The More I Play The Evil Within 2, The More I Like It

Some games grab you right away. Super Mario 64 won me over on the first jump. Bioshock got me at its elevator. Threes had me at six. The Evil Within 2 needed more time to hook me, but now, it’s proving to be something special. The Evil Within 2 comes from a notable publisher, Bethesda,…

Final Fantasy XIV Gets A World From Final Fantasy III On March XIII

Based on the optional dungeon in Final Fantasy III where the game’s most robust equipment can be found, the Forbidden Land of Eureka comes to Final Fantasy XIV in patch 4.25 on March 13, bringing with it brand new gameplay mechanics and powerful new equipment to acquire and enhance. In Final Fantasy XIV, Eureka is…

This Local Two-Player Mode Looks Rather Silly

Handy Mah-jong for Nintendo Switch is a budget-priced download game with a budget-looking local two-player mode. Developed by Imaginative Technology Land, Hand Mah-jong’s official website has a PDF download for TV mode (above). It looks rather imaginative and goofy, but so does the PDF download for the portable mode. Hey, whatever works! Kotaku East is…

Last Year’s Crappiest-Looking Anime Made Slightly Less Crappy

When Dynamic Chord originally aired on Japanese TV, it looked terrible. Good thing the Blu-ray release cleaned things up! That’s typically what DVD and Blu-ray releases do—fix all the sloppy and unfinished animation that was originally broadcasted. Twitter user Yuru has been obsessively cataloging the dynamic fixes, which you can compare for yourself in the…

The City That Never Sleeps. Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan. By Aldair Ortiz | Instagram  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! 

Uh Guys Let’s Go

Nick Foreman is an artist at Sumo Digital, known for games like the console versions of Sega’s Outrun reboot and the starfighter sequences of the new Battlefront games. You can see more of Nick’s work at his ArtStation page To see the images in their native resolution, click on the “expand” button in the top-left…

Mods Saved A Game, So They’re Now An Official Product

When flight sim IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover was released in 2011, it was…OK. Over the next few years dedicated modders stepped in to make the game great, however, and in recognition of their work the actual studio behind IL-2 has just re-released their work officially. IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover BLITZ Edition is the…

The Internet Reacts To Brigitte, Overwatch’s New Hero

Overwatch fans have totally fallen for Brigitte Lindholme, the game’s latest hero. Fans have known about the character for a while. She was last seen in the November 2017 Overwatch short, “Honor and Glory,” and were hoping she’d end up as the next hero. They’re already making fanart, jokes, and realizing they’ve been pronouncing her…

Duke Nukem 3D’s Creators Just Released A New Shooter Built On a 1995 Engine

3D Realms—yes, they’re still around—just quietly released a new shooter called Ion Maiden. It’s notable because unlike a load of modern games that are built to look like they’re using old tech, it actually is: it’s built on the Build Engine, which ran everything from Duke Nukem 3D to Shadow Warrior Ion Maiden is still…

Is That Bear Driving A Car?

Enviro-Bear 2000 is an arcade driving game about a bear frantically careening through the forest to grab fish and berries before winter comes. Awkward controls and loose car physics turn foraging into a dizzying affair of hairpin turns and rabid possums. It’s a classic game and perfect Indie Pick. Released by Justin Smith in 2010,…

Dragon Ball FighterZ Producer Talks About The Challenges And Thrills of Creating The Game’s Stages

Fists aren’t the only striking thing in Dragon Ball FighterZ. Its stages, inspired by the landmark anime, are gorgeous. Excited about the game’s great stages, we reached out to Dragon Ball FighterZ producer Tomoko Hiroki about what developing them was like. Rendered with immense detail, but also with big, anime-style lines, Dragon Ball FighterZ stages…

Hearthstone Is Finally About To Get A Tournament Mode

Hearthstone is about to get a feature that fans have been begging for since its earliest days—a mode that lets you run your own organized tournaments from within the client. Every year, Hearthstone gets a “soft reset” of sorts: a new competitive season begins, and old cards rotate out of Standard play to make space…

What We Loved About Annihilation, An Ecological Horror Story

Annihilation is the latest movie from Alex Garland, director of Ex Machina and screenwriter of Never Let Me Go, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd. It’s surreal, terrifying, and definitely worth a watch. I sat down with Cameron Kunzelman to try to make sense of it all. Gita Jackson: Hi Cameron! Last weekend we both…

Please Let David Lynch Teach You Typing 

Visionary Twin Peaks director David Lynch is a man of many talents, and now teaching typing is one of them, thanks to indie developers Hyacinth Nil and Luke Palmer. David Lynch Teaches Typing is a free game that envisions a world where quinoa aficionado and transcendental meditation enthusiast David Lynch has taken on the sinister…

Judge Orders Teen To Stop Playing Violent Video Games [UPDATE]

Earlier this week, a student at Lake Park High School in the suburbs of Chicago was arrested for threatening to commit a school shooting on social media. At his hearing, a judge yesterday ordered the teen to forfeit his smartphone to his parents and stop playing violent video games. According to a report by the…

Super Mario Odyssey Players Think They’ve Found New Secrets

Super Mario Odyssey’s latest patch added a highly exploitable balloon hunting mini-game to Mario’s to-do list, but it might have brought secrets as well. Dataminers searching through the new patch have found a handful of hidden images that appear to showcase the location of extra Power Moons. Odyssey’s patch 1.2.0 mostly focused on adding a…