Culture

A Cute Lil’ Akira Prequel Sounds Weirdly Tempting

Nilberto Tawata is a 3D artist from Brazil, and this is his lil’ Kaneda, who as a kid was learning all the important skills he would go on to need as a…bigger kid. I love how, since the whole model is including iconic Kaneda imagery like his bike (and stickers), jacket and hair, the brake…

Bungie Is Fixing Fashion In Destiny‘s Fourth Year

Destiny 2 is a game about grinding for loot, and one of the biggest motivators is how cool that loot looks. In recent seasons, a lot of these cosmetics have been locked behind the game’s microtransaction shop. Bungie says that will change come September. “In today’s Destiny 2, the balance of the game’s rewards is…

Tonight We Riot Devs Wanted To Make An ‘Unapologetically Leftist’ Game

“Politics” has become a dirty word in gaming, especially when angrily screamed—or, as is usually the case, frantically typed—by a vocal minority of reactionary video game fans. But for more progressive players, games often aren’t political enough. Or, when they do take a position, they push objectionable conservative concepts like capitalism, imperialism, and militarism. Tonight…

Video Games Are Full Of Weird Birds

Outside my current place of residence, there is a nest full of freshly hatched baby birds. They’re shapeless little blobs, embryonic amalgams of beaks and fluff. They do not look like birds. They are, in that sense, perhaps the closest living relatives of the polygonal mutant birds that appear in video game backgrounds, as highlighted…

Valorant Players Say Anti-Cheat Is Making Their PCs Overheat

There’s anti-cheat software, and then there’s the program Valorant’s got under its hood. When the game’s closed beta first launched, the clandestine anti-cheat was always running in the background. Now players can disable it when they’re not playing Riot’s 60 percent more wizard-y version of Counter-Strike, but it’s started to cause other issues. That is…

Destiny 2 is coming to next-gen consoles, Bungie announced today following Microsoft’s Xbox Series X event. The studio didn’t given any specifics about when, but said more details would be coming in the future. The game’s fourth year and annual expansion get underway this fall. 

Everything Microsoft Showed During Today’s Xbox Series X Event

Microsoft finally showed its next-gen Xbox Series X in action today during a special edition of Inside Xbox featuring a slew of trailers for upcoming games, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon Over a dozen games were shown during the roughly hour-long event and while many of them were from…

All These Studios Are Making Xbox Series X Games

During today’s Inside Xbox broadcast, Microsoft revealed a whole host of studios making games for Xbox Series X. Some of the bigger names featured include Crystal Dynamics, Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Capcom, Epic, From Software, Sega, Square Enix, and WB Games. Sarah Bond, head of Xbox partnerships, said that players can look forward to “hundreds”…

This Is What Xbox Series X Graphics Look Like

Here’s what Playism’s Bright Memory: Infinite looks like running on the Xbox Series X, or at least in-game footage representative of Xbox Series X performance. Not too shabby. The first game shown during Microsoft’s Xbox Series X gameplay reveal event was this first-person shooter from developer FYQD-Studio. Note that the official stream version carried a…

Watch The Xbox Series X Gameplay Reveal Live Right Here

This morning Microsoft is giving us our first look at next-generation gameplay on the Xbox Series X, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in action. Let’s watch. It should be an interesting show, full of footage from games looking slightly to significantly better than they would on standard Xbox One hardware. Many of the games coming to…

How’s It Going?: Family Edition

It’s Thursday! Time for an Xbox briefing, as well as our daily open thread. Last night, my sister told me my oldest niece wants to become a vegetarian. I stopped eating meat around her age and stuck with it for about 16 years, eventually giving it up when some folks I was staying with out…

HyperX And Ducky Made A Keyboard Baby Together

Taiwanese keyboard maker Ducky and Kingston gaming division HyperX have joined forces to create the HyperX x Ducky One 2 Mini mechanical gaming keyboard, a limited-edition version of one of the most popular mechs on the market. Ducky’s 60 percent One 2 Mini is a ridiculously popular keyboard. Online keyboard shops in the U.S. were…

In Nintendo’s most recent financial statement, the company listed “TBA” for the release of Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel. This shouldn’t be too surprising, but just in case you were wondering, now you know!

Over 11 Million Units Of Animal Crossing: New Horizons Sold In Just 11 Days

On March 20, Animal Crossing: New Horizons went on sale. The game moved 1.88 million copies in Japan at launch, surpassing the country’s previous biggest-selling Switch hit at launch, Pokémon Sword and Shield. Worldwide, the game was also a smash—a massive one. According to Nintendo, there have been 11.77 million units of Animal Crossing: New…

RIP EVA-01

Arson Liu is an artist from China. You can see more of Liu’s stuff at his ArtStation page

I Still Can’t Believe We Got Tony Hawk (And Jet Set Radio) On The Game Boy Advance, And They Ruled

These days we’re used to ports on weaker systems featuring a few trimmed edges, maybe some muddier textures, some longer loading times. Like, say, The Witcher 3 on Switch. But in the Game Boy Advance days, when games could get nowhere near GameCube (or even N64) visuals, ports had to get inventive. And few got…

Mario Bros. Masters Set New Arcade High Score While Stuck At Home

Steven Kleisath and Stephen Boyer are no slouches when it comes to Nintendo’s original Mario Bros. platformer. Recently they achieved something truly spectacular, reaching a high score of 1,280,550 while playing the game cooperatively over long distance. Unlike its linear and better known successor Super Mario Bros., 1983’s Mario Bros. is an arcade game where…

That Prince Of Persia Redemption Footage Came From A Real, Canceled Game

A video surfaced online this morning purporting to show footage of an unreleased Prince of Persia game. Bearing the subtitle Redemption, the game appears to feature all the hallmarks of the series’ modern installments, like time-warping shenanigans and creepy sand enemies. Kotaku has learned that Prince of Persia Redemption was indeed a real project at…

Stadia’s Wireless Controllers Can Finally Connect To PC Wirelessly

Google Stadia launched back in November with a wireless controller that could only connect wirelessly to a Chromecast Ultra. Playing on a PC or laptop required a USB connection. An update to the controllers rolled out this week, allowing them to connect wirelessly to any browser-based Stadia client. The Stadia controller is an odd beast.…

How’s It Going?: Spring Edition

We’re halfway to Friday! Welcome back to our daily open thread. I got ramps in my CSA yesterday. Ramps are a much-hyped vegetable that have a really short spring season. I’d only heard about them being a big deal at the farmer’s market, but I’d never actually seen them, much less eaten them—despite my deepest…