I Have Several Issues With This Year’s Halloween Pokémon Toys

Pikachu as Mimikyu. Charmander as Cubone. Lucario and Celebi as live-action role-players. This year’s batch of special Halloween-themed “Pumpkin Parade” plushies from The Pokémon Company are adorable at first glance. But if you look closely, the cute facade begins to crumble. Let’s start with Charmander wearing another Pokémon’s dead mother’s skull as a costume. Depending…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for going to my neighborhood block party, which will hopefully be full of sweet neighborhood gossip. It’s also for playing video games! It has been way too long since I checked in on Subnautica Below Zero. Hopefully you can pet the penguins by now. Stealth game The Light Keeps Us Safe also…

Kind Words Is A Game Where You Send Confessional Letters To Online Strangers

“I always read the stuff people send me the wrong way,” a stranger on Kind Words, a new PC game where you write and receive confessional letters. “I read it as if they are upset with me and don’t want to talk to me. They’ve always told me this isn’t how they feel, but I…

I Never Got Into Real Hockey But I Love NHL Video Games

I couldn’t tell you the name of the cover athlete of EA’s NHL 20 off the top of my head. For that matter, I couldn’t identify the players on the cover of NHL 18 or 19 ,despite both games still being installed on my Xbox One dashboard. I have little knowledge of the real-life sport…

Mordhau Players Are Having A Great Time By Ignoring All The Rules

A player’s first experience in the popular PC game Mordhau will be Frontline. The 32-on-32 skirmish is the marquee player-vs-player mode in the game, and it embodies a specific grimdark fantasy of the high middle ages; two proud knighthoods, each defending a vague dynastic crest, cracking skulls with catapults, javelins, morning stars, and zweihanders. The…

How To Play Long Video Games When You Have No Time

For a lot of gamers with demanding jobs, marriages and/or families, the excitement of reading good reviews for games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is tempered by the sinking realization that they’ll never have time to play them. How do you make time for a 60+ hour game when you have…

Daemon X Machina: The Kotaku Review

Daemon X Machina, out September 13 from Marvelous, is a game about gigantic customizable mechs. Here is another way to describe it: the worst filler episode of your favorite anime series. It is a mess of a game, with a story mode chock full of unintelligible cutscenes, repetitious anime tropes, and a core of mech…

The Merchandise Of The 2019 Tokyo Game Show

When you go to the Tokyo Game Show, you can play games. But if the lines are too long, you can buy stuff. Your choice! As in years’ past, TGS has a dedicated merchandise area. Certain things sell out, so if you are planning on going (and know what you want to buy), do your…

The Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro Is Massive In-Person

The images SNK have released do not convey the actual size of the Neo Geo Arcade Stick Pro. It’s humongous. The stick comes packaged with 20 games and can be connected directly to the TV or PC, plug-and-play style. Huge arcade sticks aren’t uncommon, but this one seems especially jumbo. It seems that SNK also…

Why It’s Taken So Long For A New Space Channel 5 Game

It was at 1999 that the first Space Channel 5 debuted at the Tokyo Game Show. Now twenty years later, the classic music game is back. Following the success of the original Space Channel 5, Sega released a GBA version and a sequel called Space Channel 5 Part 2. While the main character Ulala had…

Hands-On With Death Stranding: The Umbrella

Hideo Kojima’s upcoming release Death Stranding isn’t playable at the Tokyo Game Show. But you can demo Death Stranding: The Umbrella. Full disclosure: Even though it’s overcast here today at the Tokyo Game Show, I was not able to test this demo umbrella outside in the rain. While Death Stranding: The Video Game is a…

The New Resident Evil Is Good (So Far)

I’ll be honest. When Project Resistance was announced, I was skeptical. A multiplayer Resident Evil? Surely, that cannot work, I thought. At the Tokyo Game Show, I got hands-on with Project Resistance, and from what I played, I realized that, yes, yes it can. Project Resistance is a four-on-one asymmetrical co-op multiplayer game. Four players…

Tales From Off Peak City, Volume 1 is the first in a series of games set on, around, and under the same street corner. It’s a follow up to one of my favorite games of 2017, The Norwood Suite, which took players to a dreamy hotel that’s still one of the most uniquely arresting video…

Adidas Is Making A New Star Wars Sneaker, And Um

Perhaps hoping to recapture a little of the magic from their older collaborations, Adidas is once again teaming up with Star Wars for a sneaker release ahead of the Rise of Skywalker in December. The result is this X-Wing-inspired Ultra Boost. Which, when you only read about the news in text form, should be great!…

BioWare’s Anthem Added To EA’s Subscription Services

Anthem’s ignominious fall from “BioWare’s next big thing” to “oh dear” hasn’t hit rock bottom just yet, as today it was announced that the game is being added to EA’s subscription catalogues. Both EA Access and Origin Access subscribers will be able to download and play the base game for free as of today across…

Divinity: Original Sin 2‘s Cross-Save Between PC And Switch Is Magic

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a big, chewy role-playing game that benefits from a mouse and keyboard, but sometimes, you just want to lie down on the couch and play a game on the Switch. The game’s new Switch port allows players to go from one to the other, like magic. On this week’s Kotaku…