Culture

Homeworld 3 Is Coming, Hell Yes

Twenty years after the release of the first game in the series, we got news today that there’s going to be a third mainline Homeworld game. Gearbox announced the title today at PAX West, with development being handled by Blackbird Interactive, the studio behind not just the recent Homeworld Remastered games, but the Homeworld prequel…

Control’s Hidden Puppet Show Is A Horror Masterpiece

Control could be called a horror game. It’s creepy and unsettling,right down to the title cards that pop up in every new location. But Control is also a good action game, withfun, bombastic gunfights. It’s probably best to just call it a thriller—at least, until you find the first episode of Threshold Kids, an inexplicable…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for baking a cake, if I don’t eat all the blueberries I plan to put in the cake first. It’s also for playing video games (possibly while eating cake). At long last, we have returned to the time of Too Many Games. I’m excited to play more Control, and also hop into…

I Keep Quitting Dragon Quest XI Thanks To Its Atrocious Music

Ever since my friend and Kotaku comrade in arms Tim Rogers reviewed Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age last year with glowing praise, I’ve been trying desperately to play it. The combat is snappy, the world is gorgeous, and the prospect of a sweeping story excites me. But every time I play, I…

WoW Classic Players Are Using Illicit Tools To Stay Logged In And Avoid Login Queues

If you watch people play games on Twitch, or you read about them on websites, or you just awoke from a thousand-year slumber and the first thing anybody explained to you was the concept of “video games,” you’re probably aware that everybody’s going bonkers for WoW Classic right now. This has resulted in hours-long queue…

Woman Says Oculus Rift Cofounder Put His Hand Up Her Skirt During VR Demo

Earlier this week, Autumn Taylor, marketing director at the virtual reality game studio Owlchemy Labs, said that Oculus cofounder Michael Antonov groped her during a VR demo in 2016. At first, Taylor described the incident without revealing the person’s identity. “They showed me VR demos, but put their hands up my skirt while they did…

Destiny 2‘s Seasons Will Work Much Differently This Year

Destiny 2 is about to get some big changes with its forthcoming Shadowkeep expansion, out October 1. Changes so big that developer Bungie has chosen to slowly tell us about them piecemeal, in lengthy blog posts from the game’s director, Luke Smith. This week, Smith publisheda postoutlining Destiny’s new approach to its seasonal structure, and…

Here’s September 2019’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

Hitman’s first season led February’s PlayStation Plus games, but if you’re an Xbox fan, now you can get it too with September’s Games with Gold. Which you should, because it rules. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Gold subscription. September’s Games with Gold are: Xbox One Hitman:…

Why King Of Fighters Dominates Latin America’s Fighting Game Scene

What’s the fighting game you remember the most from the arcades of your youth? Street Fighter II? Tekken? Mortal Kombat? If you’re from Latin America, there’s an excellent chance that the first game that jumps to mind wasn’t any of those, and the game that defined your formative arcade experience was actually SNK’s The King…

I May Never Stop Watching YouTube Tutorials And Actually Play This Strategy Game

For the last couple months, I’ve been trying to get into Stellaris in a big way—partly because the game is one of the few 4X games to get an uncompromised console port, and partly because I think space stuff is rad. Since I’m not a PC guy, I’m still pretty new to games in the…

The New Sonic The Hedgehog Monopoly Game Is About Going Fast And Battling Bosses

Debuting in 2017 with a Mario-themed set, Monopoly Gamer combines Hasbro’s classic real estate board game with iconic video game characters and unique game mechanics. Now it’s Sonic’s turn to race around the board, collecting rings, fighting for chaos emeralds, and investing in property, just like he does in his video games. Monopoly Gamer: Sonic…

Wolfenstein: Youngblood just got a little less frustrating. The game’s 1.05 patch—out now for PC and coming soon to consoles—comes with a bevy of tweaks, the biggest ones affecting enemy “bullet sponginess” and adding checkpoints. Still can’t pause in co-op, obviously. (Though you now can offline, thanks to update 1.04.)

Goofy Spider-Man Glitch Turns Everyone Into Walking Piles Of Denim

In the Marvel comic books and films, Spider-Man is a superhero who was bitten by a radioactive spider that granted him the proportionate strength, speed, and agility of an arachnid. In Spider-Man, the PlayStation 4 video game, you play this man in a world gone mad, where everyone was bitten by a pair of radioactive…

Yakuza 7 Announced, Ditches Action Combat For JRPG Battles

The first true post-Kiryu Yakuza game has just been shown off in Tokyo, and Yakuza 7 is changing up more than just its location. Set this time in Yokohama, and featuring new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga (this game was actually very softly announced in March, this is just a more formal and informative reveal) the game…

KEEP FIRING

Zhihui Su is an artist and illustrator from Guangzhou, China. You can see more of Su’s work at his ArtStation page

Incredibly Rare 1980s Konami Game Found, Uploaded

Of all the games ever made for the Famicom/NES, few are as rare as those produced for Konami’s QTa adapter, a special accessory that allowed Nintendo’s consoles to play cartridges made as part of a partnership between the publisher and Japanese media giant NHK. Only a handful of games were made, including an educational series…

Blizzard Sues Shameless WarCraft Rip-Off

There are a lot of mobile games out there ripping off Blizzard’s characters and series, but Glorious Saga is pretty bad even by those low standards. As Polygon reports, Blizzard is suing the game’s creator, Sina Games, accusing it of wholesale theft of the characters from its own WarCraft series. “Every monster, creature, animal, and…

Couple Cosplays Labyrinth To Perfection

Russian husband-and-wife team Molzaand Dextercosplayed as Labyrinth’s Sarah and Jareth respectively the other day, and the results were just fantastic. All photos by Kira

After Player Outcry, Fortnite Reverts Turbo Building Changes

In the wake of widespread outcry over yesterday’s changes to building, Fortnite developer Epic Games has done a 180 on its decision. A lot of Fortnite’s success comes from its building mechanic. Apex Legends and PUBG might also strand competitors in an inescapable death arena with tens of other people, but only Fortnite lets players…

Meet The Fallout 76 Player Mapping Every Item In The Game

The first time Jaret Burkett played Fallout 76, he fully expected that everyone in the game would want him dead. The moment he exited the safety of Vault 76, where every player of the online survival game begins their journey with little to defend themselves, he was attacked by robots. Barely able to take them…