Culture

We Miss You, Barney

Olya Bossak is an artist based in St. Petersburg, Russia. You can see more of Olya’s work at her 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 video game artists, showcasing the best of both…

Owlboy Developers Leave Some Glitches Alone For Speedrunners

Developers make games, and speedrunners break them. Those goals might seem to be at odds, but Owlboy studio D-Pad keeps in touch with the game’s speedrunning community, and has left sequence-breaking glitches intact just for them. (It’s even added some back in.) Like inspirations such as Super Mario Bros 3 and Kid Icarus, Owlboy has…

Doomfist Controller Lets Overwatch Players Catch These Hands

Today on Highlight Reel we have fatal bullets, pileups, land cruising, self-help, 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! Final Fantasy XV –dance the…

What We Mostly Loved About Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can. Apparently spiders can reboot their movie franchises twice in 15 years. The web-head made his feature debut in the Marvel cinematic universe, and it wasn’t horrible at all. Join Patricia Hernandez and me as we discuss Spider-Man: Homecoming Fahey: First off, let’s establish a baseline. I have seen…

Steam Bans Over 40,000 Accounts

If you’re gonna cheat, you might as well do it on the cheap. That seems to be the going line of thought among would-be cheaters in games like Counter-Strike, who risk losing access to games and even their accounts if they get caught. Valve, however, has caught on to the loophole. The day after this…

What We Loved (And Didn’t Love) About The Castlevania Anime

Netflix’s Castlevania animated series released over the weekend and has plenty of demon killing, testicle jokes, magic and blood. But how does it hold up as a complete package? I sat down with my coworker Mike Fahey to talk about all the good and all the bad. SPOILERS AHEAD Heather Alexandra, Kotaku: Netflix’s Castlevania series…

The Best Speedruns From SGDQ 2017

A lot of people played video games very quickly last week, raising $1.7 million for charity in the process. All of the speedruns at Summer Games Done Quick 2017 were entertaining, but if you don’t have time to catch up on them all, here were some of my favorites. Final Fantasy VII (starts at 11:15)…

Symmetra Is Overpowered In Real Life

Here’s a video of someone cosplaying as Symmetra’s microwave attack, which not only features some very good Symmetra cosplay, but also a cameo from the character’s voice actor, Anjali Bhimani. Symmetra is Utahime, while the microwave is D Piddy

The Week In Games: Ivalice Homecoming 

Eleven years later, fans will once again be able to return to Final Fantasy XII’s vast, MMO-inspired fields and dungeons in HD and with a lot less jagged edges. You wouldn’t know it from this list, but the series twelfth outing was actually pretty phenomenal. Final Fantasy has always tried to do two completely incompatible…

Bidding War Over The Player’s Name In Earthbound Speedrun Goes Down To The Wire

This year’s Summer Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon finished with Earthbound. In part a charity event raising funds for Doctors Without Borders, viewers were allowed to bid on naming stuff at the beginning of the game. Ness’s favorite thing, for instance, was almost Bepis, beat out just barely by R.N.G. instead thanks to $25.12. The…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Christie On Vacation, Winners!

Last week I asked you to take Governor Chris Christie on vacation, and man does that guy get around. Pleasance13’s entry didn’t just take Christie to another beach or alternate universe, it took him inside a game that refused to release until it was something entirely different. I’d be about as likely to play something…

Podcast: Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy XIV, And… Other Games

Today’s Kotaku Splitscreen is made just the way you like it: heavy on the Fahey and the Final Fantasy First, Kirk regales us with stories from his backpacking adventures before settling down with me to talk Destiny 2 soccer (9:58), Mass Effect: Andromeda’s lack of DLC (15:43), and Zelda’s new content (24:44). Then we bring…

Sunday Comics: Beware The Hat

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 July 9. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published July 3. Read more…

Summer Games Done Quick 2017 Breaks Last Year’s Record, Raises $1.7 Million For Charity

Seven days later, this year’s Summer Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon has come to an end, but not before raising $1,760,400 for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Last year’s event raised around $1.3 million for the organization, making SGDQ 17 a record breaking year (AGDQ 17 was earlier this year and broke its own…

Track: Sugar | Artist: Beach Fossils | Album: Somersault  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

This Week In The Business: Tear Down That Rocket League Wall 

QUOTE | “It is inevitable. How long [until] inevitable actually becomes reality, I don’t know. But we think we are getting there. The key is for the community to really get behind the idea.” – Psyonix VP of publishing Jeremy Dunham is confident that Sony will follow Microsoft and Nintendo in allowing cross-platform play for…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for packing to move into a new house! So probably not video games. But probably actually video games, because packing is boring. I spent all my money in The Witcher 3‘s Blood and Wine expansion on Geralt’s house, which is pretty similar to my current real-life situation. So I need to grind…

Speedrunner Beats All Of Link To The Past‘s Dungeons Without A Sword

The highlight of this week’s Summer Games Done Quick marathon happened very early this morning, as the charismatic speedrunner Andy broke the hell out of Link to the Past, beating the whole game without using a sword. The run lasts around an hour and 20 minutes and is mostly a showcase for glitches, boundary breaks,…

What We Loved (And Didn’t Love) About Baby Driver

Do you like good music and cool car chases? If so, you will probably find something to like in Baby Driver, Edgar Wright’s new spring-loaded rock ‘n roll heist flick. My colleague Gita Jackson and I handbrake-spun into theaters after the movie came out last week, and decided we’d sit down afterward and talk about…

Doubt And Drama Still Haunt An Old, Seemingly Impossible Atari World Record 

The current world record for the Atari 2600 racing game Dragster is 5.51 seconds. Thirty-five years after it was set, nobody has beaten or even tied it on official leaderboards. One speedrunner who has examined the game’s inner workings believes that world record to be impossible, but the game’s creator thinks it’s legitimate. For now,…