L.A. Noire‘s Homicide Investigations Were Some Of The Best 

Last month, we started streaming L.A. Noire on Kotaku’s Twitch channel. While the start of the game hassome problems, its homicide investigations take a darker turn, adding nuance and moral ambiguity to the tale of LAPD detective Cole Phelps. L.A. Noire is broken into various “desks” such as arson and homicide. The game’s opening cases…

New Overwatch Short Explores Mei’s Tragic Origins

There’s a new Overwatch CGI short, and no, it’s not that painfully brief Junkrat and Roadhog comedy sketch from the other day. This time around, Mei’s the star of the show, largely because all of her friends are dead. The new short is a re-telling of Mei’s origin story, beginning with a cryo-hibernation gone wrong…

And Now A Hearthstone Musical Number

Introducing a new series of animated shorts and comics aimed at injecting more personality into its collectible card game, Blizzard treated fans watching today’s Gamescom event to a little song and dance. The star of the video is a young girl who stumbles upon Harth Stonebrew’s tavern, where everybody gets along and knows how to…

Modern Warfare‘s ‘Mad Props’ Mode Is Broken And Boring

The new Weekend Warfare mode for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered might actually be one of the most ill-conceived and unbalanced game modes in the franchise’s history. Raven Software decided to create a new Weekend Warfare mode for Modern Warfare Remastered, spinning off the success of the wacky hide-n-seek mode called Prop Hunt, which…

D&D Rules Developer’s 9 Insider Hacks For Players and DMs

Dungeons & Dragons’ lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford has a tough job. To keep the game in top form, he’s got to make sure its exhaustive ruleset walks that fine line between combat and role-play, thoroughness and accessibility, firmness and flexibility. Along the way, he’s come up with some good tips on getting in touch…

The second chapter of the outstanding puzzle RPG Ticket to Earth is now live on iOS The free update picks up after the cliffhanger ending to episode one, adding new enemies, locations and an additional playable character. Expect the Steam version to update later this year.

Holy Crap, Hellboy’s Coming To Injustice 2

NetherRealm’s hit DC Comics fighting game uses the conceit of the multiverse to explain the countless different versions of characters. Apparently, the Right Hand of Doom exists on one of those infinite earths, because Hellboy is part of a crop of new fighters coming to Injustice 2 Announced during a livestream from Gamescom, Fighter Pack…

Fukushima Evacuation Area Overrun With Vegetation

It’s been seven summers since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The homes and apartments closest to the reactor are still abandoned. They are now also engulfed by plant life. Asahi Shimbun uploaded the video below. It’s in Japanese, but the images, many of which were taken by helicopter and drone, are a good reminder that…

Yu Suzuki Explains Shenmue III‘s Stiff Facial Expressions 

Rest easy if you thought the Shenmue III trailer was real bad. In a recent interview, Yu Suzuki talked about the “stiff” facial animations, saying that they’re temporary. Phew. Here is the exchange with Japanese website Game Watch Impress as Yu Suzuki watched the Shenmue III trailer. Game Watch Impress: Is this trailer all in-game?…

Old And New. Osaka Castle, Osaka, Japan. By Chris Bryan. 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! 

The beautiful Super Famicom-themed 3DS XL that Japan got last year is finally headed to Europe and Australia—two markets whose SNES shared the same design—in October.

Xbox Live Was Down For Over Five Hours [Update]

Xbox Live is experiencing some serious downtime at the moment, with many owners unable to play games or even sign in. [Update: it’s back] This is Xbox Live’s status page at time of posting. As you can see, both “core services” and purchasing are affected. Microsoft is aware and looking into the problem: This means…

Blizzard Making A Bunch Of Changes To Overwatch‘s Competitive Mode

Overwatch’s fifth competitive season was not the game’s finest hour. Doom and gloom dominated the proceedings, and no, those aren’t the names of Reaper’s shotguns. For season six, Blizzard is changing things up, albeit with a series of tweaks, as opposed to a total overhaul. The biggest news is that competitive seasons will be shorter…

Throw NBA 2K18’s Cover In The Trash

Didn’t we only just go through this with PES? Now it’s NBA 2K’s turn to have its already-anointed cover athlete screw things up by changing teams before the game is even out. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reportsthat Cleveland and Boston executed a blockbuster trade todaythat sends Cavs superstar Kyrie Irving to the Celtics in exchange for…

Six Years Later, Bethesda’s Brink Is Suddenly Free-To-Play

Brink was weird. It mashed together multiplayer gunplay with single-player narrative, then spiced up its chunky concoction with parkour and levels set on floating cities (because global warming). It’s also telling that I speak about it in the past tense, because while it continues to exist, you could be forgiven for assuming otherwise. The Bethesda-published,…