup

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order marks the first time Nintendo is publishing a game in this series, and the company has tapped Team Ninja to develop it. I and several of my Kotaku coworkers swung by the Nintendo booth at E3 to check out how the game plays. I found it to be…

Breath Of The Wild Sequel Producer Won’t Say If You Can Play As Zelda

When Nintendo teased a sequel to Breath of the Wild at the end of yesterday’s Direct, it left everyone with one big question: Can you play as Zelda? Legendary series producer Eiji Aonuma knows the answer. He’s just not saying. “A lot of people have been asking that, and so I want to ask you,…

Pokémon Sword And Shield‘s Giant Pokémon Changed Up My Battle Strategy

If you were worried about Pokémon Sword and Shield’s new Dynamaxing mechanic, which makes your Pokémon super big and super powerful for a limited amount of time, being an empty gimmick, you can calm down. I played a 20-minute demo at E3 yesterday, and it actually adds to the game’s complexity. Being an adult fan…

Minecraft Dungeons has no Minecraft-style building. It’s a loot-filled dungeon crawler for up to four players with all sorts of Minecraft characters. Players can equip and enchant a wide array of outfits, armor, and gear. It’s pretty, and was fun to romp through here at E3 in that Lego game kind of way. Coming to…

A Killer, A Secret, And A Time Loop Make For A Harrowing 12 Minutes

We last previewed time-loop game 12 Minutes back in 2015 after I saw it at PAX East in Boston and chatted with Luis Antonio, who was singlehandedly making the game for a desired 2016 release. Here we are in 2019. 12 Minutes is still looking good, but it’s not done. 12 Minutes is now scheduled…

Walking Around Minecraft Earth Feels Amazing

I’ve been a casual player of both Minecraft and of the augmented reality game Pokémon Go, so when Minecraft Earth was announced as an augmented reality version of Minecraft, I was curious. There’s a lot to Minecraft, so I was skeptical that the entire game could be scaled to a touchscreen experience on your phone.…

Not All Pokémon Can Be Imported Into Sword and Shield

Pokémon fans eager to see the previous seven generations of pocket monsters popping up in Pokémon Sword and Shield received disappointing news yesterday when producer Junichi Masuda announced that only Pokémon present in the new Galar region Pokédex can be imported into the upcoming Switch games. Pokémon Sword and Shield kicked off yesterday’s Nintendo Treehouse…

Ni No Kuni’s Remaster Is Looking Beautiful, Of Course

2011’s Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch still looks amazing, so it doesn’t really need a remaster for its new platforms. But it’s getting one, and everyone with a Switch, PS4 and/or PC who hasn’t played it is in for a treat. While the more recent sequel was released on a wider array…

Cyberpunk 2077 And Other E3 Games Are Getting Outsold On Steam By American Truck Simulator DLC

It’s the most video games time of the year, with every developer and their (voice actor’s) dog showing off glamorous new games powered by multi-million dollar marketing budgets. In many cases, this has involved unfurling elaborate pre-order campaigns to coincide with upcoming releases. But despite the surefire sales success of games like Cyberpunk 2077 and…

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s Developers Are Still Deciding How Disturbing To Get

In a hotel suite at E3 2019, Infinity Ward studio art director Joel Emslie and single-player design director Jacob Minkoff showed off two levels from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare campaign. They showed these same two levels to the press this past May, but the messaging around those levels has changed. At this presentation,…

Dr Disrespect Streams Inside An E3 Bathroom, Gets Banned From Twitch [Update: E3 Badge Revoked]

Today, popular Twitch streamer Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm got suspended from Twitch after streaming from inside a bathroom at the Los Angeles Convention Center during E3. His E3 badge was also revoked. Dr Disrespect is attending E3 and, purportedly for the first time ever, doing a series of IRL streams onsite. On Tuesday afternoon, the…

Epic’s Donald Mustard Says Fortnite‘s Reaper Skin Isn’t Keanu Reeves

Fortnite has an official John Wick skin, but before it arrived, Keanu Reeves seemed to be in the game in the form of a Season 3 battle pass skin called the Reaper. The Reaper wasn’t officially Reeves or his action movie character, but it looked a lot like him. During today’s E3 Coliseum, Epic creative…

Final Fantasy VII Remake Feels Great To Play, But The Project Might Not Be Finished For A While

This afternoon at E3 in Los Angeles, I watched an extended demo of the Final Fantasy VII remake and got my hands on a build for about 15 minutes. Here’s the good news: It could be really special. The bad news: We have no idea when the whole project will be completed. “We can’t reveal…

10 Minutes Of The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening On Switch

The Switch remake of 1993’s The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is here at E3, and we’ve capped as much footage of it as we can to show you. It’s beautiful, largely faithful to the source material and just a bit stumbly on the framerate, which they can hopefully smooth out by the game’s September…

Nintendo Will Add Friend Matching To Mario Maker 2 Online Play

Last month we reported thatSuper Mario Maker 2 would not allow players to matchmake with friends for online play. The news did not go over well. Now it’s going to reverse course with an update. Speaking during today’s Treehouse Live presentation at E3 2019, the game’s producer Takashi Tezuka said that its developers now plan…

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Will Let You Decorate The Whole World

It’s been so long since Tom Nook last bled us dry and left us to die beneath a mountain of themed furniture inside our mini-mansions, and everybody’s begging for more. Pocket Camp was a nice appetizer, but it’s no substitute for the real thing. Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Switch, coming March 20, has co-op…

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint‘s Survival Elements Keep The Game Tense

I was playing Ghost Recon: Breakpoint as the assault class, Fixit. I had been doing my best to act as a tank for my teammates by getting out front and shooting people with my assault rifle. But my injuries started to add up: First I got nicked in the arm, then the leg. I didn’t…