Culture

Fleshlight Or Flashlight?

Today we wait for someone to drag our corpse home, ponder Kirby’s feet, watch rich white dudes “dance” and discuss who saw a fleshlight last weekend. It’s Morning Checkpoint! Great Kotaku Content From The Past Week Like most weeks, Kotaku was filled with some great stories. Here are a few of my favorites! Sometimes it…

What We Love About Country Trap Banger ‘Old Town Road’

No one, not even rapper Lil Nas X, thought his song “Old Town Road” would blow up the way that it has. After taking over the Hot Country Songs chart, it was removed for not being country enough, though the artist has been campaigning to get it reinstated. Now that he’s dropped a remix with…

Major Speedrunning Hub Forced To Roll Back Rankings After Security Breach

The most popular speedrunning website, Speedrun.com, has reverted all its rankings to their April 1 state after a security breach left many leaderboards at risk of tampering. After a similar issue in November 2018, the site’s owner is considering strengthened security measures to prevent future breaches. Speedrun.com is the place to go for a game’s…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for doing taxes. It’s also for playing “just 10 more minutes” of a video game before doing taxes. I really want to play more Apex Legends, but I’m feeling a little burnt out on multiplayer games. So I think I’m going to pick up Titanfall 2, which I’m telling myself could just…

What I Know About Surviving In Sekiro I Learned On The Volleyball Court

The spectral foe towered over me, her sheer size outmatched only by her overwhelming poise. The pole arm she held in one hand was twice the size of my character, and the loose robes and prayer beads draped over her hulking figure only served to make her more intimidating. With a grace that only made…

Shenmue‘s Much-Hated Forklifts Feel Revolutionary Today

Mario has Yoshi. Link has Epona. Ryo Hazuki has a forklift. This unassuming industrial vehicle has become so closely identified with Shenmue that when series director Yu Suzuki wanted to tease the announcement of Shenmue III, all he had to do was tweet a picture of one. For both advocates and detractors, Shenmue’s forklift sequences…

Track: Old Town Road [Remix] | Artist: Lil Nas X (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus) | Album: Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus) [Remix] Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Night Rider. Osaka, Japan. By Pedro Szekely | Flickr 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! 

Borderlands Is Getting Review Bombed On Steam Over Epic Store Exclusivity [UPDATE]

Yesterday, Gearbox announced that Borderlands 3 will be an Epic Games Store exclusive for six months after its September 13 release. Like clockwork, Steam users began review bombing previous games in the noted dabbing robot shooter series shortly after. Twenty-four hours and thousands of negative reviews later, Steam’s new anti-review bomb system has yet to…

New Afro-Futurist RPG Is A Fresh Break From Sci-fi’s Tired Tropes

The art book Kickstarter for Swordsfall, a tabletop roleplaying game set in an Afro-futurist African nation, raised over $64,000 in about 24 hours and cleared its $2,000 goal with ease. Creator Brandon Dixon told Kotaku that he’s not all that surprised by the success of this campaign. He knew that he had something unique, that…

Kirby Star Allies‘ Developers Explain How They Improved The Game A Lot After Launch

The early 2018 Switch game Kirby Star Allies improved a lot over the past year thanks to a stream of free downloadable updates. Some significant parts of those updates weren’t originally planned, according to the game’s developers at Kirby studio HAL. HAL’s chief creator, Shinya Kumazaki explained the process of expanding the game to me…

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Help, I Still Love My Ex-Wife!

Hello all you fiery sex-buckets, and welcome to Ask Dr. NerdLove, the only dating advice column to pivot entirely to Fortnite This week, we’re tackling the thorny questions of what to do when relationships don’t go the way you hope or expect. What do you do when you’re divorced… but still very much in love?…

The Best Part Of Yoshi’s Crafted World Is The Scenery

Games traditionally propel us forward with any one of these methods: increasingly tough bosses, collectable outfits, competitive skill points, unlocking new abilities, and, of course, story beats. Yoshi’s Crafted World is not like those games. For me, the paper carrot at the end of its fuzzy pipecleaner stick is discovering what charming and surprising thing…

Captain Toad’s Treasure Crusher

Kleiner Hai is an artist from China. You can see more of Hai’s work at his ArtStation page

Accusations Of Sexual Predation Shake Pokémon YouTube Community

Accusations of sexual predation are rocking the Pokémon YouTube community after 12 alleged victims made public statements against four individuals in that scene, including Kyle “TheKingNappy” McNeal, a well-known Pokémon YouTuber with over 500,000 subscribers. Pokémon is a franchise that typically appeals to kids and teenagers, plus adults who grew up with the games and…

I Want To Delete Sekiro From My Brain So I Can Experience It Again

I finished Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice earlier this week and had a fantastic time learning its combat and tackling challenging bosses. I’m eager to play more and if I want to, I could start right over with New Game Plus. Taking that plunge, however, has me wondering about the experience I’ll have. If the joy…

Track: Oretachi No Susumu Michi Wo Kanashimi De Tozasanaide | Artist: Sambomaster | Album: Yes Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Dusk. Osaka, Japan. By Brian Ashcraft | Twitter  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 High

Alex Kim is an illustrator and concept artist who has recently worked on stuff like War Thunder and the tabletop game Star Wars: Legion You can see more of Alex’s work at his ArtStation page

Super Mario Lost Levels, Punch-Out!! Heading To Switch This Month

Punch-Out!!, Star Soldier, and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, aka the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, are the next games coming to Nintendo’s NES library on Switch Online, on April 10. In other words, it’s another fairly safe, predictable month for Nintendo, with no especially surprising releases and nothing that hasn’t already been in…