Technically The Worst Game Of This Console Generation

Frame rates in the low teens with frequent stutter. Loading times upwards of two and a half minutes. Persistent screen tearing. Lichdom: Battlemage is a fun game on PC, but on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One it’s the worst. Originally posted 4/23/16 The animated GIF atop this post is running at 10 frames per second.…

Things To Do In World of Warcraft Before Legion Comes Out

World of Warcraft: Legion comes out on August 30, which means we won’t see a new update in the coming months. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do in WoW. It’s the perfect time to prepare for all the gameplay changes. We collected the achievements and content that will be removed from the game…

The Stylish Way To Win A Hearthstone Match In One Turn

Here’s Crypt with a quite classy Hearthstone one turn kill. He manages to defeat his opponent with pirates, an almost too perfect symmetry on board, parrots, a funny friend request at the end, pirates and more pirates. And even though it’s not a ranked game, pulling a combo like this looks pretty effective and fun.…

The Beauty of Martial Arts and Self Defense in GIFs

This is virtuosity. Truly. Via 2ch, here is a collection of martial arts and self-defense GIFs that feature the likes of Tetsuzan Kuroda,Doug Marcaida, Vladimir Vasiliev, and Seiji Nishimura, among others. There’s an incredible series of moves in an array of styles on display here. Feel free to add more martial arts and self defense…

Alien: Isolation Fan Art Really Nails The ‘Deserted Space Station’ Feel

Retro tech, abandoned coffee cups, unmade beds, monitors saying “LOST CONTACT” in all caps. Yep, that’s a deserted Alien space station, alright. This is yet another piece of university coursework, made by environment artist Azam Khan from the UK—another Staffordshire University alumnus, like the guy who made the BioShock piece from earlier—as his final project…

Japanese Factories at Night Are Magnificent

Plus, there’s a nice Final Fantasy VII vibe going on. For a while now, photographers have been tweeting photos of factories at night to the hashtag #工場夜景 (koujou yakei) or “factory night view.” Many of these appear to be refineries, and the resulting images are often futuristic and otherworldy.

Meet a Guy Who Checks 3,000 Kit Kats Per Minute

Making Japanese Kit Kats sure seems fun. Checking them, though, that looks hard, especially when thousands of them are rolling by every minute. A recent episode of Japanese TV program JobTune showed the inside of a KitKat production factory. To ensure that only decent wafers end up sold, a factory worker spot checks them. One…

Hummingbird and cherry blossoms. Yoyogi Park, Tokyo, Japan. Update February 15 – 2:42 am: The name of the photographer was removed at his request. 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 Week In Games: These Are Definitely Some Video Games Right Here

You know how most release weeks have one central peg, some highly-anticipated title that a person creating a list can latch onto? Yeah, about that. This week we’ve got a bunch of smaller titles. Many of them are highly-anticipated, but it’s a very focused sort of anticipation. I mean, more Hitman is good, but episodic…

The Game of Thrones Dilemma

In the first book of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Eddard Stark faces a near-impossible choice: Should he sacrifice his noble values to save his own life? This week, people across the world will have to make a similarly difficult decision: Should we watch the new season of Game of Thrones?…

The Acer Predator 8 Looks Like A Gaming Tablet But Hasn’t Got The Guts

With its crimson accents, sharp angles and four front-facing speakers, the Acer Predator 8 looks like a tablet built for serious mobile gaming., but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve been pleased with what I’ve seen so far of Acer’s most recent gaming-aimed products, so I figured I would see what else the red-and-black…

Podcast: When Is ‘Crunch’ OK?

Is mandatory overtime an integral part of game development or a systemic issue that should be completely eliminated? Where would you even start? Originally posted 4/21/16 On today’s episode of our podcast, Kotaku Splitscreen, industry veteran Matthew Burns (Destiny, Halo) joins us to talk about the nuances of “crunch”—game parlance for forced unpaid overtime—and how…

Kotaku Shop Contest: Lighten Up, Dark Souls: Winners! 

Last week I asked our Photoshop-savvy readers to bring a little bright and fluffy to the dreary world of Dark Souls. This is the prettiest ‘Shop Contest winners post ever. You folks have got a lot of brightness in your hearts, as I expected. There were so many spectacular entries for last week’s contest that…

Goombas and Roombas. LEGO builder Cecilie Fritzvold (via The Brothers Brick) created this micro scale Super Mario Bros. play session, complete with a robot vacuum cleaner to handle chores while the player is otherwise occupied.

Match-Fixing Report Shows How Gambling Has Ruined Korean StarCraft

The Korean prosecutor’s office leading the StarCraft 2 match-fixing investigation released its report this week, and the results are not good for fans of the sport. One of the game’s greatest players, Lee “Life” Seung Hyun, now stands convicted of match-fixing, as well as another leading player, Bung “Bbyong” Woo Yong. That’s only half the…

Sunday Comics: A Pitiful Cry For Help

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published April 22. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published April 18. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…