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CultureFinal Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age Is Finally Headed To Xbox Game Pass
Remember all those Final Fantasy games Microsoft promised back in 2019 were coming to Xbox Game Pass? Another one is finally about to show up. Microsoft announced this morning that Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age is headed to the Netflix-style subscription service on console and PC, on February 11. Long story short, Microsoft announced…
By Ethan Gach Published February 2, 2021 -
CultureOdds and EndsHow Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Creators Snuck In Connections To Older Games
An assassin in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla shares a small but fun connection to a templar in Assassin’s Creed III, as confirmed by Ubisoft in a recent interview with Kotaku In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players will quickly encounter two assassins. One is Basim and the other is his younger apprentice, Hytham. That name might sound familiar…
By Zack Zwiezen Published February 2, 2021 -
Kotaku EastJapanAfter PS5 Chaos, Japanese Retailer Cracks Down
This weekend, a mob of PS5 shoppers caused chaos at the Yodobashi Camera retailer in Tokyo’s Akihabara. The police were called and sales were halted. Famitsu now reports that the retailer has instituted new requirements to purchase the Sony console. According to Famitsu, it’s necessary to have the store’s gold point plus Visa card and…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 2, 2021 -
AnimeWhy Studio Ghibli Turned To CG Animation For Its Latest Movie
It was bound to happen. And it shouldn’t be a complete surprise. The latest Studio Ghibli film, Earwig in the Witch, is a CG animated feature film. Last month, director Goro Miyazaki told Kotaku how that happened. Earwig and the Witch isn’t Studio Ghibli’s first foray into CG animation. Hayao Miyazaki, Goro’s father, released a 14-minute…
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 2, 2021 -
CultureTrack: Let Forever Be | Artist: The Chemical Brothers | Album: Surrender
By Brian Ashcraft Published February 2, 2021 -
OpinionImpressionsControl’s Next-Gen Edition Finally Does Justice To Remedy’s Shooter On Consoles
Control left like it was pushing the last generation of consoles to their breaking points, with loads of performance issues on the old machines. Despite these problems it was a great game, my favorite of 2019. Now, with the next-gen release of Control, many of these problems are gone, and an already-great game is improved…
By Zack Zwiezen Published February 2, 2021 -
OpinionAssassin’s Creed Valhalla Gets History Right Where It Matters
If Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is indeed based on historical events like its intro screen says,it is based very loosely. Yet for all its simplification and misrepresentation of the Viking invasions of Britain, there’s one thing the game depicts really well: the idea that England’s history is one of immigration. This hasn’t been a great decade…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureCapcom Says Resident Evil Village‘s Very Tall Vampire Lady Is Nearly Ten Feet Tall
So we were off by a bit! Last week Ash did some excellent work trying to work out just how tall the Very Tall Vampire lady in Resident Evil Village was, eventually coming in at 96 inches, or around eight feet tall. Turns out that was too short. Thanks to the outpouring of…feelings for the…
By Luke Plunkett Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureYakuza Spin-Off Judgment Heading To Next-Gen Consoles On April 23
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Judgment is getting the next-gen treatment on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on April 23, Sega announced today. It will come bundled with all previously released DLC for $39.99. A Yakuza game in everything but name, Judgment follows Takayuki Yagami as he private detectives his way through the fictional streets…
By Ian Walker Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureDuckTales NES Prototype Reveals Unused Song
It’s no secret that Capcom’s DuckTales for the Nintendo Entertainment System is a bona fide classic, especially in the realm of video game music. But being a NES game, it only has about a dozen quick tracks to enjoy. An early prototype that’s currently making the rounds, however, expands on the final soundtrack with another…
By Ian Walker Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureReport: Another GameStonk Movie Is In The Works At Netflix
Less than a day after news broke that MGM had acquired filming rights for an upcoming book about the ongoing GameStop stock situation, Deadline is reporting that another GameStonk movie is being developed at Netflix. The streaming giant is reportedly in talks with Mark Boal, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of both The Hurt Locker and Zero…
By Ian Walker Published February 1, 2021 -
OpinionGameStop’s Stock Can’t Save You
GameStop’s rollercoaster ride through the absurd machinery of the stock market has been fun to watch. It sent some of CNBC’s finest minds scrambling to Wikipedia to find out what Reddit is and allowed for Very Serious Thought Leaders to peddle all sorts of pet theories, like blaming GameStop’s unlikely rise on young men not…
By Ethan Gach Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureTwitchTwitch Embeds Keep Getting Worse
In the past couple months, the experience of watching Twitch via third-party sites or tools like MultiTwitch has become… fraught. A purple screen sometimes obscures whatever you’re watching. It implores you to tune in on Twitch dot television instead. Eventually, it disappears. Then, every 15 minutes or so, it comes back. As of a couple…
By Nathan Grayson Published February 1, 2021 -
Tips & GuidesWhere To Find Every Banana In Hitman 3
Hitman 3 is b-a-n-a-n-a-s. IO Interactive’s latest stealth game puts you in the spit-shined oxfords of international assassin Agent 47 and tasks you with eliminating various well-protected targets. But the most effective tool at your disposal isn’t a firearm or vial of poison. No, it’s an ingredient you’d most likely find in smoothies, sandwiches, and…
By Ari Notis Published February 1, 2021 -
OpinionAsk KotakuWhat Games Do You Keep Replaying Over and Over?
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 games do you keep replaying over and over? Fahey As I sit here pondering this latest Ask Kotaku question, World of Warcraft is running in…
By Alexandra Hall Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureGoogle Stadia Shuts Down Internal Studios, Changing Business Focus
Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize gaming by letting users stream games without needing to own a powerful PC or console, is altering course, getting out of the game-making business and will now offer its platform directly to game publishers alongside offering Stadia Pro to the public. The company is…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureOdds and EndsFinal Fantasy XV Could Have Had A Much Better Villain
There are a lot of things I love about Final Fantasy XV. Its tale of brotherhood is bar none and representative of some of the best “it’s the little things” storytelling I’ve ever experienced in a video game. But there are, of course, elements I don’t like. In particular, the game’s villain. Final Fantasy XV’s…
By Ash Parrish Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureSomeone Already Sold The Movie Rights To An Unpublished GameStonk Book
Someone is already writing a book on the saga that has been GameStop’s stocks, which in turn is already primed to become a movie. It’s barely been a week. Deadline reported yesterday that Ben Mezrich, whose 2009 book about Facebook’s founding, The Accidental Billionaires, became the David Fincher-directed biopic The Social Network the following year,…
By Ian Walker Published February 1, 2021 -
CultureKotaku Game DiarySo, I May Have Made A Mistake In Mass Effect 2
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I did everything right in Mass Effect 2. I slapped armor plating on the Normandy and equipped it with a shield. I gave it a big fucking cannon. I even tackled (most of) the game’s loyalty missions. I was ready for the final battle, and went through the…
By Ari Notis Published February 1, 2021 -
CulturePlayStation Studios’ First Xbox Game Comes Out In April
As part of the new multi-year deal made between Major League Baseball and Sony back in late 2019, long running PlayStation-exclusive baseball game MLB The Show is no longer PlayStation-exclusive as of April 20. That’s when Sony releases an Xbox game with a PlayStation logo on the cover. Weird. For years now Xbox owners have…
By Mike Fahey Published February 1, 2021