Barrel Paradox Crashes Game

Today on Highlight Reel we have pirate stories, paradoxes, flamethrower shotguns 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 more! Catch up on all the episodes…

Video Game Companies Reach ‘Tentative’ Agreement To End Voice Actor Strike

After nearly a year striking, unionized video game voice actors just tentatively agreed to end their boycott against 11 games companies, a new Screen Actors’ Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) press release said today. Voice actors had demanded residual payments, better protections for their voices and more transparency about what projects they…

The Company That Wants To Replace Textbooks With Video Games

On any given day, CEO André Thomas arrives at his company Triseum’s office in Bryan, Texas at nine in the morning. While this is when Thomas gets in, his work day usually starts hours before by checking sales on the company’s educational video games. On one of the days that Thomas and I spoke, he…

Not Everyone Should Be The Driver In Battlegrounds

Anyone asking me to chauffer them around PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds had better be prepared to kiss any of the following things: a large tree, the ground, a wall or a puddle of their own blood. Thankfully, somebody has outclassed my worst Battlegrounds driving moments, and watching them royally blow it in a recent video made me…

New Call of Duty Mode Let Players Squash Enemies With Their Fingers

I was skeptical this past weekend when I saw ‘Gesture Warfare’ listed in the featured playlist on Infinite Warfare. Killing players with the finger gun? A flick of the wrist? It all sounded completely ridiculous, but then I remembered how much I enjoy Modern Warfare Remastered’s hide-n-seek ‘Prop Hunt’ mode. I literally play as trash…

Overwatch‘s Most Popular Player Says Picking New Team Was ‘One Of The Hardest’ Decisions Of His Life

As was foretold (by himself), Brandon “Seagull” Larned is back. But the DPS dynamo didn’t return to partially Shaq-owned team NRG Esports. In a move that surprised many, he’s jumped ship to Team EnvyUs Earlier this year, Seagull stepped away from the highest levels of pro Overwatch play to dedicate himself to streaming. At the…

Zelda’s Hyrule Historia Gets A Follow-Up Encyclopedia

Nintendo’s partnership with publisher Dark Horse has already brought us two outstanding volumes, Hyrule Historia and Art & Artifacts. Next April the “Goddess Collection” gets its third and final volume in The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia, a comprehensive guide to the series from the first game to Twilight Princess HD. Hyrule Historia and Art &…

I Tried Remaking My D&D Adventure In Divinity: Original Sin 2, And It (Mostly) Worked

Divinity: Original Sin 2 has a mode that lets players design their own Dungeons & Dragons-esque adventure inside the role-playing game, and in case you were wondering what kind of dweeb would port their homebrew D&D game into DoS: 2, the answer is me. My experiment was instructive and, I think, says a lot about…

Game Designer Says Developers Would Be More Candid If Gamer Culture Wasn’t So Toxic

Video game enthusiasts often muse about the secrecy surrounding game development, which is at times treated as if it were operated by the NSA. Over the weekend, one developer offered an interesting take: Game developers are secretive because being open can lead to too much toxicity. Designer and programmer Charles Randall, who has worked for…

New Ocarina Of Time Speedrun Beats All Dungeons Without Opening Any Doors

Ocarina of Time speedruns are already challenging, from Any% that use all sorts of glitches to speed through the game to 100% runs that collect everything. A new tool-assisted runtakes things a step further, completing all dungeons without opening a single door. A tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) uses emulation and special software to play a game…

How An NFL Joke Slips Into A Japanese Game

Danganronpa V3, like previous entries in the excellent humor-horror series, is full of pop culture references. But how did an NFL joke get stuck in there? As a longtime New York Jets fan who has nothing but bile for the New England Patriots, I very much enjoyed seeing the above line, a non sequitur delivered…

This Is A $2,200 Retro Gaming Machine

This is the Zette System, handcrafted from wood by Swedish artist Love Hultén. In its resting state it resembles a stylized wooden boombox, but it’s actually a retro gaming machine with a pair of wireless gamepads and a built-in projector. Only 25 of them are being made, and they are not cheap. From boombox mode,…

Japan’s Newest Giant Gundam Is Finished And So Awesome

This weekend, the one-to-one scale Unicorn Gundam was officially unveiled in Tokyo. It looks fantastic. The 64.6-foot statue replaced a previous giant Gundam that went up in 2012 and came down this past March. The newest life-sized Gundam is the most impressive one yet as the tweets uploaded on Barukan Log show. Kotaku East is…

First Permanent Sailor Moon Store Opens In Japan

Until now, the only Sailor Moon stores in Japan have been temporary pop-up shops. That’s changed with the country’s first permanent Sailor Moon store opening in Tokyo’s Harajuku. According to The Japan Times (full disclosure: I am a columnist there), the store opened this weekend, selling an array of Sailor Moon goodies. “Because more goods…

It Sucks When Ultraman Lands In Your City

In Japanese superhero and monster movies, massive battles lay waste to cities. We rarely get to see what it’s like to experience that from the point of view of a regular citizen, but that’s exactly what City Shrouded in Shadow offers.  Developed by Granzella, City Shrouded in Shadow is the spiritual successor to the Disaster…

The Cosplay Of The Tokyo Game Show

It’s that time again. Time for cosplayers to descend on the Tokyo Game Show. The two public days bring out some of the most talented and most interesting cosplayers around. Below are photos from the public days as well as from the Cosplay Collection Night event. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture,…

In the Dolomites. The Alps. By Robbert Vervuurt. 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! 

Catch The Latest Uncharted’s Story Without Actually Playing It

Want to skip playing a very good video gameand just catch up on that very good video game’s story? Andy Gilleand has you covered with this “movie” that covers Uncharted: The Lost Legacy’s plot in just under, um, four hours. For the record, he’s done this before with the other games in the series, in…