Sinmara Saga is an animated short directed and animated by Jason Hendrich. It’s basically all the bullshit experiences you had with a JRPG as a kid, only blown up with 2016’s visuals.

The Kick-Ass Space Art Of Dead Star

PS4 and PC game Dead Staris a neat little shooter. It also has some of the sexiest concept art for an indie game I’ve seen in a long, long time. Guys, posters, please Below you’ll find a ton of art from the game, from promo shots to ship designs. They’re the work of a whole…

Congressman’s Card Spends $1300 Of Campaign Money On Steam Games

Congressman Duncan Hunter is being questioned by the Federal Election Commission after it was discovered his credit card used “campaign funds to pay for video games on 68 separate occasions.” As the San Diego Union-Tribune report, Hunter’s campaign credit card spent $1302 on “Steam Games” last year, noting that they were a “personal expense” that…

To Explain Netcode Properly, You Need Props

Sometimes discussions on forums can get a little out of hand. Fans are pretty good at going down the rabbit hole. Sometimes it goes into full-blown conspiracy theories. In this instance yes, you the fans, were right. You’ve worked out how Overwatch’s netcode works, and that’s made the programmers happy to talk about it in…

Ashes Of The Singularity Is A Very Old-Timey RTS

Ashes of the Singularity, a new sci-fi RTS, was released last week. Long famous for being a benchmark for DX12, I’ve been playing the actual game for a few days now, and have thoughts. Pitched as a return to a type of slow, expansive experience we haven’t seen much of since the Supreme Commander days…

Toy Time Wields UltraSabers’ Renegade Combat Lightsaber

Plastic toy lightsabers are fine if you just want to goof around. Light FX models are great if you want something more ornamental. UltraSabers Renegade Combat Lightsaber is for serious fans who want their own version of Star Wars’ iconic weapon to take into battle. Ever since I saw the first Star Wars movie in…

Your Best (And Worst) Video Game Stories

Some of our most memorable times with video games have little to do with the game itself, and everything to do with who we were, who we were with and what we were doing at the time. Here are some Kotaku reader’s tales of triumph, despair, friendships lost, puking, battles with cancer, broken saves… For…

A Sign Of The Times

The option to disable copyrighted music in a major video game would have been unthinkable or at least seemed irrelevant years ago. Now it’s in a major Xbox One release like Quantum Break, as seen here. This will likely become increasingly common as game makers want gamers to be able to stream without fear of…

Steph Curry, Shaking That Ass Just Like An NBA Dancer

Sport video game modders, you’ve finally gone too far. To be frank, I’m not all that mad at the mod that overlays the bodies of NBA all-star players onto the animations of a league dance team. It’s hilarious watching Steph Curry, Lebron James and other hoop greats getting loose at halfourt. But the disturbing part…

The Best Scene In Star Wars: The Force Awakens

There are a lot of good scenes in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This one is my favorite. It happens a little over 30 minutes into the movie. Immediately after meeting, nervous ex-stormtrooper Finn and scavenger-with-a-destiny Rey have been thrown into a desperate battle for their lives, first fleeing a TIE Fighter attack on Rey’s…

Hidden Gem Hand of Fate Gets A Sequel Early Next Year

The 2015 hybrid card game and action role-playing game Hand of Fate was surprisingly good, if a bit rough-edged. It built a following, sold some 400,000 copies on PC and console, added 1.5 million more through a free Xbox Games with Gold promotion and was successful enough that it’s getting a slicker sequel that was…

1979 Revolution: Black Friday: The Kotaku Review

1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a game conceived by people who might not ever be able to go back to their native Iran, because they’re daring to create a document from its history. Despite the fact that game-maker Navid Khonsari is suspected of spying by the Iranian government, the primary takeaway from playing 1979 Revolution…

Skyrim Player Says He Went Through Hell Just To Adopt A Virtual Dog

And now, an epic tale of love and dedication only possible through video games. Patrick Lenton is a Skyrim playerwho had but one simple desire: to adopt a virtual dog. Adopting a dog in Skyrim isn’t straightforward, however. As the Elder Scrolls Wiki explains, pets can live with you only if your adopted children accept…

Shhh, April’s Mythical Pokémon Is Sleeping

Now that we’ve finished celebi-ting the third month of the year-long celebration of 20 years of Pokémon, it’s time to kick back, relax and maybe sleep for a thousand years. Jirachi month is chill, yo. It’s a good year for Pokémon toy collectors, with The Pokémon Company and Tomy teaming up to deliver a different…

Marvel’s New Poe Dameron Comic Expands The Star Wars Universe

Marvel’s Star Wars comics have been pretty damn good so far. But the creators on these titles have had it easy: they’ve been working with characters who have been popular and well-loved for decades. The team doing this week’s Poe Dameron comic has a tougher job: keeping the momentum going from one of the biggest…

Fallout 4’s Next DLC Drops April 12th, Lets You Collect Monsters Like Pokémon

Introducing Wasteland Workshop, a Fallout 4 DLC that lets you make your settlements more homey. Assuming, of course, your idea of “home” means building better death traps for your settlers, or having the ability to collect cats and Deathclaws. It might be worth it for this alone: My question is, can we force cats and…

The Valve-Backed HTC Vive Is Virtual Reality At Its Best And Worst

For the past five days, I’ve spent nearly as much time in virtual reality as real reality. My calves ache and my neck is sore, but all in all I’ve had a pretty good time. I’ve been using the Vive, an ambitious new virtual reality system created by HTC and Valve. With the Vive set…

Team Ninja’s Samurai Dark Souls Is Getting A Week-Long PS4 Alpha Demo

Spirit sharks and Shiba Inu puppies aside, Team Ninja’s Nioh continues to give off strong Dark Souls vibes, right down to the more polite “Ready To Die?” tagline in the trailer. We’ll see if that vibe holds when the week-long PlayStation 4 alpha demo kicks off later this month. Nioh (or sometimes Ni-oh) has been…

The Greatsword of Artorias From Dark Souls Isn’t For Normal Human Beings

Even for veteran fighters from medieval times, handling a giant two-handed sword must have been a challenge. And while the folks at Man at Armsdid a very good job forging a replica of this iconic weapon from Dark Souls, they have a bit of trouble wielding it. But as the end of the video shows,…