This Week In The Business: There Are Hits, And Then There Are Hits

STAT | 3 million – The number of Dark Souls 3 copies shipped by Namco Bandai in the year ended March 31. The game launched March 24. Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… STAT | 14 million – The number of Star Wars: Battlefront copies Electronic Arts shipped for its “phenomenal” fiscal year…

Serial Cleaner is a game about stealthily mopping up murder scenes. Think Viscera Cleanup Detail, except it’s a) set in the 1970s, b) a stealth game, and c) played from an entirely different perspective. So maybe it’s not much like Viscera Cleanup Detail at all. Except for the whole, you know, cleaning-up-gory-murder-scenes part.

Microsoft Kills Project Spark

Project Spark is no more. Microsoft announced Friday afternoon—prime news-burying hour!—that their online game creator is no longer for sale as of today. Online services will end in August. “For existing users of Project Spark, online services will be unavailable after 8/12/16,” community manager Thomas Gratz wrote on their website. “Without services, players will no…

Someone Recreated The Warcraft Movie Trailer In World Of Warcraft

Against my better instincts, I’m crossing my fingers for the Warcraft movie. It’s being directed by the guy behind Moon and Source Code. He is also technically a Bowie! If all else fails, though, when the dust settles, we’ll have at least gotten this cool in-game trailer out of it. Ivan Kuzkin crafted a shot-for-shot…

Nine Underappreciated JRPGs That Are Worth Your Time

You’ve heard of Final Fantasy VII. Everyone’s already told you to play Chrono Trigger. But what about the lesser-known JRPGs? What about the gems that don’t get discussed all that much? Today we’re highlighting some underappreciated gems from the past few decades, across all consoles. I’m sticking to games that don’t get discussed very often,…

The Origins Of Cosplay Date Back To The 1930s

As the weekend approaches, it’s time for Worth Reading, a roundup of the best games writing around. Let’s start with a history lesson. Hey, You Should Read These “Meet the Woman Who Invented Cosplay” by Jennifer Culp If you, like me, know nothing about the cosplay’s history, Jennifer’s article is highly recommended. Though her piece…

Inspired by the announcement of Civilization VI, buccura added a certain familiar face to XCOM 2. Why’s he nicknamed “Nukem”? It’s a long, exceedingly amusing story

Watch Us Play Some Uncharted 4 Multiplayer

We’ve talked a lot about Uncharted 4’s single player here on Kotaku, but if you want to get a sense of the other big mode on Naughty Dog’s latest, you should tune in to our livestream below. For about an hour, Riley and I will be playing through Uncharted 4’s multiplayer on Facebook. It is…

The Spice Must Flow

Jad Saber is a concept artist based in Beirut who has worked across games, advertising and visual fx. You can see more of Jad’s work at his personal site and ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on…

New Pokémon Sun and Moon Trailer Appears To Show Unannounced Monster

Time to put on your detective caps, Pokémon fans. By now, you’ve probably seen one of the two trailers released for Pokémon Sun and Moon earlier this week. Hell, you may even have an opinion about which new starter is the best one.Well, as it turns out, there is actually a third trailer for Pokémon…

This Final Fantasy XV Interview Is Incredible

Hironobu Sakaguchi was the first director of Final Fantasy. Hajime Tabata is the latest director of Final Fantasy. When they get together, the results are surprisingly hilarious. Today Famitsu Magazine published an English transcript of a recent interview they held with both Final Fantasy luminaries, and it’s full of incredible moments. Sakaguchi’s comments are blunt,…

Friday The 13th Movies, Ranked

Chi-chi-chi-ha-ha-ha. It’s Friday the 13th! What better way than to celebrate than by judging, ranking, and obsessing over the violent cinematic exploits of hockey enthusiast Jason Voorhees? Most of these movies aren’t even good! This article was originally published on March 13, 2015. Friday the 13th has been around since 1980, seen nine sequels, experienced…

Brilliant Destiny Player Solos Oryx On Hard Mode

For a while, it was impossible to solo the Hard Mode version of Oryx in Destiny, a video game about quietly pondering the meaning of life. After the April update, however, that’s changed. In a video that I somehow missed last Friday when it was first posted, Destiny player Esoterickk1 shows us how it’s done.…

DOOM Has A Cool Terminator 2 Easter Egg

Minor spoilers ahead! DOOM is full of great Easter eggs and references but this is a special one. In order to trigger it, you have to die. You have to die in a morbid way, by jumping into the lava, to be exact. And this can only mean one thing: a scene from Terminator 2!…

LEGO Library of the Undead. Awesome dungeon-style build by Deus Otlosus, that looks like an intense encounter straight from a classic RPG. To contact the author of this post, write to: [email protected]

The Art of Traditional Japanese Storytelling Makes for a Compelling Anime

Rakugo, the art of traditional Japanese storytelling, has existed for over 1000 years. Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju uses the modern day world of Rakugo to tell a story of love, loss, and tragedy through the life of Japan’s last great storyteller. At first, however, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju seems nothing like this. The start of…

The New Kojima Productions Logo Has a Whole Body, Apparently

You’ve seen this, no? It’s the new Kojima Productions logo (above), which was first shown last December and which shows a skull and some sort of helmet. But that’s not all, according to Hideo Kojima. “I can’t really say yet,” Kojima recently told Famitsu, “but this logo has a secret. It has a full body,…