Black Fleet: The Kotaku Review

There are too many board games about pirates. But Black Fleet is one you should fight through the fatigue for. It’s similar in scope to other buccaneering board games, since it involves merchants carrying goods across the Caribbean and pirates raiding (or trying to raid) them. But where Black Fleet is cool is that it…

Wooting One Keyboard Review: Analog Innovation

Most mechanical keyboard switches have two positions—off and on. Either the key is activated, or it’s not. The switches in the Wooting One keyboard are different. Like the analog trigger on a gamepad, they detect a range of motion. I wouldn’t say it’s something every PC gamer needs, but it can definitely change the way…

Hot Wheels RC Brings Rocket League To Life This Fall

Last year, Rocket League developer Psyonix added iconic Hot Wheels vehicles to its popular car soccer video game. This year, Hot Wheels returns the favor, recreating the video game in miniature with the Hot Wheels Rocket League RC Rivals Set. While I would have been satisfied with a couple of traditional Hot Wheels cars and…

Overwatch League Teams Are Making Their First Trades

Overwatch League’s first stage had some big moments, but it felt like everybody was still trying to find their footing. With the big OWL slumbering in a mighty oak somewhere until February 21, teams are fine-tuning their rosters. It’s been a day of trades and free-agent signings, the former of which are among the first…

Fortnite‘s Tilted Towers Are Evil

Last month, when Fortnite Battle Royale dropped its fantastic new map, it was marred by one tall, gray blemish: The Tilted Towers. Yes, I am tilted over the Tilted Towers. Laugh it up. A cluster of several-story buildings now sits squarely in the center of Fortnite Battle Royale’s map, where once, there was a lovely…

I Love Deadly Premonition, But The Villains Are A Mess

We recently finished playing Deadly Premonition on Kotaku’s Twitch channel. In Deadly Premonition, FBI detective Francis York Morgan tries to find the murderer behind a series of serial killings in the town of Greenvale. Greenvale is full of colorful residents with daily schedules and humanizing side-stories. Its villains are complicated and human, but once their…

Assassin’s Creed Origins’ new non-violent educational mode will feature 75 historical tours that range from five to 25 minutes, according to an official Q&A. They’re set in the game’s open world and cover mummies, cultivation, the Library of Alexandria and more. Discovery Tour will be free for Origins owners on Feb. 20 (or $20 as…

Don’t Expect Much From Lego Marvel 2‘s Black Panther DLC

In today’s downloadable Black Panther level for Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, Everett K. Ross is kidnapped by Erik Killmonger, setting up an epic showdown that doesn’t actually happen. I don’t expect much from a $2.99 piece of Lego game DLC. A few extra characters, a ten-minute mini-adventure—that’s par for the course. But I don’t…

Rare Says Sea Of Thieves Will Run Well Even On Crappy PCs

Usually, when developers talk about PC ports of big games, they emphasize top-tier performance. The best possible graphics, the highest resolutions. God rays, 4k, a million frames per second. Rare, though, has taken a different approach with Sea of Thieves The game, Rare says, will run capably on a whole host of different PC configurations…

Game Developer Adam Rippon Is Having A Good Time Right Now

Yesterday morning, Adam Rippon got a rude message from an anonymous Twitter account. “You have shown to all just what a complete I.D.I.O.T you are!” wrote Grumpygrampa22. “You’re an embarrassment!” Here’s the bad news for Grumpygrampa22: Unless he meant to insult a 37-year-old game designer in Oakland, California, he got the wrong Adam Rippon. For…

For My Third Time Through Dragon Age: Inquisition, I Promise I’m Not Gonna Romance Iron Bull

Yesterday I made the hardest choice in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I decided not to romance Iron Bull. This is my third playthrough of Inquisition. I wasn’t a big Dragon Age person when I started it the first time around. In fact, I’m not really a big fantasy fan, but the game had come highly recommended…

New Anime Season Is Killing It With Shows About Ordinary Girls

Sex and the City is a guilty pleasure for a reason, but it might not be the reason you think. The pleasure half comes from its voyeuristic look into how four hot women navigate careers, sex and, like totally, more sex. The guilty half is because these four women are fake as hell and we…

Four Years Later, Twitch Is Playing Pokémon Red and Blue At Once

The iconic streaming experiment Twitch Plays Pokémon is not only still alive and kicking, it’s now taking on a new challenge: controlling two games in one go. After playing nearly every Pokémon game imaginable, it’s impressive that the channel continues to find new ways to keep the social experiment alive. A quick recap, for those…

The Radiant Historia Remake Lets You Skip All The Battles

The underappreciated Nintendo DS role-playing game Radiant Historia gets new life today on 3DS, and with it comes a feature that should probably be in every role-playing game: You can skip every non-story encounter. I’ve been playing Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology on and off for the past few weeks, as tough as it is to…

Compete Discusses: Is Overwatch League Any Good, Or What

After a full year of hype, we now have a decent idea of what the Overwatch League looks like in practice. With the season a quarter over—“Stage 1″ just ended—Compete staff checks in on how things are going. Eric Van Allen: So the first real question, I guess, is do we feel like the league…