The Long Dark‘s New Cooking System Is Too Real

Last month, snowy survival game The Long Dark got a new cooking system. Like in real life, it requires timing things just right. I couldn’t pull it off in my last game, as well as in most of my own home cooking. The Long Dark added manual cooking in its June update. While you used…

How Octopath Traveler‘s Structure Actually Works

There’s been a lot of confusion about the structure of the upcoming Switch role-playing game Octopath Traveler, namely surrounding the game’s eight main characters. Allow us to clear things up. Octopath Traveler, which comes out Friday, unfolds in an entirely non-linear fashion. From the beginning, you can pick one of eight characters—the knight Olberic, the merchant…

New For Honor Bot ‘TheeLizardWizard’ Pays Tribute To A Player Who Died

Fatmooch69 has spent the last couple weeks searching for a bot in For Honor. The AI in question is a Raider, one of the game’s two-handed axe wielding vikings, called TheeLizardWizard. Fotmooch69 has enlisted other Reddit users to help him, asking them to share screenshots if they ever encounter it. That’s because TheeLizardWizard is a…

All 151 Original Pokémon Are Getting New Plush Toys In Japan

This month, a bunch of plush toys based on the first gen Pokémon plushies will go on sale. Later this fall, even more will. According to the official Pokémon site, thirty plush toys of Generation 1 Pokémon will be released this month at Pokémon Center shops in Japan. The second round will feature another 121…

Kenroku-en. Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan. By Brian Ashcraft | Twitter JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Some excellent My Hero Academia cosplay from nickrod99

Always Two, There Are

Rong Chen is an artist from China. You can see more of Chen’s work at his ArtStation page Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you’re in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you’d…

God Bless Nintendo Switch Skins

The Nintendo Switch’s docked design isn’t just practical, it’s also perfect for skin manufacturers (and Nintendo themselves) to have some fun with. I have never seen a console dressed as toast. Now that I have, I want more. And a 3DS skinned like a cup of tea to go next to it. The same company…

Fortnite Is Better Than Overwatch At Telling An Evolving Story

Cracks in the sky. Rifts on the ground. Fake burger-restaurant mascots in real deserts. All eyes are on Fortnite’s map right now, and with good reason: It’s the main character of a story that could go just about anywhere. Fortnite’s battle royale mode barely has a story in the traditional sense. Little is known about…

Broly Is Up To His Old Shit Again In New Dragon Ball Super Movie [UPDATE]

Dragon Ball Super has ended its TV run, but no worries—the series’ next movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is coming out in Japan before the end of the year. We don’t know much beyond what’s shown in the official poster and the short teaser trailer that got released today. Broly, the Saiyan version of the…

New Warhammer 40K Game Is All War, No Talk

There are, at last count, 1,537,284 Warhammer games on the market, and yet somehow none of them have been in the 4X genre. So hi there, Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War It’s tough to truly innovate in this space, since its fundamentals breed similarity, but while Civilization is the most well-known 4X (eXplore,…

Two Streamers Beat An Apparently ‘Unbeatable’ Ultimate Custom Night Challenge

Yesterday, Twitch streamer Rhemery accomplished what Five Nights at Freddy’s fans and YouTubers around the world have been trying (and failing) to accomplish these past few weeks—beating a supposedly “unbeatable” mode in Ultimate Custom Night. Today, he was followed by another streamer, Dawko Ultimate Custom Night, which Kotaku covered last week, was released on June…

Gone Home But You’re A Car

At this point, 2013’s Gone Home has pretty much joined the canon of formative video games as a progenitor of the now-ubiquitous (if poorly-named) walking simulator genre. Gone Vroom, then, poses an interesting philosophical question: do cars walk? Gone Vroom is a brief but faithful recreation of Gone Home’s muted, mysterious opening, except you’re a…

Wreckfest Santa Transforms Into Glitchy Nightmare

Today on Highlight Reel we have Father Christmas body horror, Rainbow Six Siege moments, Battlefield V spider soldiers, and much more. Watch the video then talk about your favorite highlight in the comments below. Be sure to check out, like, and share the original videos via the links below. Subscribe to Kotaku on YouTube for…

Maplestory Gave Me My First Best Friend, And First Betrayal

Modern kids socialize in games like Minecraft or Fortnite, but when I was growing up, I played Maplestory. Most other kids I knew made new friends at summer camp, or they played soccer or learned how to play an instrument. Meanwhile, I spent my youth as a hermit, shamelessly spending hundreds of dollars (with my…

Did You Know That Uncharted’s Damage Meter Is Actually ‘Luck’?

A tweet from a Naughty Dog animator helps explain how the heck Uncharted’s Nathan Drake can survive getting shot at so much. Pointing back to a little-known design factoid reminds players that Drake isn’t a massive bullet sponge—he’s just really lucky. Naughty Dog animator Jonathan Cooper brought up this piece of gaming trivia on Twitter…

This Twitch Streamer Gets Revenge On Tech Support Scammers

“How should I get you the money, like, write a check?” said the Twitch streamer Kitboga, affecting the frail vocal fry of an 81-year-old woman named Edna. On the other end of the phone line, a man with a South Asian accent told “Edna” that she would have to pay $200 for the man to…

Top PUBG Streamer Finds A Hacker, Has A Hell Of A Time

Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, a popular PUBG Twitch streamer known for his skilled play and quick reflexes, recently played alongside a hacker. When fans noticed the hacker on Grzesiek’s stream and shared clips on social media, it sparked debate over what to do about top players fraternizing with cheaters. The video clip circulating around PUBG’s community…