Baten Kaitos Speedrunner Loses 97 Hours Of Progress Due To A Single Item

Cult-classic card game Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is a pretty big game, especially if you want to collect everything there is to find. A 100% speedrun takes over 300 hours to complete, and even a single mistake could spell disaster. World record holder “Baffan” learned this the hard way during a…

Steam’s Recommendations Will Now Show Popular Games Less Often

Last October, Steam’s algorithm briefly went haywire, filling users’ “More Like This” recommendation sections with popular games while negatively affecting under-the-radar indies who needed the exposure. At the time, Valve chalked this up to “a bug” which it said it corrected, but smaller developers complain that Steam’s recommendations have continued to let them down ever…

Lego’s Gingerbread House Holds Disturbing Secrets

Every year around this time, Lego unveils the latest expansion to its ever-growing Winter Village line of sets and I bemoan not having a massive basement to deck out in blocky holiday cheer. This year’s addition, the $100 Gingerbread House, looks like the perfect standalone piece for brick fans with limited room. Whereas sets like…

No Man’s Sky Player Builds Concert Hall That Seats A Thousand

A No Man’s Sky player built a concert hall, and the level of detail is just astounding. This concert hall in space can seat a thousand, and it’s gorgeous to behold. Player Needred replicated everything a concert hall should have, from scaffolding for lights to the decorated ceiling. I especially like the grand entrance, which…

Pewdiepie Rescinds $50,000 Pledge To Jewish Charity After Fans Spread Conspiracy Theories

After Felix “Pewdiepie” Kjellberg pledged to make a plush donation of $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group founded to combat anti-Semitism, hundreds of his fans went into full conspiracy theory mode, questioning whether he had been blackmailed into doing so. Kjellberg, who has been subject to controversy in the past for making anti-Semitic…

I Wasted My Life Trying To Climb A Dragon Quest Builders 2 Mountain When I Could Have Walked

Since video games have significantly lower stakes than real-world decisions, I am, as a rule, happy to be a reckless fool in them. Eager, even. Many times, this has led to me being a complete and total bonehead. Given the option between a sensible solution to a problem that requires a little planning and a…

Inside The Ghosting, Racism, And Exploitation At Game Publisher Nicalis

At E3 in June of 2015, the game designer David Crooks was hanging out across the street from the L.A. Convention Center when he met a man named Tyrone Rodriguez. Crooks needed support for the console versions of his quirky top-down dungeon crawler, Enter the Gungeon, and Rodriguez’s company, Nicalis, seemed willing to help out.…

We Are Starting To Suspect That ‘National Video Games Day’ Might Be A Nonsense Holiday

Did you know that today is National Video Games Day? We didn’t. In fact, we are getting an inkling that this might not be a real holiday. This piece was first published on September 12, 2017. We’re bumping it today because National Video Games Day is, supposedly, still a thing Kotaku found out earlier today,…

Craig Of The Creek Uses Pokémon As A Perfect Metaphor For Growing Up

In “The Evolution of Craig” episode of Cartoon Network’s refreshingly pure animated series Craig of the Creek, our young hero struggles with the idea of growing up and the fear of transforming into a different, older person. With a tadpole taking the place of a pocket monster, Craig learns a Pokémon-inspired lesson about the benefits…

Nintendo’s New Fitness Game Puts Joy-Cons In Strange Places

Nintendo is heading back into the fitness business with Ring Fit Adventure, a new game where you strap a Joy-Con onto your leg, put another in a big squeezy new peripheral and flail about like nobody’s watching. Here is the game’s first trailer—it looks like a surprisingly decent use of RPG mechanics, given the fitness…

Zelda: Link’s Awakening‘s Chamber Dungeons Are A Big Disappointment

The appeal of a Zelda dungeon is in its intricacy. A good dungeon starts off feeling overwhelming, full of buttons and doors and strange obstacles. As you make progress, solving puzzles and acquiring items, it all slowly begins to make sense. You get a complete understanding of how the passages flow and the rooms all…

HTC’s latest PC virtual reality headset, the Vive Cosmos, goes up for preorder today for $699, with its global release on October 3. The set features a pair of 1440 x 1700 displays running at 90 Hz, satellite-free tracking, and a flip-up design, and comes with a year’s subscription to the Viveport Infinity game and…

The Motorcycles Of The Tokyo Game Show

I’ve been coming to the Tokyo Game Show since 2004, but this is the first year I remember seeing bikes of any sort at the booths. While they’re not road-ready, they are prime for picture taking. Makes sense! Both Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy VII Remake feature motorcycles. Neither of these bikes actually move. They’re props…