Culture

Fortnite Leakers Band Together To Swear Off Spoiling This Weekend’s Big Event

In these days of rampant data mining, few things are ever truly surprises. Even Fortnite’s seemingly endless parade of (often literal) bashes isn’t immune, with big moments like the Tilted-Towers-leveling Vault event getting spoiled before players could experience them firsthand. This weekend, though, longtime leakers—people with the word “leak” front and center in their handles—have…

Fan Makes NES John Wick Game And It’s Really Hard

Keanu Reeves’ “John Wick” character appeared in Fortnite earlier this year, and has a strategy game called John Wick Hex coming sometime in the future. But if you don’t feel like waiting, there’s now a short NES homage to the would-be-retired hitman you can play for free. Spotted by PC Gamer, the short game, titled…

Meet The Pixel Artist Recreating Breath of The Wild Scenes In 8-Bit

On Tuesday, Instagram user ncxaesthetic began uploading a series of “screenshots” in which he took iconic scenes from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and rendered them in the 8-bit pixel art style of the Game Boy Color Zelda games like Link’s Awakening DX. Here, for example, is a scene from early in…

Watch Goichi Suda Tell Me Absolutely Nothing About No More Heroes 3

Less than an hour after releasing a two-and-a-half-minute teaser for No More Heroes 3 last month, Grasshopper Manufacture CEO Goichi Suda graciously agreed to sit down with me for one hour and answer no questions whatsoever. We filmed the whole thing. I condensed the experience into 24 minutes, because if you watched the whole hour,…

Three Incredible Mario Kart Wii Shortcut Glitches Discovered Within 24 Hours

Mario Kart Wii remains the best-selling game in the series, and despite being over a decade old, players are still discovering new secrets hidden deep inside its 32 courses. Just last week, three new shortcuts were discovered, continuing the race to try and find one for every course in the game. Prior to July 11, there…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for going to visit my sister and her kids in Texas, where I will get to ride a horse and pet a dog. Her kids are kind of excited to see me, but they’re mostly excited I’m bringing my Switch. I don’t think kids under 11 will be very excited to play…

I Play Destiny As A Warlock But Now Think I Should Be A Titan

As far back as I can remember, I, like Ray Liotta, have always wanted to be a Warlock. My daddy was a Warlock. His daddy was a Warlock. Warlockin’ is in my blood, I thought as I started up Destiny for the first time in 2014. When Destiny 2 was released three years later, I…

‘The Discord Is The Church:’ A Place For Gamers To Worship

A few months ago, I was watching streamer Matt Souza play Fortnite on a custom server while I played along with his community, GodSquad Church. With a laptop earbud in one ear and my PC headset over another, I landed randomly on a hilltop near Polar Peak, only to immediately be killed by a player…

The Fraught History Of The Sims Introducing Same-Sex Romance Options

In design documents for the very first Sims game, renowned programmer Don Hopkins wrote that anyone offended by the game having same-sex romance needs to “needs to grow up and get a life.” According to a New Yorker article, programmer Patrick J. Barrett III added same-sex romance to the game without much input from anyone…

Track: Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do? | Artist: Radwimps | Album: Weathering With You OST  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment. 

Pick Up That Can

Alex Nice is an artist who has worked on stuff like Pacific Rim and John Wick 3 You can see more of Alex’s work at his personal site and ArtStation page

Nike Is Making Official Spongebob Squarepants Sneakers [Update]

While some of Nike’s recent pop-culture tie-ins have merely been inspired by something, this upcoming line of Kyries is a full and officially licensed collaboration between the athletics company and…Spongebob Squarepants. [Update: now with official product images] If that seems like an odd partnership, it’s actually a fairly predictable fit for Walking Galaxy Brain Meme…

Streamer Tries To Test PUBG Bug, Accidentally Lands Shot Of A Lifetime

Sometimes, there’s just no point in trying—for instance, when you’ve got to nail a shot on a target that’s several football fields’ worth of space away. Luckily for Twitch streamer Jake “ChocoTaco” Throop, he wasn’t trying at all. Or at least, he wasn’t trying to do that particular thing. Throop just wanted to demonstrate a…

Ignored By Nintendo, Brazilian Fans Film Their Own Nintendo Direct

If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. As USGamer reports, a group of Brazilian Nintendo fans, fed up with the way the company has withdrawn from the market (which has left them paying big import prices for games and hardware), decided to team up and record their own Nintendo Direct. Led by…

In Dustnet, You Explore The Ruins Of One Of Video Games’ Most Beloved Maps

Even within the internet’s vast digital memory, nothing is guaranteed to last—especially not games. Maybe a company runs out of money and has to cut the cord. Or maybe disinterest turns servers into ghost towns, with not even a pixelated tumbleweed in sight. Dustnet takes the latter idea to its utmost extreme, positing a world…

Permadeath Doesn’t Matter If You Have Enough Save Files

From XCOM to Fire Emblem, it feels bad to watch your team die in a tactical game. It’s way better to save a million times so that you can re-do part of a battle to keep everyone alive. On this week’s Kotaku Splitscreen, Kirk and I brought on Gita Jackson to talk about Fire Emblem:…

Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has explained how the new role queue feature will work in-game. Both quick play and competitive modes will, by default, incorporate role queue. You’ll queue up for matches based on whether you want to play tank, damage, or support, and in the case of competitive, you’ll have a separate skill rating…

Please Let Me Buy Individual Joy-Cons To Mix And Match

Earlier this week Nintendo announced two new sets of Joy-Cons that will release in October. Once they’re out, the Switch will have over 100 different color combinations, an impressive number of options even by the standards of the most devoted Nintendo fan. But the Joy-Cons are still only sold in pairs, making true customization an…

The Strange Guilt Of Changing Jobs In An MMO

As I continue to lose myself in the world of Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion, writing guides on how new folks can get started and fighting terrifying raid bosses, I’ve also taken the time to experiment with new jobs. I followed my co-worker Mike Fahey’s lead and started the new Dancer job. And oh my…

GTA Online‘s Casino Will Have Horse Racing, Private Arcades, And Penthouses

GTA Online’s casino update launches July 23. The update is about the opening of the Diamond Casino & Resort in Los Santos. Rockstar has revealed more information about the long-teased update via a separate website, a first for GTA Online expansions. The update sounds ambitious and potentially very expensive, with slot machines, horse track betting,…