Culture

Please, For The Love Of God, Let Masahiro Sakurai Rest

So…Steve in Smash Bros. Ultimate, huh? Great. I have no dog in this Smash Bros. fight—while I don’t hate that Steve was announced, I was personally hoping for Overwatch hero Tracer, especially after this cryptic tweet from the Overwatch League a few days ago. Whatever your thoughts are on Steve, what I truly hope is…

Apex Legends Is Getting Cross-Play On October 6

PS4, Xbox One and PC players of Apex Legends will soon be able to shoot and ping together, development studio Respawn Entertainment and publisher EA announced today. Cross-play will be offered starting October 6 and will be enabled by default on all platforms. Players will be able to opt-out of cross-play if they wish. Respawn…

Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s Next Fighters Are Steve And Alex From Minecraft

Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai announced today during a brief video that Steve from Minecraft will be joining the game’s roster. He’ll be joined by Alex, Zombie, and Enderman. Steve and co. will be able to use pickaxes, throw down blocks, and even have a crafting ability. Sakurai added that every stage currently in…

Stadia Doesn’t Even Work On Google’s New Chromecast

Google revealed its new Chromecast device yesterday and it does a lot more than the previous versions. One thing it doesn’t do, however, is stream Stadia games. Officially called ‘Chromecast with Google TV’, the new device comes with a remote and functions more like a standard streaming box, letting you watch stuff on Netflix or…

Going Under’s Lo-Fi Soundtrack Makes Me Feel Like I’m Not Working At All

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today, we’re heading into the office in Going Under, a roguelite dungeon crawler where work is hell. Going Under (playlist / longplay) is a game about navigating the hellscape of working in America. In Going Under,…

Track: Akarui Mirai (Live) | Artist: Never Young Beach | Album: Hall Tour 2019 

Vending Machine Action. Tokyo, Japan. By Anssi Määttä | Instagram  JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line!

We All Took The Banner Saga’s Art For Granted

Danny Moll is an artist who has worked on projects like The Banner Saga 3 and the Castlevania animated series. You can see more of Danny’s work at his ArtStation page

Artist Animates Anime-Style Among Us Kills

Okay, hear me out. What if Among Us, but anime? Artist and content creator Landonardo recently shared a couple of great videos featuring his takes on what anime-style kill animations would look like in Among Us, the multiplayer deception game from 2018 that only recently went supernova on Twitch I’m crossing my fingers he hits…

Report: Warner Bros. Games President Says Transphobe J. K. Rowling Has “The Right To Hold Her Opinions”

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is a transphobe. Maybe someone could let Warner Bros. Games president David Haddad know that that should be called out and condemned. As Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports, Haddad was asked in an internal Q&A today about the widespread criticism of Rowling over her public and toxic transphobic views, which have…

Spelunky 2 World Record Speedrun Is Only Three Minutes Long

The current world record Spelunky 2 speedrun is a sight to behold and won’t take up hours of your time. A legendary Spelunky speedrunner by the name of d_tea recently uploaded a video in which they complete the sequel in just under three minutes. While the run is obviously full of the precise running and…

Xbox’s New Parents App Is Great

A couple of years agoI spoke very highly of Nintendo’s parental controls app for the Switch. Microsoft have recently released something very similar, and it’s just as good. The beauty of the Switch’s app wasn’t the fact it had parental controls—all consoles do, and have had them for a while!—but the way it took them…

Pokémon Go To Pokémon Home Transfers Will Be A Little Annoying

The Pokémon Company announced yesterday that Pokémon Home support for Pokémon Go will arrive before the end of the year. But when it does it sounds like it will come with a weird caveat. Pokémon Home is the new version of the Pokémon Bank which lets you house Pokémon from just about every modern game…

Black Ops: Cold War Zombies Revealed, Will Connect To The Game’s Battle Pass This Time

Cross-play and Battle Pass Progression are finally coming to Call of Duty’s Zombies mode with the launch of November’s Black Ops: Cold War, meaning playing the popular mode will be less of a departure from the rest of the Call of Duty experience. That was the stand-out detail from today’s reveal video and trailer, which…

Peter Parker Looks Very Different In Spider-Man Remastered On PS5

Spider-Man Remastered puts players back in the latex suit of the arachnid superhero, but this time around civilian-mode Peter Parker is going to look a little different thanks to a new facial capture for the PlayStation 5 upgrade. In new videos and screenshots released today, Insomniac Games gives us our first glimpse of what Marvel’s…

Twitch is introducing a new feature that gives streamers access to rights-cleared music. “Soundtrack by Twitch” will circumvent the DMCA takedown issues that have plagued streamers for years (and especially recently) by giving them access to Twitch-curated songs that the company actually has the rights to include in broadcasts. The feature also separates music into…

Need For Speed: Payback and Vampyr Are October’s PlayStation Plus Games

October’s PS Plus games are a weird combination, but not a bad one: I’m totally charmed by Vampyr, despite its stumbles. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active PlayStation Plus membership. October’s PS Plus games are: Need for Speed: Payback Vampyr Both games are available October 6 through November 2.

Nintendo is announcing Smash Bros. Ultimate’s next fighter tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. ET. The presentation is set to be three minutes long and conclude with a message from game director Masahiro Sakurai. Anything but another Fire Emblem character please.

Final Fantasy XIV’s Crafting System Turned Me Into A Capitalist Swine

A few expansions into playing Final Fantasy XIV, I decided to try leveling one of the game’s many crafting classes. For one, I’d heard a fair amount of FFXIV’s strongest weapons and most stylish gear were locked behind them. On top of that, I’d found the adventuring life to be expensive. Sure, running dungeons and…

Ar Tonelico‘s Music Chants Discordantly, Whispers Seductively

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re going to attempt to look past how blatantly horny the Ar Tonelico series is so we can focus on how good its music is. I wish us all luck. Created by Gust, the Japanese…