Culture

A Musical Tribute To Counter-Strike‘s Most Frustrating Moments

Counter-Strike is an amazing, brilliantly tactical game. It can also be total bullshit sometimes. Dragonu Ro put together a song/video tribute to his love-hate relationship with Valve’s perennially popular shooter. [UPDATE: Turns out, he didn’t! He took the video from Stagged, its real creator. Apologies for the error.] From constant container disappointments, to shitty teammates,…

Track: The Private Psychedelic Reel (Live) | Artist: The Chemical Brothers | Album: Dig Your Own Hole Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Shadow Of The Colossal Robot

Kait Kybar is an Estonian artist based in Sweden who works at Starbreeze. We actually featured a piece of Kait’s back in 2014, as part of the Into The Pixel showcase (when he worked on Killzone: Shadow Fall), so it’s about time we gave him his own feature. You can see more of Kait’s work…

XCOM 2, Now With 100% More Bob Ross

XCOM 2 can be stressful as fuck. Thank goodness for Bob Ross and his soothing tones. Also his terrifying talent with a plasma rifle. With the help of an expansive voice pack and some in-game character tinkering, you can have renowned snake charmer of the demons of the human soul (also painter/Twitch star) Bob Ross…

Venture Bros. Cosplay Is Too Real

Sometimes, you see a group cosplay effort that looks like it took a lot of design and planning, and looks pretty good for a bunch of humans in costume. Other times, like here, you see a group cosplay effort that looks like three characters walked straight off a TV set and into the real world.…

Palpatine Will Dab On Those Fools

Today on Highlight Reel we have a dabbing Palpatine, bad rocket aim, Rainbow 6 breaching failures, tasers, 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.…

The Best Cosplay From MAGFest 2016

The 2016 edition of MAGFest, a big music games festival, went down in DC over the weekend, and there was a ton of cool cosplay on show. Photographer Devon Rowland was there, and she took these shots of the cosplayers in attendance. You can see more of Devon’s cosplay photography here If you recognise (or…

Players Find Half-Life And Left 4 Dead Demos Buried In Valve’s VR Code

Valve’s new VR performance test program contains a two-minute snippet of the infamous Portal-themed Aperture Robot Repair demo. But there’s also more, if you know where to look. SteamDB and ValveTime dug through the code of an older version of the performance test, and they unearthed all sorts of interesting artifacts from Valve’s earlier attempts…

Witch House Looks Like Gothic XCOM

Supernatural crimes? Turn-based tactics? A detective main character who sounds like when he says he wants a whiskey on the rocks, he means jagged shards of gravel? Gee, Witch House, it seems an awful lot like you’re trying to get my attention. Witch House takes place in the prohibition era. More specifically, it’s set in…

Our Favorite (And Least Favorite) Vita Memories

The PlayStation Vita turns four today in North America, which makes for a good excuse to look back and reminisce about Sony’s much-criticized portable console. Come join some of Kotaku’s staff for a chat about the Vita and what we’ve done with it over the past few years. Jason Schreier: Hi guys! Four years ago…

Snacktaku Eats Stale Munchkins And Sadness At LaGuardia Airport

After spending nearly a week in New York City eating Taco Bell and attendingToy Fair 2016 I was more than ready to fly home to see my wife and children. Due to uncooperative weather I spent the night on the floor at LaGuardia instead, eating the worst version of tasty things. My flight to Atlanta…

The Many, Many Faces Of Nathan Fillion

Brad Shortt is a Senior Character Artist at 343 Industries, the (current) developers of the Halo series. For Halo 5, Brad got to play around with Nathan Fillion’s (slightly improved) video game face. A lot And everyone else’s face too, mind. But they’re not quite as interesting as seeing the Firefly star look like he’s…

Track: Dust | Artist: Glitterbug | Album: Dust Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

The Week In Games: Enter The Beastmaster

Thog love kitty. Kitty Thog friend. Thog and kitty always together. Thog name kitty Phsteven. Good Phsteven. Games come. Thog fear games. Games scare Thog. Phsteven keep Thog safe. Thog want to play Agatha Christie. Tuesday, February 23 Far Cry Primal — PS4, Xbox One Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders — PS4, Xbox One, PC…

Sunday Comics: Snake Sex

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 February 19. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published February 15. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…

This Week In The Business: Casual Casualties

QUOTE | “[O]ur games for core audiences did extremely well, but the casual audience has not yet emerged on next gen consoles.” – An Activision Blizzard representative explaining why the company laid off developers after disappointing debuts for Skylanders SuperChargers and Guitar Hero Live. Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… QUOTE | “Up…

Devil Daggers Keeps Kicking My Ass, And It’s Great

My first play session with Devil Daggers, a new ‘90s-inspired shooter on Steam, lasted five seconds. When I’m playing Devil Daggers, my face pretty much always looks like this: Because of this: Devil Daggers is not what I would call a kind game. Everything about it is leering, hostile, agonized. The game’s sole room is…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The shortest month of the year is cruising into the home stretch, and there are still so many games to play. What will you be playing this weekend? I’ll go first: I’m in the thick of an XCOM 2 playthrough that is likely going to end with the fall of the Advent, though who knows…

A Game Disappeared From Steam, And Nobody’s Saying Why

A few weeks ago, a pirate-themed RPG called Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry vanished from the Steam store. At that point, it was surrounded on all sides by (unproven) allegations of fake reviews and shady dealings. Flash forward to now: people still can’t figure out precisely why it disappeared. I’ve been keeping a close eye…

Ask Dr. NerdLove: My Girlfriend Won’t Stop Cheating On Me With Her Ex

Hello, Internet! Welcome to Ask Dr. NerdLove, the first dating advice column to break through to the 8th dimension with the power of the Oscillation Overthruster. On occasion I get a reader letter that’s so complex and dramatic that the only thing to do is go through it piece by piece, peeling back the layers…