Culture

Track: Voyager | Artist: Paul van Dyk & Alex M.O.R.P.H. | Album: Music Rescues Me Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Neo-Tokyo. Tokyo, Japan. By Davide Sasso | Instagram 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! 

Steam Bug Keeps Popular Indie Game From Being Recognized As ‘Real’ For Five Months

Wandersong is a side-scrolling rhythm adventure game that is—pardon my language—charming as all heck. Its combination of inventive mechanics and comedic, heartfelt writing have caused many to fall in love with it, myself included. And for five months Steam wasn’t sure it was a real game. As part of Valve’s ongoing effort to weed out…

Atlas, As Told By Steam Reviews

When Atlas first launched last month, it didn’t cannonball into the high seas so much as belly flop. The resulting wet slapping sound continues to echo around in the game’s Steam review section to this day. Even though the game is still eliciting cringes and jeers from its reviewers, Atlas has somehow also become hugely…

Hollow Knight Speedrun Has A Tense Finale

Hollow Knight is a quiet game of exploration and difficult bosses that can take dozens of hours to complete. Last Sunday at Awesome Games Done Quick, a speedrunner beat it in under 90 minutes. The run was a highlight of precise, masterful movement. And the ending had the audience on the edges of their seats.…

The Stories Behind Assassin’s Creed Mercenaries Are Terrific, But Easily Missed

You don’t need to know the backstory of Shoeless Ogarneos, a mercenary who may try to kill you in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but the word in the game is that this ancient Greek killer-for-hire only wore bandages on his feet and “liked the red tint they had at the end of each day.” I can…

The Week In Games: Mario Brothers Of Days Past

Not one but two older entries into the Mario Bros. canon resurface this week, because in the world of video games what’s old is eternally new again. And I do hope you like new old games, because otherwise you’re out of luck. In a test of just how many Nintendo fans will buy games they…

Track: Fade Into You | Artist: Mazzy Star | Album: So Tonight That I Might See  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Pink Boat Towards Happy Beach. Mactan, Cebu. By Martin Tan. 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! 

Red Carpet Superstar

JungAh Lee is a senior concept artist at Blizzard, and has worked on stuff like Overwatch You can see more of Lee’s work at her ArtStation page

The Best-Reviewed Steam Games Of 2018

More so than perhaps even playing them, Steam is a place where people go to yell about games. Here are the games they yelled most positively about last year. Steam reviews are kind of a mess. The positive/negative binary squelches nuance and doesn’t translate well into an overall percentage score, and the system is easily…

Every Christmas, There’s A Cosplay Spectacular In Florida

Holiday Matsuri has quickly grown to become one of the biggest and best cosplay shows in the US. And it’s not hard seeing why: who wouldn’t want to escape the winter chills for a resort in Orlando in the middle of December? Below you’ll find a selection of video and photos taken by Mineralblufrom the…

The Internet Reacts To Soldier 76 And His Ex-Boyfriend

Tracer is no longer the only canonically LGBTQ hero in Overwatch. Today, Blizzard released a new short story focusing on steely sniper grandma Ana and grumpy military dad Soldier 76. The latter, it turns out, used to be involved with a man named Vincent. In the short story, titled “Bastet,” Ana encounters Soldier for the…

Middle Eastern Fortnite Players Start Massive Protest For Dedicated Servers

Alaa “DvLZStaTioN” Ebrahim has been missing his sniper shots. The popular Fortnite YouTuber, who has three million subscribers, says it’s not his fault. Nor are the times when his opponents’ shots hit him even as he moves away from the rain of bullets. Ebrahim, who lives in Bahrain, a small island country in the Middle…

The Eternal Castle Is A Great Throwback To Classic Cinematic Sidescrollers

The Eternal Castle is a love letter to old cinematic platformers of the late 80s and early 90s, a throwback to games such as Another World, Flashback. It capitalizes on their virtues without the weight of their technological limitations. It just came out on Steam over the weekend. I haven’t even finished it yet, and…

Track: Wintertime | Artist: Noah Jones with Jeff Tweedy | Album: Wintertime single Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment. 

The Climb. Bonn, Germany. By Aria Khoshsirat | Instagram 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! 

Ladies And Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Eric Pfeiffer is a concept artist and illustrator based in Seattle. You can see more of Eric’s work at his ArtStation page

Warner Bros. Pulls LEGO Lord of the Rings Games From Steam, Doesn’t Say Why

Bad news for fans of LEGO, Lord of the Rings, and buying things: Warner Bros. has taken The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit away from us—possibly forever. The saga seemingly began when the two games were free on the Humble Store last month, sparking debate over whether new games were on the horizon—or…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for going to Norway, to live out my bizarre lifelong dream of turning a birthday in the Arctic Circle. My boss dubbed it “a real-life The Long Dark,” which is pretty on-brand for a Riley dream. I will be unable to play very much The Long Dark before I leave, but I…