Culture

Mario Deserves Better Than Knock-Off Lucky Charms

The most exciting thing about new Super Mario Cereal is the box. That’s just sad. Announced last week and showing up in stores starting December 11, Super Mario Cereal is essentially a generic Lucky Charms knock-off. It’s got star-shaped oat bits and three types of vaguely Mario-ish marshmallows. It’s not bad, it’s just not anything…

South Park: The Fractured But Whole Uses Little Details To Make Its Characters Human

South Park: The Fractured But Whole has sentiment. This might be a surprise given the television show’s notoriety for crass, irreverent humor. Shock humor can grab an audience’s attention, but it can’t maintain it, and that’s why The Fractured But Whole uses small details to give its bawdy cast of nine-year-olds humanity. It’s difficult to…

Track: Always Ascending | Artist: Franz Ferdinand | Album: Always Ascending Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Track: Failed Transmissions | Artist: Icarus The Owl | Album: Rearm Circuits Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

After Two Years Minecraft Finally Gets A New World Record

Ender Dragon is Minecraft’s final boss, a serpentine collection of dark blocks that launches fireballs at the player. Minecraft speedrunners have long struggled with it, but this week speedrunners finally discovered how to bypass the Dragon altogether. It’s already led to a world record. Part of what makes the fight against the Ender Dragon time…

Crappy Games Keep Trying To Steal PUBG‘s Name On Steam

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds? That’s old hat. These days, I’m all about, um, *checks list* PlayerUnkn1wn: Friendly Fire, PlayerUnkn4wn: Zombie, and Battle Pixel’s Survival Over the past few months, a handful of games with names suspiciously similar to PUBG have made it onto Steam, seemingly undeterred by silly things like Valve’s strenuous approval process (lol) or trademark…

Time to start bringing your Switch to the grocery store. Snacktaku has confirmed that the Amiibo included on boxes of Super Mario Cereal can be scanned without opening the box, which means coins and hearts for Super Mario Odyssey will be available in the cereal aisle starting December 11.

Track: Let’s Go Crazy | Artist: Prince | Album: Purple Rain  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Spice, Flow, Nowhere To Go

Rostyslav Zagornov is an artist based in London who has done work across both video games and film. You can see more of Zagornov’s work at his ArtStation page. To see the images in their native resolution, click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of…

Superhot is getting a standalone expansion. Titled Superhot: Mind Control Delete, it puts a procedurally generated roguelike twist on the original’s time-defying antics. It’s coming to Steam Early Access in two days, but the devs warn that it’ll be “extremely early,” with the full version nearly a year out.

Stealth RPG Seven Tries To Mash Up Thief And Diablo, But It Doesn’t Work

I’ve had my eye on Seven: The Days Long Gone since the moment I heard the words “isometric open-world stealth RPG from ex-Witcher developers.” It sounded like a game made just for me. Unfortunately, while Seven has a cool setting and some fun ideas, the glue that holds it all together is sloppily applied. Seven…

How Super Mario Odyssey 100% Speedrunners Collect Everything, No Matter The Cost

Super Mario Odyssey has hundreds of collectables to find, including moons, coins, and trinkets. Speedrunners who wanted to 100% the game in record time had to figure out obvious things like the best possible route, while also sussing out when it’s safe to take a bathroom break. The current world record for Super Mario Odyssey’s…

Battlegrounds Player Nails Perfect Crossbow Shot On Moving Car

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds player pappabrun crossbow-ed their way into the community’s dreams and an enemy’s car today with an absolutely preposterous shot. Seriously, I cannot even comprehend how they lined up that trajectory in a split second. One for the crossbow history books, right there. Here’s the full clip:

It’s Wild Out There

Geoffrey Bire is an artist at Ubisoft, where he’s worked on games like Ghost Recon: Wildlands and The Division You can see more of Geoffrey’s work at his ArtStation page To see the images in their native resolution, click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work…

Call Of Duty Loot Box Eats Man

Today on Highlight Reel we have synchronized snipes, nuts Mario Odyssey tricks, and much more! Watch the video then talk about your favorite highlight in the comments below. Be sure to check out, like, and share the original videos via the links below. Subscribe to Kotaku on YouTube for more! Catch up on all the…

Here’s What Professional World of Warcraft Cosplay Looks Like

Henchmen Studios, some of the best cosplay builders on the planet, worked with Blizzard earlier this year for PAX West to construct two incredible World of Warcraft outfits. Alleria Windrunner and High Exarch Turalyon were worn by Bubbles Cosplay and Snowdinson Cosplay respectively. The build took ten people almost a month to complete, and involved…

The Week In Games: Curse Of More Loot

Destiny 2’s first DLC expansion arrives this week which means too many of us will be magically drawn back into its universe and grinding for loot whether we want to or not. Last week Bungie laid out a number of small changes coming to the game when Curse of Osiris arrives as well as some…

Track: Jinsei ha Yume Darake | Artist: Ringo Sheena | Album: Gyakuyunyu: Kowankyoku Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

The Best Cosplay Of The Tokyo Comic Con

The Tokyo Comic Con just wrapped up, so let’s check out some of the best—and most entertaining—cosplay of the show. Held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, the Tokyo Comic Con kicked off last Friday and ran through Sunday. Since this is Comic Con, cosplayers mostly portrayed Western comic book, video game and movie characters,…

In Japan, Family Mart Opening Fitness Gyms

Japanese conveniences are already great, but they’re getting greater. Family Mart is opening a string of fitness gyms on top of its convenience stores. According to Jiji, Family Mart plans to open 300 gyms over the next five years, with the first hitting Tokyo’s Ota Ward in February 2018. Dubbed “Fit & Go,” the 24-hour…