Culture

I’m Sorry To Say Laurence Fishburne Died In The 2005 Matrix MMORPG

One of the MMO's biggest plot points was the assassination of Morpheus

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for doing things in video games you would never do in real life. Like shooting people, crashing cars, or playing golf. I am a video game golfer. I like the idea of using a stick to hit a ball into a hole very far away. It’s all the other stuff involved in…

Crysis Remastered Comes Out In September, For Real This Time, Probably

After lots of leaks, confusion, and backtracking, Crysis Remastered finally has a new release date and it’s coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 18. The remaster, which is only of the first game in the series and doesn’t include any multiplayer, will have a number of graphical updates like ray-traced reflections and…

Here’s Everything Destiny 2 Is Losing Later This Year

Bungie went into more detail about what precisely will be disappearing from Destiny 2 later this year, when the studio begins vaulting content for the the first time in game’s history and…it’s a lot. The base game’s main campaign will all but disappear and most of its existing free-to-play content along with it. The Destiny…

Strider’s Most Disappointing Console Port Had The Best Soundtrack

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s new, daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today I’ll disparage Capcom’s arcade classic Strider and then try to win back your trust by praising its music. A bold strategy! Let’s see if it pays off. Sega’s 1990 Genesis conversion of Capcom’s 1989…

Track: Prism | Artist: Bully | Album: SUGAREGG

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s Melbourne Monolith Was Created By A Typo

Typos can do incredible things to video games, like causing Gandhi to nuke people senseless for over two decades. And in the case of Microsoft Flight Simulator, it’s a typo that’s caused Ȁ̛̺̪̳͔͓̀̔̏LL͈̟͒͐ ̦͕̭̅̄̾H̢̧̡̛̝͑͒͘A͎̽I̩̟͚̊̾̿̆͢L̢̉ ͖̤͕̆̀͠T͖̓H̡͠E̠͝ ̞̹͛͡S̤̥̱̮̊̑͐̀͊͢Ṕ̤͍͎̜̇̉̚͢͝I̼̥͂̉R̘̓Ę̜̖̀̈́͠. Microsoft Flight Simulator pulls data from Bing Maps, and so any peculiarities or anomalies with Bing Maps data were…

Art Of Rally, A Minimal Driving Game, Looks Fantastic

I covered Art of Rally back in early 2019when it was supposed to be out in late 2019. That obviously didn’t happen, but a delayed game can always be a better game, and Art of Rally sure is looking nicer than the last time we saw it. It’s now due…sometime later this year on PC

A DSLR Lens On A Game Boy Continues To Rule

I knowI’ve written about this before, but I just love it so much, and this video is so good that I’m going to do it again. Reader Sam was messing around with the same 3D-printed DSLR mod that I wrote about in 2018, but instead of using it to massively zoom in on stuff like…

Fall Guys Was Almost Called Stumble Chums

Game development, like any creative endeavor, is an iterative exercise in brainstorming and fine-tuning. A recent Twitter thread by Mediatonic creative director Jeff Tanton gave everyone a brief glimpse into that process as it pertained to Fall Guys, which apparently had several possible titles before the studio settled on its final name. Fall Guys got…

Flight Simulator Pilots Make 16-Hour Flight From LA To Dubai In Real Time

One of the big draws with Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator is that it recreates the entire planet to scale. What that means is, if you want, you can fly from one airport to another in real-time. And few airports are further away in a single trip than LAX and Dubai International Airport. It takes around…

Streamers Furious After Ad Company Uses Twitch Donations To Advertise Burger King

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Twitch is that you can never entirely predict what sort of alchemical chain reaction a streamer and their audience will create together. Recently, an ad agency representing Burger King decided to cash in on this inherent unpredictability, seemingly without asking anybody. Streamers are, to put it lightly, not…

How Deathloop, Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man: Miles Morales Will Use PS5 Controller’s Fancy Features

At first glance, the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller doesn’t look like a huge level-up over its predecessor, the DualShock 4. The shape is similar, the layout is near-identical, and the iconic button quadfecta (Square, Triangle, Circle, X) sure hasn’t gone anywhere. But there are a few subtle improvements. One Sony has trumpeted in recent months…

Capcom Hands Down Odd Punishment For Street Fighter V Player’s Outburst

A poor experience with Street Fighter V’s online multiplayer during a recent Capcom Cup qualifier sent one top player on a childish tirade against both the organizers and the player who beat him. Capcom announced today that he will have to start the next tournament in the losers bracket. Victor “Punk” Woodley is one of…

Stephen King Baffled By Tekken Jargon

I love horror novelist Stephen King. I love fighting games. But it seems those two flavors don’t go together all that well. It all started last night when a random Tekken player, as they are wont to do, hopped on Twitter to demand changes from the developers. I won’t bore you with the competitive implications…

Spiritfarer Pokes Fun At Animal Crossing’s Jerk Raccoon, Tom Nook

Spiritfarer and Animal Crossing: New Horizons have a lot of shared DNA. Both feature anthropomorphic animals with distinct personalities. Both give you a space of your own that you can shape to your whims. Both demand a meticulous level of resource management. And both, more surprisingly, star a morally defunct raccoon salesman who worships at…

Latest Fall Guys Update Prevents Consecutive Team Games

Fall Guys is great, but if there’s one thing on which most players can agree, it’s that the team-based mini-games don’t quite live up to the fun of the solo competitions. The game’s latest patch relieves that a bit by making back-to-back group activities a thing of the past. Thanks to an update released this…

How’s It Going? RIP Summer Edition

It’s cold where I am, at least too cold to take a swim. Which is good because our pool’s been empty since a tropical storm flooded the yard (and our basement) earlier this month. Do we clean it out and fill it back up? Take it down and admit this summer blew? I should probably…

Hitman 3 Will Be An Epic Games Store Timed Exclusive On PC

Snuck onto the end of a Hitman 3 location reveal, developer IO Interactive announced that Hitman 3 on PC will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for the first year. “In January 2021, you’ll be able to play Hitman 3 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Google Stadia and PC,…

Creepypasta Spins The Strange And Unsettling Circumstances Around Cancelled Tomb Raider Game

As I was doomscrolling (heh) Twitter early this morning (a deeply unhealthy part of my morning ritual) I came across a thread written by Xalavier Nelson Jr., former PC Magazine writer and Narrative Designer on ‘90s internet simulation Hypnospace Outlaw. Nelson’s thread hooked me from the very beginning, promising a never-before-heard story about a video…