What Makes Hooks So Damn Good In Competitive Video Games

The hook is a simple but effective tool in games: a chain, thrown accurately, pulling enemies back to their likely doom. But in the realm of competitive games, hooks seem almost ubiquitous. The reason why a hook is a near-necessity for any competitive game, is simple: They’re the biggest moments in games, boiled down to…

Punching Players Out Of Moving Cars, And Other Battlegrounds Myths

Survival shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is massively popular, but because it’s in early access, it’s not exactly polished. That makes it ripe for mythmaking. Can you block infinite crossbow bolts with a frying pan? Can you punch someone out of a moving car? The answers to both are yes, according to a new YouTube video by…

GameStop Customers’ Credit Cards May Have Been Stolen, Company Says

A very bad year for GameStop got even worse this week, as the retailer sent out letters to online customers informing them that their credit cards may have been stolen. In the letter, which several Kotaku readers (and an editor-in-chief) received yesterday, GameStop says that breachers may have obtained names, addresses, and credit card information…

The E3 2017 Press Conference Schedule

We’re just days away from E3, when we’ll all gather on the internet for that barrage of endorphins that can only come from live video game press conferences full of gun shooting, cars, and more gun shooting. The show will start on a Saturday this year, thanks to the early risers at Electronic Arts. Let’s…

Nice Garage You Got There, Fallout 4

Ioan Dumitrescu is an artist based in Bucharest who has worked on games like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Fallout 4 and Crysis 3, and movies like the new Beauty and the Beast Note: the top image is based on an illustration by Ilya Nazarov We’ve featured Ioan on the site before, but since it’s…

Square Enix Releases Much-Needed Instruction Manuals For Mana Collection

When the Seiken Densetsu Collection, the first three games in the Mana series, was released earlier this month in Japan, it did not come with instruction manuals. So Square Enix has decided to change that by releasing them online. The manuals can be viewed here. As Kotaku previously pointed out, Seiken 3‘s Super Famicom release…

Live-Action Gintama Says It’s A Comedy

The debut Gintama trailer wasn’t exactly hilarious. The latest one isn’t either, but it does want you to know this: It’s a comedy. Makes sense! Because the Gintama manga and anime are rather silly. Which seems to be the goal of this trailer. We won’t know for sure if the Gintama movie is funny until…

Japan’s Top 15 Attractions Picked By International Tourists 

Wondering what to see in Japan? You might want to listen to the advice of your fellow travelers. Website Trip Advisor has this year’s most popular tourists spots as selected by visitors from around the world. This is the 9th year that Trip Advisor has published such a list. It draws from a massive number…

Night. Kyoto, Japan. By Elliot Mitchell. 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! 

Finally, Good Overwatch Figures!

For a game where half the fun is just loving its cast, Blizzard has been slow getting quality Overwatch figures onto the market. Pop Vinyls should be shot into the sun, and the Nendoroids were a start, but Good Smile has now stepped up with a Figma based on Tracer. Due out in December, it’ll…

Nintendo Attempts Live-Action Super Mario Run On Stage

That cute trailer wasn’t the only thing Nintendo did to celebrate thegroundbreaking ceremony for its own theme park yesterday. There was also this attempt at a live-action recreation of side-scrolling Mario. If the setting looks familiar, that’s because it was the reason for that stage being constructed in the Universal Studios parking lot that we…

Check Out The Incredible Amount Of Detail In A Video Game Vehicle

Strike Vector is a game we’ve featured on Fine Art before—back in 2013!—but we’re circling back round to it today to focus on one very particular aspect of it that I thought was interesting enough to share. Outside of the team making the game itself, a small crew got together to make a trailer (first…

Overwatch Pro Suspended After Griefing And Streaming Anime Porn

Daniel “Dafran” Francesca is an extremely skilled DPS player for Selfless, one of the best pro Overwatch teams out there. He’s also an unapologetic griefer and troll, and his antics have finally come back to bite him. Today, both Blizzard and Dafran’s own team have suspended him from play. This means he’s no longer allowed…

Overwatch Now Has An In-Game Reference To Tracer’s Girlfriend

To recap, Overwatch’s Tracer is gay. Until now that’s been a fact contained to offscreen fiction, but the latest update to the PTR (Public Test Region) has dropped in a new voice line that references Tracer’s girlfriend Emily within the game itself. Spotted by Aryaand Mic, here’s what it sounds like: If the embed doesn’t…