Culture

The Week In Games: Hyper Light Rifter

In case you hadn’t been paying attention to the calendar, this coming Friday is April 1. As I don’t work on Fridays, I plan to spend the day curled into a tight ball under my desk playing Hyper Light Drifter. Before that I will likely be playing some Nights of Azure, a strange hack-and-slash sort…

Sunday Comics: Nobody Has To Die Here Today

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published March 24. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published March 21. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…

This Week In The Business: Bullshit Crunch

QUOTE | “Crunch is bullshit.” – Failbetter Games CEO and creative director Alexis Kennedy talking about the problem the game industry has with ridiculous overtime and why crunch is not sustainable for game studios Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… QUOTE | “Muslim blood is the cheapest on Earth right now.” – Vlambeer’s…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

It’s the weekend! The days may be longer and the weather may be warmer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t spend a bunch of time playing video games. This weekend I’ll be playing a buuuuunch of different games. I’m heading up our coverage of the Oculus Rift, so I’ll be playing a bunch of the…

Ubisoft Steam Sale Bundle Costs More Than Buying Games Individually

Price of individual products: $68.17. Your cost: $99.99. Hmmmm. Steam’s running a big sale on Ubisoft games this weekend, and it’s pretty exciting. Even newer games like Far Cry Primal have had their price tags trampled by mammoths and yelled at by weird frightened NPC dudes. The sale is definitely worth a look. Buuuut all…

Oh Deer

Today on Highlight Reel we have bad deer, kill streaks, selfies, car slides, unnerving Division moments and much, much more! Watch the video above or on our Youtube Page, 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 Rocket…

What We Liked and Hated (Mostly Hated) About Batman v Superman

Last night, two of Kotaku’s staffers went to see DC Comics’ biggest superhero icons duke it out on the big screen. World’s Finest, it ain’t. Mike Fahey and myself are probably the most superhero comics-loving people here at Kotaku. But we both went to Batman v Superman out of a sense of duty rather than…

Pinball Was Once Illegal

Pinball. The great American (mechanical) pastime. It’s about as innocent as gaming gets, especially compared to the blood, drugs and sex you find in video games. Yet bizarrely, for decades, pinball was actually declared illegal in some of America’s biggest cities, including New York and Los Angeles. This piece originally appeared 4/4/12. It had nothing…

Valve Wants People To Mod The Steam Controller

Don’t like the look or feel of the ever-divisive Steam Controller? Valve just released all the information you’ll need to modify or rebuild it. You can grab the complete package, which comprises the Steam Controller’s mechanical CAD geometry, right here. Valve briefly outlined its contents: “The archive contains several eDrawings viewer files: from Creo Express…

Of Course Somebody Recreated The Holodeck In Steam VR

Ever since HTC and Valve’s Vive VR headset was announced, people have been comparing it to Star Trek’s Holodeck. Now that Valve is letting people make their own Steam VR backgrounds—between-game hangouts, essentially—someone put two and two together. Reddit user illogical_cpt came up with the background, which Steam user Bradllez uploaded to Valve’s new VR…

Slain Looks Like Heavy Metal Castlevania

Sometimes we play games because we want stories, or otherworldly out-of-body experiences, or to drive a Euro Truck. Other times, we just want to kill some shit. Slain happily obliges. Slain is a new sidescroller coming to Steam today, and it looks excruciatingly solid. It combines chunky pixels with gothic Castlevania-style environments, an elemental combo…

Podcast: The Future Of Gaming Hardware

By this time next year, we could be playing PS4.5 at home and NX on the go, with VR goggles strapped to our heads the whole time. Who’s ready for the future? On today’s episode of our podcast, Kotaku Splitscreen, Kirk and I take a deep dive into virtual reality, the Nintendo NX, and the…

Track: The Fleets Arrive | Artist: Sam Hulick | Album: Mass Effect 3 Original Soundtrack In-game video (ME3 spoilers): Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Jako, The Angry Little Mako

Timothy Rodriguez is a freelance artist from France who has done work for companies like Bethesda, Warner Bros. and Applibot. You can see more of Timothy’s work at his personal site and ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper),…

Darkest Dungeon‘s Harrowing Journey Through Steam Early Access

When Darkest Dungeon first launched on Steam Early Access in February 2015, it was almost universally beloved. A unique, polished, fleshed-out experience on Early Access? It was practically unheard of. So it was all happily ever after from there, right? Hardly. For a few months, things went according to plan. The punishingly difficult dungeon-crawler RPG/trauma…

Amazing Nathan Drake Cosplay Enters…Uncharted Waters

I mean, sure, you could just dress up as Uncharted’s Nathan Drake. Or you could become him, and spend a day running around waterfalls, climbing trees and abseiling with an AK-47 and flares. Italian cosplay superstar Leon Chiro opted for the latter, and ended up with these incredible shots taken by Alessio “Fotomania” Buzi

Geralt & Ciri Say Goodbye

There will come a day when I stop posting amazing Witcher 3 cosplay. But it is not this day. Ciri is Miranda Hedman, Geralt is Tim Filin

Track: Jazz (We’ve Got) | Artist: A Tribe Called Quest | Album: The Low End Theory

Track: Pork Ginger | Artist: Tricot | Album: N/A Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Chris Le designed a Counter-Strike weapon skin in Vive VR. Le, a BFF of Danny Trejo, used a Google 3D painting program called Tilt Brush to do it. In it, you walk around and draw on thin air. It’s one of the more interesting Vive apps I’ve tried, and watching someone use it to make…