Culture

Ark: Survival Evolved Has Downgraded Its Dinosaurs

Ark: Survival Evolved is one of the most popular survival games ever, and if you can’t see why, you’re the dumb adult in one of those old Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials. It’s the dinosaurs. So what happens when a patch makes them markedly less useful? Things go south in a hurry. The PC version of…

Track: Colorless Aquarium | Artist: tricot | Album: A N D Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Turns Out Robots Don’t Need Arms

Thomas Istepanyan is a freelance artist from Paris, France. You can see more of Thomas’ work at his ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine Art is a celebration…

Valve Bans Match-Fixing Counter-Strike Players For Life

Nearly a year after a notorious scandal, Valve has clarified their stance on the punishment for match-fixing (that is, conspiring to lose on purpose, typically for the purposes of illicit moneymaking) in pro Counter-Strike: a permanent ban from competition. Not “indefinite.” Permanent. With teams like iBuyPower—whose members were found to have participated in a major…

Player Creates Crowd-Sourced Trash Talk Generator For Steam Games

For many players, friendly (or unfriendly) trash talk is as much a part of competitive games as, well, gaming. Truly clever quipping, however, ain’t easy, so one Steam user decided to crowdsource an automated trash talk generator. This being the Internet, things of course went horribly wrong—at least, at first. Davis Ford’s Shittalk Generator allows…

One-Handed Transformers: Devastation Speedrun Lights Our Darkest 45 Minutes

Here we see speedrunner Halfcoordinated taking out the Autobots’ most feared enemy with one punch during his Awesome Games Done Quick run of Transformers: Devastation on its highest difficulty level. That’d be an impressive feat even if he were playing with both hands. But Halfcoordinated is not playing with both hands. He’s playing with one…

SOMA Mod Stops Monsters From Attacking, Improves The Game

SOMA is a contemplative horror game dripping with psychological, oftentimes existential dread. It’s also about running from scary monsters. Surprisingly, however, stripping out that second part actually makes the game more enjoyable and, in some ways, scarier. The Dreamer’s rather derisively named Wuss Mode: Monsters Won’t Attack mod is actually really cool. They describe it…

FIFA Celebration Gets A Little Out Of Hand

Today on Highlight Reel we have wrestling confusion, Just Cause 3 explosions, dog warping, good goals and much more! Watch the video above, 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. Just Cause 3 – Heads up –…

Track: The Witcher 3 Cover: Priscilla’s Song – The Wolven Storm | Artist: Malukah | Album: N/A Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Mortal Kombat Cosplay Is Ripping Out Hearts

Costume? Check. Make-up? Check. Bloody organ? Check. Kotal Khan cosplay by Yeliz, photos by SLDixon

The Art Of Fable Legends

Normally, we get to see concept art from a game after it’s been released. With Fable Legends, though, the art book is out months before the game. It’s by Titan Books, and if Fable’s bright colours and big boots are your thing, you can order a copy here Below you’ll find a selection of some…

Undertale Creator: It’s OK If People Dislike The Game 

As I mentioned in my Undertale review, the game’s fans can be a bit… insistent. “You can’t dislike it! That’s not possible!” That kind of thing. I get it. To an extent, I am one of those people. But, as these things often do, it’s resulted in some heated exchanges. Undertale fans are dedicated. They…

The Steam Winter Sale Is Over, But People Are Still Hunting For Clues

Shortly after the big Steam winter sale kicked off, intrepid users started sleuthing around, believing that they’d latched onto some kind of alternate reality game (or ARG, for short). Surprisingly, they ended up finding a secret search bar within Steam, as well as other hints. But… that’s it. And now it’s over. When I first…

Five Cool Steam Games I Played Over The Holidays

This holiday season, I received the most precious gift of all: a bit of free time. I ended up using it mostly to play an ungodly amount of Fallout 4 (it’s alright), but also to check out a handful of Steam games from last year that I never quite got around to. While I haven’t…

Fallout 3 Beaten In Under 15 Minutes, A New World Record

Watch as one gamer blazes through the capital wasteland in the time it takes most of us to deliberate over a single SPECIAL point. Phenomenal. The latest world record playthrough of Fallout 3 “any percentage” was attained by Rydou a few days ago, and you can watch the 14:54 run below. It’s the first time…

Track: One Night in Neo Kobe City | Artist: Konami Kukeiha Club | Album: Snatcher Original Soundtrack Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Nice Wheels

Jan Urschel is an artist who worked on the sadly-cancelled Star Wars: 1313. He’s also worked for companies like Marvel, EA, Sony, Microsoft and Ubisoft across both games and film. We featured Jan’s work back in 2012, but since that was four years ago, I figured it’s time for a showcase of some more recent…

Nice League Cosplay

There’s a lot of good League of Legends cosplay out there, but Kenny Chan’s experience with props and armour (and Matt Eleven’s fantastic photos) really set this Garen outfit apart.

We’ve seen the best cosplay stills of 2015, but how about a change of pace? This video by Mineralblu recounts the twelve cons he attended this year, from Comic-Con to PAX South to Katsucon.

The Week In Games: The Best Games Of 2016 (So Far)

At a time when everyone is debating which games were the best released during the year previous, it’s good to have some certainty. For a brief, shining moment, the games released this week are the best games of 2016. And that’s great, because we generally completely forget about these by the time late December rolls…