Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Six Months Later

Six months ago, life as we knew it changed. The covid-19 pandemic rippled through every corner of society. Millions were infected. Thousands died. Municipalities across the globe issued shelter-in-place orders. Overnight, social distancing turned from a polite suggestion into a mandatory directive. On March 20, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It wasn’t a panacea,…

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Black Athena: How Hades Gets Its Gods Right

I love Hades. It’s a great roguelike, has a cleverly-crafted story, and is stuffed with beautiful art and design. But what I like most about it is its commitment to diversity among its characters. Hades’ pantheon of Greek gods is diverse. Athena is a dark-skinned Black woman. Dionysus is south Asian. Hermes is east Asian.…

Amazon’s Error Dogs, Ranked

The video game world spent a significant portion of the morning trying to score an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S. More often than not, folks were met with error screens telling them their efforts were in vain. While certainly frustrating, at least evil megacorporation Amazon gave folks some great dogs to look at…

A Return To The The Legend Of Zelda: The Ocarina Of Time Reminded Me Why It’s Special

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time is widely considered not just one of the greatest games in the Zelda series, but one of the best games of all time. The 1998 Nintendo 64 game felt vast. It’s story was epic. It made controlling a character in 3D space feel intuitive. It was Zelda…

Ubisoft Apologizes For Excluding Women From Assassin’s Creed Sizzle Reel

Ubisoft, which has spent much of the summer dealing with widespread reports of sexism, harassment, and misconduct at the company, put out a short video on Twitter yesterday highlighting all of the Assassin’s Creed protagonists who have mastered the hidden blade. Somehow it left out all of the women. “The blade is back,” Ubisoft’s Assassin’s…

Xbox Series X Pre-Orders Have Been A Debacle So Far [Update]

Despite advance notice, a set time, and links set up for all of the retailers who would be selling the Xbox Series X and Series S today, trying to pre-order Microsoft’s next-gen console has been a massive headache. Pre-orders in the U.S. were set to start at 11:00 a.m., which is also about the time…

Microsoft Now Has 23 First-Party Studios, Here’s What They’re Making

Let’s take a look at what all these studios are working on and what we can expect from them in the coming months and years.

Destiny 2 Teases The Return Of Variks

“Destroy mines, yessss?” Long-time Destiny players have those words and other morsels of dry sarcasm etched into their brains from spending dozens upon dozens of hours fighting enemy mobs in the first game’s Prison of Elders. Now, that jail’s warden, Fallen scholar Variks, The Loyal, appears set to make a fresh appearance in the game…

Here’s A Book Filled With Game Boy Box Art

Quality video game tome publisher Bitmap Books is about to launch pre-orders for Game Boy: The Box Art Collection, a 372-page volume of nothing but critiqued Game Boy game covers and green-tinged screenshots. I love the contrast between the gorgeous art adorning the outside of Game Boy boxes and the actual in-game screenshots. I like…

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim’s Time-Travel Mech Story Unfolds In The Coolest Way

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, the latest PS4 game from developer Vanillaware, tells the story of 13 Japanese high school students who get mixed up in a war between mechs and massive kaiju beasts that spans over a century and a half of history. To get the whole story, you have to weave together chunks of…

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey’s Music Bombards You With Ominous Chants

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re checking out Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, specifically the way its soundtrack utilizes haunting, oppressive vocals to make this difficult RPG that much more distressing. Eep! 2010’s Nintendo DS SMT spin-off Strange Journey (playlist…

Random Generator Spits Out Hilarious Guilty Gear-Style Round Openings

Fighting games, especially those made by Japanese developer Arc System Works, are known for having some pretty wild start-of-round messages. Someone named ArcaneMonkey took all those lines—as well as some choice memes and other non-sequiturs—and inserted them into an online generator, which randomly spits out some really funny stuff. Here are a few of my…

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Ron Cobb, The Design Genius Behind Aliens And Back To The Future, Has Died

Ron Cobb, the legendary production designer whose ideas helped define movies like Alien, its sequel Aliens, Conan the Barbarian, Back to the Future and The Last Starfighter, has died at the age of 83. As THR reports, Cobb passed away in Sydney (where he has been living for decades) on Monday having suffered from Lewy…

Following Microsoft’s suggestion that the Xbox Series S can double the frame rate of some Xbox One games, we’ve updated our explainer of everything we know about Microsoft’s next-gen consoles. Read more here.

Whipping Arrows Out Of The Air Is Still Super Satisfying In Spelunky 2

There are a lot of ways to deal with arrow traps in Spelunky 2, but the most satisfying strategy is simply whipping the arrows out of the air before they hit you. Everything in Spelunky 2 is out to kill you. Make one wrong move and you’re liable to get tossed around the level like…