Culture

No Man’s Sky‘s Beyond Update Fulfills The Childhood Dream Of Virtual Reality

You look left and see a giant alien behemoth. You look right and see your spaceship. And then you re-adjust your virtual reality helmet to account for all the head turning you just did. That’s the dream, right? At least that’s what Kirk assured me and Jason on this week’s episode of Kotaku Splitscreen when…

Session Is A Hardcore Skateboarding Sim With Cool, Weird Controls

“Pretty much everyone who tries the game eats shit like crazy at first,” Marc-Andre Houde told me when I met him in New York to see crea-ture studios’ forthcoming skateboarding game, Session. Maybe that’s a bad way to sell a video game, but Session is an unusual game—more a skate sim than an arcade stunt…

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Is It Weird I Have A Secret Superhero Persona?

Hello, you burning sexbeasts, and welcome to Ask Dr. NerdLove, the dating advice column that body slams your relationship problems from the top of Hell in the Cell. This week, it’s all about threading the needle of the most perplexing relationship problems. What do you do when you’ve gone from your horny period to a…

The People Behind Teamfight Tactics Talk Player Expectations And ‘Garbage’ Characters

Teamfight Tactics has been out for just over a month, and already Riot games’ entry into the auto-battler genre has become one of the top 10 most popular games on Twitch, with a wide-ranging player base and a vibrant community of creators on its hands. But as a new entrant into the fledgling auto-battler canon…

Gaming Hardware Artist Turns Nintendo Famicom Into A Retro Computer

Swedish designer and craftsman Love Hultén transforms existing gaming hardware into dreamlike pieces of functional retrofuturist art. His latest work, the FC-PVM, combines a Japanese Famicom console with a Sony Trinitron monitor to create a self-contained retro gaming system with an old school terminal vibe. The FC-PVM is a Japanese NES in a box, with…

Gamesindustry.biz has followed up their summer investigation into console manufacturer’s sourcing of conflict minerals with information from Nintendo. The company has improved its sourcing by a disappointing 3%, reporting that 79% of said minerals come from whitelisted smelters and refiners. CORRECTION: This post originally misstated this year’s percentage increase of whitelisted sources as 2%, for…

Grandia Has Reignited My Love For Role-Playing Games

When I was in my impressionable pre-teen years, I spent vast amounts of my summer tucked away in a musty little basement down the street. My closest friends would visit at their grandma’s house near me every year while school was out, and when we weren’t “ripping and running,” playing basketball with the “mannish” little…

I Get More Excited About Old Games On Switch Than New Ones

I’ve spent much of the last week staring at the Switch eShop page for the Grandia HD Collection willing myself not to buy it. For me, it is probably the most alluring recent release on the system, a collection of two classic RPGs I’ve never played, available on the most pleasant and convenient console. That’s…

Deep Ellum. Dallas, Texas, USA. By Brian Ashcraft. 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!

Sorry, You Can’t Spell Out Messages With Skeletons In WoW Classic

In vanilla World of Warcraft, as in life, skeletons were built to last. If you died somewhere and your flesh decayed to bone, your blanched, skinless husk would stick around for so long that you could die again and produce another right next to it. If you’ve spent more than several seconds around those of…

Fallout 76 Player Completes New Raid, Earns Useless Drill

Almost anyone who’s ever raided in a game before has a horror story about that time they worked really hard only to be rewarded with a piece of junk. At least one super unlucky Fallout 76 player recently joined their ranks. “We beat the final boss, opened up the loot chest at the end,” wrote…

Report: Contractors Have Listened To Inadvertently Recorded Audio From Xbox Owners’ Homes

Microsoft contractors working on Xbox have gained access to audio recordings of Xbox owners’ home life, a Vice Motherboard report revealed today. According to the report, accidentally triggered Xbox voice commands would result in audio recordings stored by Microsoft, which contractors could hear. The report, titled “Microsoft Contractors Listened to Xbox Owners in Their Homes,”…

This Game Is Great, But I Can’t Stop Playing Its Unimportant Solitaire App

Eliza is a fascinating game about tech start-up culture and mental health. It also contains a devilish Solitaire game that I can’t stop thinking about. Eliza is a visual novel about a woman named Evelyn who works as a proxy for an app called Eliza, which is a machine-learning based therapy service. Her job is…

Mortal Kombat 11 Reveals New Fighters Including The Terminator and Joker

Holy crossover, Batman! The rest of Mortal Kombat 11’s first round of character DLC has been revealed. It includes series regular Sindel before going off the rails with the Terminator, Spawn, and a dapper-looking Joker. A YouTube video this morning outlined the rest of the cast for Mortal Kombat 11’s “Kombat Pack.” Many of these…

Track: Fly Like An Eagle | Artist: Stereophonics | Album: Kind

Dota Underlords Is Finally Getting Underlords

At this point, I have spent nearly 50 hours with Dota Underlords. I still do not know what an Underlord is. This is because Valve’s early-access auto battler still does not contain its shadowy namesakes. In a matter of weeks, however, that’s going to change. Today, Valve outlined its plans for the future of Dota…

First, Players Destroyed Their Guitar Controllers, Then Developers Destroyed The Game

Smashing guitars is a rock-and-roll tradition, and for one night, video games reflected that

Now Game Developers Have To Ask Fans Not To Harass Them Over The Epic Store

One of the easiest bits of news to miss on Monday’s Gamescom Opening Night Live show was tucked away in an ad for the Epic Games Store. A simple sizzle reel that showcased a number of games exclusive to the controversial digital PC game storefront included an upcoming indie that previously wasn’t in Epic’s roster:…

Two Of Steam’s Top Games Last Month Were Anime Sex Games

It’s no great secret that Steam is overflowing with anime games intended to titillate portions of its vast user base. But how many people pay attention to these seemingly niche games, really? Turns out, enough people do that two of these games ended up on Valve’s latest monthly list of top games. While Valve does…

Fallout 76 Group’s Raid Attempt Foiled By Notorious Power Armor Glitch

In Fallout 76, power armor can keep you safe, or it can become a horrible tomb entrapping unsuspecting players until the end of time (or until they reset their game). That’s what happened to one group of players attempting Fallout 76’s brand new raid. Added today as part of patch 12, Vault 94 is the…