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CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Don’t Know Where To Put My Heroes
DOTA Underlords is Valve’s stab at the auto-battler genre. In Underlords, just like in Auto Chess and Teamfight Tactics, you place heroes you buy on a board and then they attack other heroes and creatures. And while I understand the basic rules and mechanics of the genre, I still have no idea where to place…
By Zack Zwiezen Published June 30, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryStreet Fighter‘s Queer Stereotypes Kept Me In The Closet
Last year during Pride month, I wrote about my own queer reading of the Street Fighter V tutorial, which features Ken and Ryu fighting and, in my opinion, flirting. In the year since then, I’ve been thinking about the character Juri in Street Fighter, who is the closest the games get to having a canonical…
By Maddy Myers Published June 28, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryGames Are Better With Double Jumps
Last night, after hours exploring Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, I unlocked the ability to double jump. It was such a simple thing—one jump, another jump—but I suddenly felt a rush of possibility hit me. That’s because of all the video game-y tricks, double jumps might just be the best. Whenever I think of game…
By Heather Alexandra Published June 27, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryJuggling World Of Warcraft And Final Fantasy XIV Isn’t Easy
One minute I’m a gnome warlock, delving deep into the naga-infested ocean of World of Warcraft’s Azeroth. The next I’m a red mage with cat ears and a tail, trying to remember my spell rotation in Final Fantasy XIV before the Shadowbringers expansion comes out. There’s brand-new content in both of my favorite massively multiplayer…
By Mike Fahey Published June 26, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiarySometimes You Just Need A Good Game For When You’re Zombified
After a bunch of travel my brain is pretty much leaking out of my ears. Last night, I needed to play a game that would make me remember how to do critical thinking, but also wasn’t so involved that I would bounce off of it. Enter SteamWorld Quest I’d played a ton of SteamWorld Dig…
By Gita Jackson Published June 25, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryOuter Wilds Is One Of The Best Games I’ve Ever Played
If you put me in a room with ten executives and asked me to pitch Outer Wilds, here is what I would say: “It’s got the exploration of a Metroid game and the structure of Majora’s Mask crossed with the interstellar wonder of No Man’s Sky and the narrative framework of Return of the Obra…
By Jason Schreier Published June 24, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryHow The Choose Your Own Adventures Of 428: Shibuya Scramble Reminded Me Of My Past
I’ve visited Shibuya before, but never like this. 428: Shibuya Scramble, which was developed for the PlayStation 4 by Chunsoft, released in September 2018 outside Japan. It’s kind of like those old full motion video (FMV) games. But instead of telling the story through badly compressed and grainy video, it uses a series of high…
By Peter Tieryas Published June 23, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryFinal Fantasy V Reminds Me Of What I Loved About The Series
Talking about Final Fantasy has become complicated. A lot of my favorite Final Fantasy memories are from games in the series that are over a decade old. I’ve played through most of the main series Final Fantasy games, aside from FFV and the online ones. I genuinely enjoyed most of them (even XIII), though none…
By Peter Tieryas Published June 22, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI’m The Only Person Playing Harry Potter: Wizards Unite In My Area
The first week that Pokémon Go came out, it was all my friends wanted to do or talk about, and we weren’t the only ones. Whenever I went on a jog around my neighborhood, I’d run into people of all ages and backgrounds at every PokéStop and gym on my journey. I expected the same…
By Maddy Myers Published June 21, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryNintendo’s Mobile Game Dragalia Lost Has Finally Lost Me
From its launch in late September through mid-May, Nintendo’s mobile RPG Dragalia Lost was part of my daily routine. I only missed one daily login during the entire period, and that was because I was recovering from surgery. But, over the past couple of weeks, the game’s pull on me has faded, and my play…
By Mike Fahey Published June 20, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryBloodstained Made Me Fight The Disembodied Head Of My Dog
In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, you play as a woman who must traverse a labyrinthine castle full of monsters and possessed paintings. That is to be expected: as the spiritual successor to the Castlevania series of games, it faithfully recreates many of that series’ tropes, which include monsters and possessed paintings. That’s normal. Then…
By Joshua Rivera Published June 19, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryWhy I Left Breath of the Wild Unfinished
Some time before I actually finished The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I stopped playing. It wasn’t because I got carried away by other games, and it wasn’t because I was tired of it. I just stopped. New Zelda games are rare things that only come once or twice a console generation, and…
By Joshua Rivera Published June 17, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryLook At This Extremely Nice Video Game Latrine
While playing State of Decay 2‘s new Heartland expansion—a game I find interesting, even if I don’t particularly enjoy it—I noticed something during one of several trips to my local frenemies the Wilkersons in the northern region of Trumbull Valley. It’s a latrine. An extremely considered, well-designed latrine. Just look at it! It’s hard to…
By Joshua Rivera Published June 14, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryCollection Of Mana Is 3 Amazing Games With Not Enough Extra Features
One of the first Switch games I bought, way back in the spring of 2017, was the Japanese version of Collection of Mana. It was a very simple package: emulated versions of the first three games in the Mana series, and little else. Two years later, the U.S. version is out, and not much has…
By Chris Kohler Published June 13, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiarySwitching From Healer To Tank Was Terrifying
If there’s one thing I love doing in Final Fantasy XIV, it’s healing. Saving teammates from huge attacks and making sure we survive to the end of the fight feels good. After playing some of the classes from the upcoming expansion Shadowbringers, I’ve opted for a change of pace. Now, I’m tanking and leading the…
By Heather Alexandra Published June 12, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryDevolver’s Collection Of Knock-Off Devolver Games Is Weird For The Sake Of Weird
Game publisher Devolver Digital had an E3 press conference on Twitch last night after Bethesda. As usual, it was packed with weird, gory humor and send-ups of standard E3 hype culture, as well as game announcements. One of those jokes, the announcement of a launcher-slash-game collection called Devolver Bootleg, is a real game on Steam…
By Riley MacLeod Published June 10, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryThe Forgotten Video Game Memories Hiding In Our Brains
The mind is a mysterious vessel full of things we know and, weirdly, things we’ve forgotten. My brain was cruising along as usual on Wednesday until a minute before noon when, suddenly, a Nintendo Switch press release reminded me of a passenger I had long forgotten about. There in my email inbox was a subject…
By Stephen Totilo Published June 7, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Foolishly Covered My Precious Gaming Keyboard in Slime
This is a story about the perils of homemade slime, over-intoxication, and one utterly defiled mechanical gaming keyboard. It is a story about what happens when these three things combine, and one that I am deeply conflicted about sharing. Unless you live under a rock or you’re my boss Stephen Totilo, you’ve noticed that slime—yes,…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published June 6, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryI Love It When A Puzzle Game Gets Its Difficulty Curve Just Right
A good puzzle game latches onto my mind and never lets go. One of the best ways to achieve this is to lead me along a perfectly plotted difficulty curve. MythicOwl’s math-based puzzler, Hexologic, is a prime example of how that’s done. Hexologic is a relaxing Sudoku-style math game, available on Steam, iOS, Android and…
By Mike Fahey Published June 5, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryOuter Wilds’ Time Loop Is Beautiful
In Outer Wilds, you have 22 minutes to launch into space before your sun goes supernova. The objective isn’t to avoid this fate—no one knows it’s coming. Instead, you, a four-eyed alien from the peaceful planet of Timber Hearth, are merely doing what your culture prizes above all else: exploring. After those 22 minutes are…
By Joshua Rivera Published June 4, 2019