Resident Evil Cosplay Is Not Messing Around

This is Russian cosplayer Nargaas Jill Valentine, trying here to make the most of a bad day at the office. Photos by Kira. The zombies are Aoki, Misha and Lady Neba. The make-up work involved in this shoot is absolutely A++ stuff.

How Esports Broadcasters Decide What You See

Gunfire, spells, commentators talking a mile a minute, momentum shifts, plays you can literally miss by blinking: there’s so much going on during esports events that there’s hardly any time to spare a thought for what’s going on behind the scenes, let alone what’s happening right in front of your eyes. Observers aren’t as immediately…

Our Favorite Weapons In Monster Hunter: World

One of the toughest choices you’ll face early in Monster Hunter: World is which weapon to pick. There are so many options, and anything can be viable if you know what you’re doing. Decisions, decisions… I am fully obsessed with World, but my limited time with Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on 3DS hadn’t really prepared…

I Think I Understand Sports Fans Now

Two winters ago, a high school pal whom I hadn’t seen in several years while he served in Afghanistan was back in New York, and, en route to a night of reconnecting over bowls of warm ramen, he abruptly ruined everything with a suggestion: Let’s go to a sports bar around the corner and watch…

Genital Jousting’s New Story Mode Lets You Play As A Penis With Problems

By now you may have seen Genital Jousting’s party mode, where players compete to penetrate their friends (with consent, of course). The game finally came out of early access this month, and the full release includes a story mode that works way better than it should. It’s kind of like The Stanley Parable, but with…

Few Things In Gaming Are As Satisfying As A New Room Game

The Room video games are among the most satisfying things you can play. They’re all about figuring out how to unlock intricately-locked boxes—or locked stoves or locked model submarines or some other beautifully intricate piece of old-fashioned gadgetry. The newest one, The Room: Old Sins, came out last week for iOS. It’s great. Kotaku senior…

Hub Worlds Can Be Games’ Greatest Pleasure

Video game hub worlds are towns and hamlets that the player returns to between gameplay to restock and reflect. In games like Monster Hunter World or Splatoon 2, they offer a sense of security and community that ground the player in the world and make them feel truly at ease. Monster Hunter World’s central hub…

Dragon Ball FighterZ’ Lobby System Is A Huge Hassle

Dragon Ball FighterZ’s multiplayer battles are spectacles filled with blazing-fast combat backed by outstanding netcode. If only getting into one of those battles didn’t involve fumbling about with the game’s clunky multiplayer lobby system. I spent the better part of the weekend playing Dragon Ball FighterZ, and I’ve noticed several issues that make the game’s…

The Six Phases Of A Limited-Time Video Game Event

A lot of mobile games, especially ones that rely on random drops or loot boxes, have special, limited time events.If you play those games, even if you swear you don’t care about missing an event, you kind of always do. Today is the last day of Uta No Prince Sama’s first event in their English…

PlayStation Network Keeps Going Down

What’s up with the PlayStation Network? For the past week, Sony’s premium online service has been intermittently offline, with users reporting issues playing games, streaming videos, and logging into their accounts. The problems appear to have started around January 23, and we’ve gotten tips and seen reports of sporadic outages on almost every day since.…

Dragon Ball FighterZ Is Fantastic For Newcomers

Unlike team games like Dota 2 and Overwatch where losing is always someone else’s fault, fighting games can make you specifically feel like shit. I’ve picked up and put down so many fighting games over the years rather than pile up losses with no one else to blame. But Dragon Ball FighterZ is somehow different.…

Newly Discovered Audio Message In Assassin’s Creed Origins Was Supposed To Be There All Along

A game as popular as October’s Assassin’s Creed Origins is usually wrung free of major surprises by the time it’s been out for four months. That’s why some fans were startled last week to discover that Origins contains a previously unknown, new audio message from the Isu, a mysterious ancient civilization that is part of…

You should watch this fascinating Trainer Tips documentary on the world’s top Pokémon Go player, and the incredibly competitive gaming scene he inspires in Singapore.

Infamous Atari Player Disqualified From World Record After 35 Years

In 1982, video game score-chaser Todd Rogers supposedly set a world record time of 5.51 seconds in the Atari 2600 racing game Dragster. Last year, speedrunners called that score into question. After a lengthy arbitration process, Rogers’ score was removed from Twin Galaxies, an organization that tracks video game records and high scores. “Based on…

The Week In Games: Final Fantasy Fighters Unite 

Square Enix’s fighting game joins the mix this week but not much else. There was a time when I would have bought anything I could get my hands on that sported the words “Final Fantasy.” Ten years ago the prospect of a Square fighting game that wasn’t Ehrgeiz would have made my jaw drop. And…