Culture

The Art Of Marvel’s Avengers

While working with a licensed property like The Avengers means you don’t need to imagine everything from scratch, there’s still a ton of work that went into designing and fleshing out the setting for Crystal Dynamics’ latest game. Below you’ll find a cross-section of work that went into The Avengers’ development, from environment design to character…

Halo 3: ODST Is Back, So Let’s Remember One Of The Greatest Video Game Trailers Of All Time

Halo 3: ODST is out on Steam today, a fresh addition to the Master Chief Collection, letting a whole new generation of players take part in one of the defining games of the series’ golden age. But today, I don’t want to look forwards, I want to look back, to the game’s 2009 release. When…

Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Six Months Later

Six months ago, life as we knew it changed. The covid-19 pandemic rippled through every corner of society. Millions were infected. Thousands died. Municipalities across the globe issued shelter-in-place orders. Overnight, social distancing turned from a polite suggestion into a mandatory directive. On March 20, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It wasn’t a panacea,…

Black Athena: How Hades Gets Its Gods Right

I love Hades. It’s a great roguelike, has a cleverly-crafted story, and is stuffed with beautiful art and design. But what I like most about it is its commitment to diversity among its characters. Hades’ pantheon of Greek gods is diverse. Athena is a dark-skinned Black woman. Dionysus is south Asian. Hermes is east Asian.…

Ubisoft Apologizes For Excluding Women From Assassin’s Creed Sizzle Reel

Ubisoft, which has spent much of the summer dealing with widespread reports of sexism, harassment, and misconduct at the company, put out a short video on Twitter yesterday highlighting all of the Assassin’s Creed protagonists who have mastered the hidden blade. Somehow it left out all of the women. “The blade is back,” Ubisoft’s Assassin’s…

Xbox Series X Pre-Orders Have Been A Debacle So Far [Update]

Despite advance notice, a set time, and links set up for all of the retailers who would be selling the Xbox Series X and Series S today, trying to pre-order Microsoft’s next-gen console has been a massive headache. Pre-orders in the U.S. were set to start at 11:00 a.m., which is also about the time…

Microsoft Now Has 23 First-Party Studios, Here’s What They’re Making

Let’s take a look at what all these studios are working on and what we can expect from them in the coming months and years.

Destiny 2 Teases The Return Of Variks

“Destroy mines, yessss?” Long-time Destiny players have those words and other morsels of dry sarcasm etched into their brains from spending dozens upon dozens of hours fighting enemy mobs in the first game’s Prison of Elders. Now, that jail’s warden, Fallen scholar Variks, The Loyal, appears set to make a fresh appearance in the game…

Here’s A Book Filled With Game Boy Box Art

Quality video game tome publisher Bitmap Books is about to launch pre-orders for Game Boy: The Box Art Collection, a 372-page volume of nothing but critiqued Game Boy game covers and green-tinged screenshots. I love the contrast between the gorgeous art adorning the outside of Game Boy boxes and the actual in-game screenshots. I like…

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey’s Music Bombards You With Ominous Chants

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re checking out Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, specifically the way its soundtrack utilizes haunting, oppressive vocals to make this difficult RPG that much more distressing. Eep! 2010’s Nintendo DS SMT spin-off Strange Journey (playlist…

Random Generator Spits Out Hilarious Guilty Gear-Style Round Openings

Fighting games, especially those made by Japanese developer Arc System Works, are known for having some pretty wild start-of-round messages. Someone named ArcaneMonkey took all those lines—as well as some choice memes and other non-sequiturs—and inserted them into an online generator, which randomly spits out some really funny stuff. Here are a few of my…

Nintendo Takes Down XXX Peach Game Years After Release

For almost eight years, an incredibly NSFW game called Peach’s Untold Tales has been available to play. But it’s only this month that Nintendo’s lawyers moved on the game, issuing a DMCA notice against it on Github As TorrentFreak report, the notice says Peach’s Untold Tales infringes on the copyrights of everything from Super Mario…

Ron Cobb, The Design Genius Behind Aliens And Back To The Future, Has Died

Ron Cobb, the legendary production designer whose ideas helped define movies like Alien, its sequel Aliens, Conan the Barbarian, Back to the Future and The Last Starfighter, has died at the age of 83. As THR reports, Cobb passed away in Sydney (where he has been living for decades) on Monday having suffered from Lewy…

Following Microsoft’s suggestion that the Xbox Series S can double the frame rate of some Xbox One games, we’ve updated our explainer of everything we know about Microsoft’s next-gen consoles. Read more here.

Whipping Arrows Out Of The Air Is Still Super Satisfying In Spelunky 2

There are a lot of ways to deal with arrow traps in Spelunky 2, but the most satisfying strategy is simply whipping the arrows out of the air before they hit you. Everything in Spelunky 2 is out to kill you. Make one wrong move and you’re liable to get tossed around the level like…

Elden Ring Fans Trolled By Fake Instagram Post Promising News About The Game

Over the weekend, Bandai Namco’s information page for upcoming game Elden Ring briefly redirected to a fake Instagram account. The account said more news about the long-silent game was “coming soon,” as if Elden Ring’s most devoted fans haven’t suffered enough. The Instagram account, called “bandainamcoenteurope,” has a couple hundred followers and three posts that,…

I Guess I Actually Like Roguelikes Now

Roguelike is a dirty gaming word to me: I can’t think of a genre of game that appeals to me less than one in which you do the same things over and over again in slightly tweaked variations until you somehow find the magical combination of paths, abilities, or spells to win the game. But,…

BlizzConline Coming February 2021

After cancelling BlizzCon in May, Blizzard has announced an online version of its massive convention will be held February 19-20, 2021. “While circumstances are keeping us from gathering in person this year,” Blizzard wrote in a blog post. “We’re putting together a little something early next year to channel the spirit of BlizzCon into the…

Gears Tactics Will Have Cross-Saves, Except On Steam

Gears Tactics is making its console launch on November 10, alongside the release of the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X. But only some cross-platform players will be able to continue where they left off. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, cross-saves will only be available between the Windows store and Xbox consoles. First released…

Future Bethesda Games Will Come To Other Consoles ‘On A Case-By-Case Basis,’ Microsoft Says

Following the announcement that Microsoft is buying Bethesda’s parent company, ZeniMax Media, Xbox boss Phil Spencer opened up the possibility that some of the newly acquired publisher’s future games could become exclusives. In an interview with Bloomberg, Spencer said that upcoming Bethesda games like its single-player sci-fi RPG Starfield will come to Xbox, PC, and…