-
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Will Always Love Where A Good 2D-Style Background Takes My Imagination
Like a lot of things, it started with Street Fighter II. I was a kid, not nearly as good at the game as my extremely competitive uncles who would gather around arcades when arcades were still common. It would take a while before my little hands could pull off a hadouken every time, but I…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 21, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryHelp, My Console Shelf Is A Mess
I have a problem. It’s probably a fixable problem with a little ingenuity and time, but for now I live with a terrifying gaming shelf packed with consoles, wires, books, a hair dryer, and way too much nonsense. It is all there, messy and tangled. One day, it will consume me in its spider web…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 18, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryCharacter Creation Should Take 5 Minutes, No More, No Less
I love creating a character whenever I start a new role-playing game. I also love stressing myself the hell out over it. I find the question that they often pose—How would you like to play this game?—fundamentally ridiculous. Man, I don’t know! I’ve never played this game before! I truly don’t get how anyone is…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 17, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Don’t Want To Grind For This Little Fox Person But I Will
It’s been over 12 years since I seriously worked on raising my reputation with one of World of Warcraft’s in-game factions. Those many years ago, I spent days performing repetitive tasks just to earn a special mount, and after that, I swore off grinding reputation for rewards. Then Blizzard announced the Vulpera, a new playable…
By Mike Fahey Published October 16, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryDestiny 2‘s New Grind Might Be Asking Too Much
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is made with the dedicated Destiny player in mind. It’s an expansion that foregrounds much of the math that Destiny has spent the last few years hiding, giving players more control over how they tweak and build their Guardians to play the way they want them to play. I enjoy this, but…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 15, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Fall Asleep To Puzzle Games And For Some Reason I Am Not Better At Puzzles
One of the poorer habits I have is playing handheld games in bed before I fall asleep. It’s not the best move—even with the brightness set all the way down, light has a way of messing with your sleep cycle—but sometimes it feels like the best way to slow my brain down after a long…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 14, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiarySorry I Made You Look Stupid John Wick
John Wick Hex, a new game recently released and based on the popular John Wick films, is a top-down pseudo-turn based strategy game where every action takes so many seconds. When you finish a level you can watch a replay in real-time of what you did. And these replays have made me self conscious about…
By Zack Zwiezen Published October 13, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryThe Tension Of Playing Overwatch During A Blizzard Controversy
Yesterday, like I do every day, I wrapped up my workday, closed my Chrome tabs and, without pausing, hit the Windows button on my keyboard. In the search bar, I typed “Over-” and hit enter. My eyes found the big, blue “Play” button on the game launcher. Overwatch’s familiar orchestral music swelled and, in an…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published October 11, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Succeed At This Game By Trying The Silly Shit You’d Be Punished For In Other Games
I love old-school adventure games so damn much, but sometimes I just can’t manage to finish them. I get stuck on puzzles but I’m often too stubborn to consult a guide, or I lose patience with their pacing, or sometimes I’m just tired of looking at my laptop screen (most of the adventure games I…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 10, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryThe Wonderful Feeling Of Clearing Three Destiny 2 Quests At The Same Time
The best feeling for me when I play Destiny 2 is not a perfectly landed shot, nor is it the widely acclaimed “gun-feel,” nor the rare moments when I understand what lunar mission giver Eris Morn is droning on about. No, it’s when I’m winding down a mission and manage to orchestrate a cascade of…
By Stephen Totilo Published October 9, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Found A Family In A Mario Kart Tournament
I fell off my barstool for the second time that night. My vision went blurry, my legs buckled, and the floor spun. Arms reached out to help me back up, and I leaned against the bar, sobbing incoherently. I wasn’t wasted—I was playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe I was comfortably in first place at my…
By Seung Park Published October 8, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Did Not Expect Untitled Goose Game To Trouble My Conscience
It was his last rose. I was waddling around the nice man’s garden in Untitled Goose Game and passed by this meager rose garden, with just one rose pushing above the soil. Maybe he was growing it for his wife. It wasn’t even on my to-do list; I impulsively waddled over, plucked it, shuttled it…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published October 7, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryThe Bite-Sized Link’s Awakening Is The Perfect Follow-Up To Breath Of The Wild
How do you create a follow-up to Breath of the Wild? The Switch launch game was a massive rethinking of the Legend of Zelda series, a colossal non-linear open world in which players could create their own journey. As it turns out, the perfect way to follow that was with a Zelda that is as…
By Chris Kohler Published October 3, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryFlimsy DLC Is Actually Nice If You Play It Years Later
They say familiarity breeds contempt, and video games often ask you to get extremely familiar with them. This might explain why, after a 60-plus-hour game, I’m usually…kind of tired? I don’t hate the game, but I’m definitely ready to move on. I like closure. Endings are nice. They help contextualize what was just experienced, and…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 2, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryThese Are My Settings For Every Video Game
I started playing a new video game yesterday: Ghost Recon Breakpoint. But It might as well have been any other console game, in terms of how I set up the settings. Brightness? I’m going to make sure that symbol is pretty visible. After all, who knows what “barely visible” even means. It’s all relative. I…
By Stephen Totilo Published October 1, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Should Have Stolen That Truck In Overland
Survival game Overland is unusually tough. Resources are limited, enemies are plentiful, and even my best runs have gone south quickly. Your car is one of your most important resources, as getting through the game’s levels on foot isn’t viable for long. But when the opportunity arose in one of my recent runs to steal…
By Riley MacLeod Published September 30, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryFinally Playing Judgment Again And Who The Heck Are Any Of These People
The end of the year is always busy here at Kotaku. For many of us, it means a string of reviews to write and games to cover. I’ve gone from Monster Hunter to Greedfall and beyond. Getting the time to circle back and play a game that you missed out on is a fun treat.…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 27, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Wasn’t Expecting This New Fashion Game To Be So Political
For a while, I couldn’t open Instagram without getting an ad for Covet, a styling game similar to Love Nikki. Covet’s hook is that it features real fashion brands, and while it was tempting, I also suspected that it would be like taking a vacuum to my bank account. After Jezebel editor-in-chief Julianne Escobedo-Shepherd told…
By Gita Jackson Published September 26, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryThis Skies Of Arcadia Music Box Is Making My Heart Melt
I’ve enthusiastically expressed my love for role-playing game Skies of Arcadia in a variety of different ways since I started writing for Kotaku. I’ve gotten a tattooand reached out to producersalmost two decades after the game was released. Released in 2000 on the Dreamcast, Skies of Arcadia’s story of air pirates, heroes, and adventure ignited…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 25, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryHighway Planning Game Really Underscores How Inefficient Cars Are
As I watch cars sit at a standstill at an intersection in Mini Motorways, the new game from the makes of Mini Metro, all I can think about is how much more efficient this city would have been with public transportation. Dinosaur Polo Club, the developers of Mini Metro and Mini Motorways, have created two…
By Gita Jackson Published September 24, 2019