Culture

Sunday Comics: Time To Get Festive 

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published December 9. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published December 4. Read more…

Track: Subterranean Homesick Alien | Artist: Radiohead | Album: OK Computer

This Week In The Business: Learning From Success

QUOTE | “Taking more time with Assassin’s Creed Origins enabled our talented development team to fully express their creative vision. As expected, this had a very positive impact on the game’s quality and largely participated to its commercial success. Taking a similar approach, we have decided to invest additional development time in three upcoming games.”…

PUBG‘s Desert Map Makes The Game Feel New Again

The desert. Unanimously voted “the place nobody really wants to be” every year since the beginning of time, it might seem like an odd spot for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ second-ever map. Despite the oppressive conditions, however, the map is a breath of fresh air. The map, called Miramar, is more than just a reskin of PUBG’s…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for snow, one of the greatest things that exists. Also, video games. I am making all sorts of Witcher 3 progress again, delightfully. I’m also going to check out Floor Kids on my Switch, as well as the host of super-exciting changes in The Long Dark’s latest patch. So much to do! What…

Assassin’s Creed Hippo Joins The Order

Today on Highlight Reel we have Rainbow Six plays, stealthy hippos, a frozen Link 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…

Track: Continental Breakfast | Artist: Courtney Barnett + Kurt Vile | Album: Lotta Sea Lice  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

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: