Culture

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for going to my neighborhood block party, which will hopefully be full of sweet neighborhood gossip. It’s also for playing video games! It has been way too long since I checked in on Subnautica Below Zero. Hopefully you can pet the penguins by now. Stealth game The Light Keeps Us Safe also…

I Never Got Into Real Hockey But I Love NHL Video Games

I couldn’t tell you the name of the cover athlete of EA’s NHL 20 off the top of my head. For that matter, I couldn’t identify the players on the cover of NHL 18 or 19 ,despite both games still being installed on my Xbox One dashboard. I have little knowledge of the real-life sport…

How To Play Long Video Games When You Have No Time

For a lot of gamers with demanding jobs, marriages and/or families, the excitement of reading good reviews for games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is tempered by the sinking realization that they’ll never have time to play them. How do you make time for a 60+ hour game when you have…

The Art Of Gears 5

The latest Gears of War is out this week, so tonight we’ll take a look at a bunch of the art that went into the game’s conception and production. Below you’ll see a collection of pieces, both 2D and 3D, from some of the artists involved in the game. It’s not everything from everyone, but…

Divinity: Original Sin 2‘s Cross-Save Between PC And Switch Is Magic

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a big, chewy role-playing game that benefits from a mouse and keyboard, but sometimes, you just want to lie down on the couch and play a game on the Switch. The game’s new Switch port allows players to go from one to the other, like magic. On this week’s Kotaku…

We Can Finally Explain What You Actually Do In Death Stranding

He’s finally done it. After years of talking about Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima finally showed off a full mission’s worth of gameplay during a live stage presentation at Tokyo Game Show this week. It’s as offbeat, meticulously detailed, and intriguing as you’d expect from Kojima, if not more so. To be released November 8 for…

Baten Kaitos Speedrunner Loses 97 Hours Of Progress Due To A Single Item

Cult-classic card game Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is a pretty big game, especially if you want to collect everything there is to find. A 100% speedrun takes over 300 hours to complete, and even a single mistake could spell disaster. World record holder “Baffan” learned this the hard way during a…

Steam’s Recommendations Will Now Show Popular Games Less Often

Last October, Steam’s algorithm briefly went haywire, filling users’ “More Like This” recommendation sections with popular games while negatively affecting under-the-radar indies who needed the exposure. At the time, Valve chalked this up to “a bug” which it said it corrected, but smaller developers complain that Steam’s recommendations have continued to let them down ever…

No Man’s Sky Player Builds Concert Hall That Seats A Thousand

A No Man’s Sky player built a concert hall, and the level of detail is just astounding. This concert hall in space can seat a thousand, and it’s gorgeous to behold. Player Needred replicated everything a concert hall should have, from scaffolding for lights to the decorated ceiling. I especially like the grand entrance, which…

Pewdiepie Rescinds $50,000 Pledge To Jewish Charity After Fans Spread Conspiracy Theories

After Felix “Pewdiepie” Kjellberg pledged to make a plush donation of $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group founded to combat anti-Semitism, hundreds of his fans went into full conspiracy theory mode, questioning whether he had been blackmailed into doing so. Kjellberg, who has been subject to controversy in the past for making anti-Semitic…

I Wasted My Life Trying To Climb A Dragon Quest Builders 2 Mountain When I Could Have Walked

Since video games have significantly lower stakes than real-world decisions, I am, as a rule, happy to be a reckless fool in them. Eager, even. Many times, this has led to me being a complete and total bonehead. Given the option between a sensible solution to a problem that requires a little planning and a…

Project Resistance Is The Latest Resident Evil Game

First teased earlier this week, here’s the first proper look at Project Resistance, an upcoming 4v1 “asymmetrical co-op experience” set in the Resident Evil universe. Four players can team up as regular humans and play as survivors, where they can run around, interact with stuff together and try to escape a secret facility, while one…

They Came From The Future

Fernando Correa is a freelance artist based in Argentina. You can see more of Correa’s stuff at his ArtStation page

The Division 2 Developers Promise Some Good Changes For October

Ending a month-long hiatus, The Division 2’s otherwise weekly State of the Game stream returned today with promises of a wave of encouraging changes to the game’s loot, and a change in how content will be beta-tested, that should make the game’s season pass a less regrettable purchase. Content developer Hamish Bode and game designer…

The Internet Reacts To Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ New Outfits

Tactical dating simulator Fire Emblem: Three Houses received a sizable update this morning, giving folks some more stuff to play around with as they alternate between leading teenagers into battle and attempting to woo the guy or gal of their digital dreams. In addition getting several new auxiliary battles and an extra-difficult mode for the…

Developer’s Close Call With Raccoons Somehow Inspired Noir Detective Game

During a PAX-adjacent Microsoft event in Seattle last week, I’d just finished playing the demo of Backbone, a noir detective game starring a raccoon in a rainy, animal-run Vancouver. I was fascinated by the setting, the themes, and the dialogue. Recorder on, I approached narrative designer and studio co-founder Alex Korabelnikova. “The game came about…

PewDiePie Has To Explain That His $50,000 Pledge To An Anti-Hate Group Is Legit

In a video yesterday, Felix “Pewdiepie” Kjellberg announced a generous $50,000 donation to the Anti-Defamation League, a 100-year-old advocacy organization founded to combat anti-Semitism. Kjellberg, who was celebrating his 100,000,000-follower touchstone on YouTube, explained in his video that “I feel like I’ve finally come to terms with the responsibility I have as a creator—about 100,000,000…

Players Are Not Pleased With World Of Warcraft’s New Recruit-A-Friend Program

After going on hiatus in June, World of Warcraft’s long-running Recruit-AFriend program will return later this year with cool new mounts, pets, and garb for players who convince others to join the game. The rewards, which include WoW’s first-ever backpack, look wonderful. It’s nearly everything else about the program, including the timing of its return,…

The Missing Door On This Sims 4 House Is Bugging Me

I try to ignore minor problems in games. When I feel myself getting annoyed at a game, I go through a mental checklist to put the issue in perspective. Is it breaking the game? Is the game still fun to play? If I’m still enjoying myself, then usually I don’t feel a need to harp…

Track: Street Spirit (Fade Out) | Artist: Radiohead | Album: The Bends