Heather is back from E3 and ready to beat up more bosses in the sci-fi Souls-like The Surge. Watch her totally not die live on Twitch

Huh, Black Mesa Is Still Not Finished

I played Half-Life remake Black Mesa, and really liked it! I also in the intervening years completely forgot that it wasn’t technically finished, since it ended on Earth and not, as the original game did, on the alien planet Xen. That’s because Black Mesa’s developers thought, like the rest of us, that Valve’s ending sequence…

After Three Years, Someone Actually Beat Threes

Oh, you thought Threes was just an endless little time-waster for subway rides and long lines? Turns out you can actually beat the game, a feat accomplished for the first time a mere three years and four months after Threes was first released. Or, to be more precise, as Threes co-creator Greg Wohlwend points out,…

Call of Duty: WWII Bringing Big Changes To Multiplayer

With Call of Duty: WWII, Activision is making some significant changes to the series’ multiplayer mode, including new social features and a complete overhaul of the perks and class systems. During livestreams and panel discussions at E3 last week, developers from Sledgehammer Games went into detail about the changes that the studio has made for…

Point: Helix From Arms Is Bad; Counter-Point: No He’s Not

Here at Kotaku, we have strong opinions about video games. Currently, Arms’ DNA-themed fighter threatens to tear this snack website apart. Helix is Arms’ gooey fighter whose signature “Blorb” arms squirt blinding goo on opponents’ faces. Depending on who you ask, Helix is either a lovable snot ball with tons of competitive potential or a…

Twitch Is Now The Only Third-Party Place To Watch Blizzard Tournaments

Video streaming platform Twitch announced a two-year collaboration with Blizzard Entertainment today, where the service will receive exclusive third-party streaming rights to tournaments like the Heroes of the Storm Global Championship and Overwatch APEX League. As esports continues to expand, securing broadcast rights will start to become a growing contest in the industry. Much like…

Pillars of Eternity II Lets You Run Your Own Pirate Ship

The second Pillars of Eternity is aiming to be the Baldur’s Gate II to Pillars of Eternity’s Baldur’s Gate. And if that line makes no sense to you, here’s another selling point: It’ll let you helm your own pirate ship. Last week at E3, I watched a brief demo of Pillars of Eternity II and…

Nice Cosplay, Texas

A-Kon, a convention in Texas that attracts over 30,000 fans, was held between June 8-11 at the Fort Worth Convention Centre. Here’s some of the best cosplay in attendance. Both the video and photos below were shot by Mineralblu, and you can see more shots from A-Kon at his Facebook page

Darkest Dungeon‘s DLC Adds More Awesome Bad Times For Your Party

The new Darkest Dungeon DLC, The Crimson Court, tacks a couple more stressful mechanics on top of an already stressful game. I love it. Darkest Dungeon is a game about losing—you will lose all your party members as they explore dungeons, they will all lose their sanity, and you will lose the game. Despite being…

We played Shadow of War for 10 minutes at E3. The demo’s main event was a fortress siege (watch an archived E3 stream of one raid). Arkham-style combat returns, but you storm the gates with hand-picked Orc allies who unleash special attacks. Could be a gimmick. Could be deeply strategic. We’ll know on October 10.

A Charming Post-Apocalyptic Gay Dating Sim

Who We Are Now tackles queer romance in the post-apocalypse. That doesn’t sound too far flung from Walking Dead fan fiction, but what sets this upcoming PC game apart is that it takes place well after human beings have adapted to Armageddon. It’s ten years on, we’ve learned how to survive, but the scars and…

A List Of Things I Still Have To Do In Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

According to my Nintendo Switch, I’ve put more than 125 hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I’ve defeated Ganon, of course. I’ve also taken down an army of monsters, completed a bunch of shrine puzzles, and found a ton of Korok seeds. There’s still so much to do. Like a lot…

After Dropping A Tier, I Am Freaking Out About My Overwatch Rank

After a difficult string of placement matches for the current Overwatch competitive season, the unthinkable happened. I dropped to a lower tier. I had spent multiple seasons comfortably sitting in the Platinum tier, and suddenly I was Gold. I have become obsessed with undoing this demotion. I like to think that I’m a decent video…

One Of The Mechanical Keyboard Community’s Most Beloved Boards Is Back

This is the WhiteFox, a custom 60 percent keyboard created by Matteo ”Matt30″ Spinelli. A couple of years back this board was offered as a DIY kit on Massdrop, and over 4,000 kits were sold. Now Matt30 and the folks at Input Club are offering the WhiteFox once more, fully-assembled for the masses. Working together…

Injustice 2 Pro Proves The Game’s Lightly-Regarded Joker Actually Is A Threat

In the hands of a skilled player, even a weak character can be a winner. Dominique “SonicFox” McLean proved that this weekend when he used The Joker, arguably one of the worst characters in Injustice 2, to kick Batman’s ass. The showdown happened at the Community Effort Orlando fighting game tournament and was a showcase…

The Secret Behind Scribblenauts: Making Objects By Hand (And Lots Of Crunch)

Back in 2009, a little game called Scribblenauts blew minds across the world with a single ambitious concept: you could make anything. By typing a noun on the in-game keyboard, you’d conjure that object into the game’s world. The game could recognize just about anything, from common (dinosaurs) to esoteric (Shoggoth). Most people believed that…

The Man Behind Bloodstained Talks Konami And Kickstarter Pressure

Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Nightis a throwback to Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night. Judging from our hands-on time with it at E3, it’s shaping up into a pretty fun game. I had a chance to talk to Koji Igarashi, Castlevania’s producer and now head of Bloodstained’s development to talk design, female protagonists, and…

Arms: The Kotaku Review

Arms may look like a Mario Party mini-game, but it doesn’t play like one. Charming and involved, Arms toes the line between a party game and an entry-level fighter with moderate depth. While Arms succeeds as an easy-to-pick-up brawler, its ambitions as a hardcore game for serious players are less certain. Arms does one thing,…