The State Of Diversity In Big Budget Video Games

When I think about diversity in last year’s crop of big-budget games I can see the bright spots. Some of PlayStation’s marquee games, for example, featured some of the most diverse casts I’ve seen with men of color and queer women front and center as main characters. But there’s still work to be done in…

Various Persona Soundtracks Now Available On Spotify, Apple Music

The video game discographies of Spotify and Apple Music got significantly better outside of Japan today with the addition of soundtracks from the Persona series. These soundtracks include tunes from Persona 2, Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5, as well as music from spin-off games like Persona Q and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. There…

Conspiracy Theories Drive Developer To Recreate Nancy Pelosi’s Vandalized Garage In VR

After a photo of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s vandalized San Francisco home started circulating online, it didn’t take long for people to call bullshit. Was the graffiti and seeming pig’s blood really the work of outraged leftists, or an elaborate psy-op perpetuated by some right-wing group to delegitimize progressives? Who the hell knows,…

Minecraft Earth Ends This Summer

Augmented reality mobile game Minecraft Earth is shutting down in June, developer Mojang Studios announced this morning “Minecraft Earth was designed around free movement and collaborative play–two things that have become near impossible in the current global situation,” the official announcement reads. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to re-allocate our resources…

The Medium Finally Has The Hardware To Match Its Ambition

Upcoming horror game The Medium is about a psychic trying to solve a crime. Developers at Polish game studio Bloober Team tell me it’s also about breaking down player’s preconceived notions about the world. “The game is about points-of-view,” lead designer Wojciech Piejko explained during a recent interview with Kotaku. “Nothing is black and white,…

Video Games Predict A Grim 2021

2020 was a bad year for most of us, but a surprisingly good year for video games. As we enter 2021 with the hope offered by the vaccines, and the light at the end of the tunnel just about visible, it might soon be possible to allow hope back in. Unless, it seems, video games…

Ice-Pick Lodge, makers of the atmospheric survival horror game Pathologic 2 have announced a new game called Know By Heart due out later this year on PC. Less harrowing and more chill, it’s about exploring life in a quiet Russian town.

What’s On Your Gaming Wishlist For 2021?

It’s Monday and time for Ask Kotaku, the weekly feature in which Kotaku-ites deliberate on a single burning question. Then, we ask your take. This week we Ask Kotaku: What’s on your gaming wishlist for 2021? Stephen Can we get a new Metroid this year? I know Prime 4 is a ways out. That’s fine.…

Breath of the Wild NPCs Appear To Be Based On ‘Advanced’ Miis

If you’ve ever stared at one of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s random villagers and thought, “Hey, that looks like a Mii,” it could be because the two might be related. Overnight, Twitter user and self-proclaimed Mii expert HEYimHeroic wrote that certain non-player characters in Breath of the Wild are based on…

Immortals Fenyx Rising Is Even Better If You Remap The Buttons

Immortals Fenyx Rising, Ubisoft’s latest open-world game set in mythological Ancient Greece, is pretty damn good. It’s even better if you shake up the standard control scheme. By default, Immortals maps the attack inputs to the shoulder buttons: RB for light attacks and RT for heavy ones (on Xbox). For those who swear by the…

My New Exercise Regimen Is A Plastic Taiko Drum Controller

Stuck in bed most days due to an ongoing medical condition and paralyzed from the chest down, I don’t have a lot of options for cardio exercise. Hand bikes, weights, and tension bands are boring. You know what’s not boring? Beating the hell out of Hori’s drum controller for Bandai Namco’s Taiko No Tatsujin games.…

Sequel-sized expansion The Binding of Isaac: Repentance is out on PC March 31, creator Edmund McMillen announced on Twitter over the weekend. It’s set to come to console sometime later on. 

What’s Great About Bowser

How do you evolve a franchise with an almost-static main character? You look to his antagonist: Bowser, King of the Koopas. Also known by his objectively superior Japanese name: Great Demon King Koopa. Super Mario’s World is a look at the characters that turned the Mario franchise into a household name for 35 years. Based…

The Week In Games: Werewolves

Another quiet release week. One of the biggest games coming out later this week is the Switch port of Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest. As usual, the first few weeks of January are mostly empty. Consider this a good time to dig into your backlog, read some books, or do what I…

Some Of 2020’s Nicest Screenshots

As I’ve done for the last few years, when a year comes to an end I like to look back on some very nice screenshots by one of my favourite screenshot artists, and 2020 was no different. Andy Cull’s 2020 was spent like the rest of us, playing stuff like The Last Of Us Part…