Culture

Twitch Stars Are Becoming More Like Regular Celebrities, For Better Or Worse

These days, Twitch streaming is an avalanche that drowns potential viewers in a daily rush of new names and faces. No matter how much you watch Twitch, you’ll never be able to keep up with even a fraction of the tens of thousands of partners and their daily streams, which generally last multiple hours. As…

A Newcomer’s Guide To Destiny 2

This week, Destiny 2—Bungie’s long-running sci-fi shoot-and-loot extravaganza—got a thorough overhaul. With its Shadowkeep expansion, longtime players were introduced to some pretty extensive changes. For everyone else, Destiny 2: New Light took the base game and made it free-to-play, welcoming a host of new players to join in on the fight. If you’re one of…

Ms. Marvel Gets The Team Back Together In The Avengers Video Game

The first trailer for Square Enix’s upcoming Avengers game featured a female narrator that many fans thought sounded a lot like Inhuman fangirl Kamala Khan, AKA Ms. Marvel. They were right. Revealed during the Marvel Games panel at New York Comic-Con, Kamala Khan is indeed the voice narrating the original trailer, and she’s much more…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for being Mr. Autumn Man in the extreme. I’m going to wear a sweater, and make soup, and dig my blankets out of the closet. I’m also going to play some video games. I’m completely obsessed with Overland, even though I can’t make it to the third area no matter how hard…

If Only Ghost Recon Breakpoint Were More Like Assassin’s Creed

Assassin’s Creed games have gotten better and better at establishing a sense of place and filling that place with tons of satisfying, stealthy missions. After a few hours with Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo is still mostly just thinking about how much he likes Assassin’s Creed. On this week’s Kotaku Splitscreen, we talk…

The Essentials From This Week’s Pokémon Sword And Shield Interviews

This week, Game Informer had a slew of interviews with the leads of the Pokémon Sword and Shield team at Game Freak. There’s a lot there, and some of the information has since been corrected or clarified, so here’s what you need to know. There’s Autosave, But You Can Turn It Off Traditionally, you’ve had…

Track: Wake Up | Artist: Arcade Fire | Album: Funeral 

A New Way Home. Tokyo, Japan. By Alex Knight | Twitter | Patreon  JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line!

Aces Higher

Marius Janusonis is a freelance concept artist from Lithuania. You can see more of Marius’ work at his ArtStation page

Teardown is a heist game where everything is destructible. Levels unfold in two phases: First, you bust up the level and build makeshift structures to create the most efficient pathway between objectives possible. Then you swipe an item and race against the clock to collect all the rest before security shows up. Hopefully, your procession…

It Took 12 People To Make This Giant Monster Hunter Cosplay

This enormous Grammeowster Chef is so big, and so detailed, that it took two studios—GSTQ Fashions (who we covered recently for their work on Dave Bautista’s final WWE outfit) and Wooden Leg Studios—to bring it to life. The cosplay was commissioned by Capcom for the company’s Monster Hunter display at PAX West, and stands over…

BlizzCon In-Game Loot Is One Of My Favorite Annual Gaming Traditions

People get excited about Blizzard’s annual fan convention for many reasons. Some look forward to meeting up with friends. Others are eager to hear news about upcoming games and expansions. Me? I’m mainly here for the ridiculous in-game items rolled out for World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, StarCraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone every…

Coach, Michael B. Jordan Team Up To Sell You $95 Naruto T-Shirts

Take a deep breath before you read the following sentence: Coach has collaborated with actor Michael B. Jordan on a wildly expensive line of clothing inspired by the anime Naruto Go on a journey with me. Imagine you’re at work, busy working on something not at all related to the anime Naruto, which you mainly…

Every time I listen to the theme song for Succession, the HBO drama about rich people being evil and sexy, I feel pretty evil and sexy. It’s a little less sexy when done in Mario Paint Something about the “meow” sound effect doesn’t exactly call to mind the prestige of the Roy family, though perhaps…

Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Care For My Partner With PTSD?

Hello, you electric manatees of damnation, and welcome to Ask Dr. NerdLove, the only dating advice column to help you critical path your way through the Dark Souls of Love. This week, we’re dealing with dating on hard mode as we cover the difficult, even seemingly insurmountable challenges that lovers can face. When your beliefs…

Apex Legends Players Are Trying An In-Game Recipe For Pork Chops In Their Own Kitchens

Apex Legends players have uncovered a new secret in the game’s lore: a family recipe for Mirage’s pork chops. One of the battle pass rewards for the third season of Apex Legends, which began yesterday, are new loading screens. Players have noticed that one of Mirage’s loading screens, which you can earn with the free…

High School Redesigns Shouldn’t Remind You Of Taking Cover In Gears Of War

Play enough video games, and eventually you can tell when you’re entering an area where a digital shootout is about to happen. It’s kind of a joke at this point: see an abundance of chest-high walls for you to conveniently crouch behind? Walls that make zero architectural sense? An elevated vantage point or two? Odds…

Why Online Game Launches Are Often A Mess

Just after 4 pm ET on Tuesday, Destiny 2 players began to see a warning message. A red line stretched across the bottom of their screens, and the text below it stated: “Attention: contacting Destiny 2 servers.” Minutes later, huge numbers of players got booted from the massively-multiplayer online sci-fi shooter. At Kotaku, we lost…

The 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…

Silicon Valley And ‘Skepticism For Disruption’ Inspired This Futuristic Taxi Game

Patrick Ewing, creative lead for indie game Neo Cab, told me a story about how he once got an Amazon package delivered by a person with the license plate “Uber God.” The Uber God had actually been fired from Uber that week, he told Ewing, after five years and over 19,000 rides, following an anonymous…