Culture

The PS5 Music Is A Whole Existential Mood

Last night I set up my PS5, started to download some games, and was immediately sucked through a haunting wormhole of self reflection by the next-gen system’s brooding menu music. I’ve been following all of the pre-release news and read dozens of PS5 reviews, including Kotaku’s own, so I had a pretty good idea of…

Remastered Nioh Collection Coming To PS5 In February

Samurai action games Nioh 1 and 2 are getting next-gen upgrades, including graphical enhancements and higher framerates, on PS5 come February 5. In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Team Ninja creative director Tom Lee writes that both games will support 4K, run at 120 FPS, have much faster load times, and let players bring…

Phil Collins, Leonard Nimoy, “Sugar Tit’s,” And A Kick-Ass Double Dragon II Vocal

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. So, you want a kick-ass Double Dragon II arrange album? Got you one right here. Plus, uh, some other things. Buckle up. 1990’s NES version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge (playlist / longplay) was a…

‘Who Even Are These People,’ And Other Questions From A Newcomer’s Time With Destiny 2: Beyond Light

Over the past two days, I’ve played around 10 hours of Destiny 2. I have no idea what is happening. I’m a Destiny newcomer. While it is technically true that I played exactly one hour of the first Destiny back in 2014, I barely remember it. When I began playing Destiny 2 with friends a…

You Can’t Duplicate Items In PS5 Demon’s Souls (Update: Sony Confirms)

The first thing I did in the PlayStation 5 remake of Demon’s Souls—after getting my ass handed to me by the Vanguard demon and being sent to the Nexus, of course—is stop by Blacksmith Boldwin to see if the classic, supremely useful duplication glitch was still a thing. Sadly, it is not. The duplication glitch…

No, I Won’t Ride The Big Wolf In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, released earlier this week, has some wild, strange, and magical elements in it. But while it might contain witches and impossible future technology, I draw the line at a specific inclusion. I won’t ride the giant wolf, Ubisoft. I won’t do it. In Valhalla, players have access to a horse, allowing them…

Demon’s Souls Has Some Truly Fucked Up Teeth Options

With both the PlayStation 5 and its marquee launch game Demon’s Souls launching today, you’re going to see a lot about the latter’s character creator. And for good reason! The robust customization options give you the ability to make some very cool avatars for exploring Boletaria. The teeth, though. My god, the teeth. I don’t…

Destiny 2: Beyond Light‘s New Stasis Powers Have Turned PVP Into A Mess

Destiny 2: Beyond Light’s brand new Stasis powers let players freeze one another, but they aren’t too happy about it. Play through Beyond Light’s main story campaign and you’ll get to command powers that freeze mobs of enemies and then let you shatter them into a million crystalline pieces. Stasis, a new elemental subclass derived…

Day One Patch To Fix Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War‘s Overpowered Sliding

Treyarch announced it’s going to fix one of Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s most powerful and controversial tactics ahead of launch: sliding. While Black Ops Cold War doesn’t come out until tomorrow, players have already gotten a taste of its multiplayer during weekend betas earlier in the month. One of the major verdicts?…

Forget About The Pandemic For A Second And Look At This Chill Game About Bird Watching

Monument Valley creators Ustwo Studio couldn’t have picked a better time to release a new game about exploring nature on a breezy Mediterranean island. In Alba: a Wildlife Adventure you spend a summer with your grandparents taking hikes, cleaning up litter, and snapping pics of all the wildlife you run into. First announced earlier this…

No Wonder Billie Eilish Likes Ilomilo So Much

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 music from Ilomilo, a puzzle game so overwhelmingly delightful that Billie Eilish wrote a song about it One of my favorite games of all time, Southend Interactive’s Ilomilo (playlist / longplay /…

Track: Autumn In New York | Artist: Billie Holiday | Album: Lady in Autumn

The Art Of Watch Dogs: Legion

The latest Watch Dogs game might be set in a real place, but Ubisoft’s vision for near-future London still took a lot of work to pull together. In this gallery you’ll find a selection of pieces from a number of artists who worked on the game. It’s not everything from everyone, but it’s enough to…

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate Sort Of Works On PS5, If You Don’t Mind The Shadows

Remember when Ubisoft said the PS4 version of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate wouldn’t run on the PS5, then said never mind? Well, the quietly excellent 2015 Assassin’s Creed game mostly works on Sony’s new system. There’s just a lot of flickering. I downloaded Syndicate to my PS5 a few days ago and was pleased to see it…

YouTube Is Down, So No, It’s Not Just You [Update]

YouTube is suffering one hell of an outage right now, with not just its video playback but accompanying services like YouTube music also down for the count. I first noticed it about an hour ago while…looking up old Homeworld videos, then quickly noticed that my YouTube Music playback (I keep music playing in the background…

Now 2021 Cosplay Shows Are Being Cancelled As Well

We were all expecting most 2020 conventions to have been cancelled, but the complete inability of most of the planet—and the United States in particular—to get its shit together means that we’re already starting to see big 2021 shows thrown in the bin as well. Katsucon is the first, announcing earlier today that “It is…

Twitch Apologizes, But DMCA Fiasco Continues With Punishments For In-Game Sounds, Deleted Clips

Twitch’s past three weeks have been bleak, to say the least. Late last month, the company abruptly purged thousands of streamers’ videos and advised them to delete all remaining clips in advance of a massive music industry DMCA crackdown—one it had known about for months, but failed to adequately warn streamers about until it developed…

This Speedy Gaming Monitor Was Co-Designed By Porsche

Non-congressional gaming monitor maker AOC and Porsche Design have teamed up to create exactly what one would expect from such a collaboration—an incredibly fast gaming monitor. The $800 Porsche Design AOC AGON PD27 is a 27-inch QHD monitor with a 240 Hz refresh rate, .5 millisecond response time, and a stand design inspired by a…

Plague Inc. Now Has A New Mode In Which You Try To Stop A Pandemic

The most successful video game about spreading disease got a long-promised new mode today that lets you try to stop a pandemic. Plague Inc’s new Cure mode challenges you to find the right mix of contact tracing, lockdown enforcement, vaccine research, economic assistance, and similar measures to bring society to the moment we’re all dreaming…

Roblox Creators Will Now Have To Pay For The Game’s Iconic ‘Oof’ Sound [Updated]

Kid-game sensation Roblox’s meme-famous death sound, a distressing and guttural “oof,” will be temporarily removed from the game. Following a settlement with the sound’s creator, at the end of the month the “oof” will cost money to use in games created in Roblox, and a new default death sound will replace it. (Correction, 7:45pm—A PR…