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Track: This Is How I Feel | Artist: DedachiKenta | Album: Breakfast for Dinner Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment. 

Clouds, A Cathedral And A Cone. Edinburgh, Scotland. By Nathan Seyler. 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!

Evangelion Dreams

Huang Fan is a freelance artist and illustrator who has worked on things like the Rampage movie and Blur’s Destiny 2 animation. You can see more of his stuff at his ArtStation page

How 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…

Sunday Comics: You Look… Different.

Hello! It’s time for Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published June 17. Read more of Awkward Zombie Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published June 20. Read more of Corpse Run Clueless Hero by…

Final 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…

John Wick Hex Is A Portal Into John Wick’s Mind

At a Keanu Reeves-filled E3 last week, I played a demo of John Wick Hex, a forthcoming action game directed and written by Mike Bithell, the creator of acclaimed indie games Thomas Was Alone and Volume. Playing John Wick Hex was like being transported inside of the titular assassin’s mind via a mashup of the…

Valve’s New Auto Chess Game Is Already Way More Popular Than Artifact Ever Was

The failure of Dota-themed trading card game Artifact might have left Valve with egg on its face, but the company has now scraped off that egg and made an omelette with Dota Underlords. Valve’s take on the obscenely popular Auto Chess genre hit a peak of nearly 180,000 concurrent players today, almost tripling Artifact’s all-time…

Xbox Boss On Microsoft’s Struggles With Game Quality And Efforts To Improve It

Whatever the strengths of the Xbox platform, it’s long lagged behind Nintendo and Sony in terms of homegrown, exclusive video games. There have been highlights in its history and even some stellar games of late, such as last year’s Forza Horizon 4, but the Xbox One era has been rough. There have been prominent cancellations,…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for going rock climbing! I’m taking a class to learn to belay people so I can say “no, no, I’ll hold the rope” and cover up my ridiculous fear of heights. The weekend is also for playing video games. I’m really enjoying Lovely Planet 2, which looks relaxing but is actually twitchy…

I’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…

We Went Hunting In Monster Hunter: Iceborne

Just in time for the beta this weekend, here’s a brand new video from E3 in which Tim and I play the upcoming Monster Hunter World: Iceborne expansion. We take a photo with one of the monsters that you’ll get a chance to slay in the game, lob off a couple tails, and then try…

Tokyo Tower. Tokyo, Japan. By ShuYung Wu. 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!

In case you missed me triple front flipping over haters, explaining what a “skrrrt” button is, and dropping some delicious movie references while playing My Friend Pedro earlier, here’s the YouTube archive. Follow us on Twitch for more streams.

Steam Finally Adds Official LGBTQ+ Tag For Games

The process of finding games on Steam has become increasingly driven by a tag system. Mouse over, say, Sekiro on Steam’s front page, and you’ll see descriptor tags like “Souls-like,” “Difficult,” and “Action.” Click on one of those tags, and you’ll be taken to a hub page for that game category. But that’s just the…

‘Xbox Live Is Not A Free Speech Platform’: Xbox Boss Promises New Features To Make Online Gaming Less Hostile

You can learn a lot about a person by the values they express, and possibly something about an entire gaming platform by the blog posts the person running it writes. That’s why I was so eager at E3 last week to ask the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, why he recently wrote a 1200-word essay…

Final Fantasy VII Remake, Avengers, And Other Promising (And Confusing) Games We Saw At E3

E3 2019 brought us demos and details about games we can’t wait to play, like Link’s Awakening and the Final Fantasy VII remake, but it also threw us some real head-scratchers, like that upcoming Avengers game. On this week’s episode of Kotaku Splitscreen, we ran down all the coolest and most befuddling games that we…

Wit And Charm Are Powerful Weapons In Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2

While I was playing Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2’s demo at E3 last week, I was feeling pretty smug about bluffing my way through a problem. Then, the developer holding the controller hit the wrong button, and a fight broke out regardless. Bloodlines 2 looks like it has a wonderful breadth of experiences to offer…

I’m triple flipping over fools in My Friend Pedro live on our Twitch channel right now! Come join me in the chat.

Nintendo’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…