UFC 2’s Cover Is Now A Monument To Sadness

A few months back, EA’s marketing team probably thought that their choices for the front cover of this year’s UFC game—two of the world’s most popular and successful fighters, Ronda Rousey and Connor McGregor—were as safe as could be. Then this happened. And now this Somewhere, tonight, EA’s marketing team is dying. Rousey, seemingly invincible,…

Fnatic Win The IEM Katowice Counter-Strike Championship Using Magic Bullets

To nobody’s surprise, the unstoppable Fnatic Counter-Strike team claimed yet another major championship today, and put an end to Luminosity’s ongoing Cinderella story with a 3-0 finals sweep at IEM Katowice. That score doesn’t do justice to how hard Fnatic had to fight for this championship, and just how close Luminosity came to taking a…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: An Unfortunate Acronym: The Winners! 

I’ll admit I was a little worried about how wild our community might get given a‘Shop Contest that plays on the abbreviation S&M for the recently-announcedPokemon Sun & Moon. But you guys kept it mostly nice and tasteful. Great job, everyone! Some of my favorite entries in last week’s contest abandoned the implied meaning of…

There’s A Lot Of Killing Things In The First 30 Minutes Of Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online launched in North America and Europe this week, giving many players their first taste of that character creator everyone’s been raving about. This is what happens in the 30 minutes following character creations’ end. Now thatthe bumps have been mostly ironed out and Daum Games’ massively multiplayer role-playing game is available to…

The Things That Shape Our Taste In Video Games

I don’t really like console games. OK, that isn’t true. What I should say is, I never developed a taste for them. Originally published 3/4/16 Last night I went to a lecture at the NYU Game Center by designer Naomi Clark. Naomi explored how and why we develop our taste in games, drawing on everything…

I Miss Game Manuals So Much I’d Pay Extra For One

I opened up my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD yesterday and aside from the game disc it was depressingly empty, which describes exactly how I feel every time I pick up tellingly lightweight retail game. I miss instruction booklets something fierce. There was a time when retail games were solid, meaty…

‘Trump Has Successfully Eliminated All Life On Earth’

According to a tweet from developer Ndemic Creations (via Reddit), Trump is currently one of the most popular names for players to give their humanity-ending pathogen in the strategy game Plague Inc. Another win! Plague, Inc. is a game in which players create a deadly pathogen and attempt to encourage its spread across the globe,…

This Week In The Business: Virtual Shots Fired

QUOTE | “That is up to Apple, and if they ever release a good computer then we will do it.” -Palmer Luckey, on when Oculus will release a Mac version of the Rift VR headset Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… QUOTE | “In reality I see [virtual reality] as a very expensive…

First Details on Nintendo’s Universal Studios Collaboration

As Kotaku reported last year, Nintendo is coming to Universal Studios Japan. Today, the first details—namely, how large the Nintendo area will be, how much will be spent, and when it should be completed—have been made public. According to Sankei News, forty billion yen (US$351 million) is being invested in this project with the deal…

Na’Vi’s Throwdown Against Luminosity Was Some Of The Year’s Best Counter-Strike

Today’s Counter-Strike duel at at the IEM Katowice tournament established itself as one of the best rounds of CS:GO of the year before it even reached the halfway mark. Then it got really good. On one side you had the established, reliable Na’Vi team: always a strong team and a challenger for a finals spot…

Metal Gear Solid HD Fan Remake Suddenly Shuts Down

Remember that great-looking Unreal Engine 4 fan remake of Metal Gear Solid? Remember how you’ve spent every waking moment since it was announced dreading its unceremonious cancellation? Well, haha, about that… The remake, which made ever our grumpiest Metal Gear skeptic, Luke Plunkett, go weak in the muscles he’s built up from years of playing…

Podcast: Rachel Bloom’s Journey From YouTube Hit To Golden Globe Winner

Onthis week’s podcast, we’re joined by my old friend Rachel Bloom, who tells us what it’s like to star in a TV show and win a friggin’ Golden Globe. Bloom writes, produces, and stars in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, one of the funniest shows on television. (Seriously.) Today on Kotaku Splitscreen, she talks about how she pulled…

The Ugly New Front In The Neverending Video Game Culture War

Gaming’s culture war hasn’t ended. It’s still roiling, with new fights, new targets, new depths of ugliness, but also many of the same tactics. If you’ve witnessed this kind of “Chanterculture”/GamerGate drama before, you know the playbook: discredit, harass, shame, isolate, maybe find a skeleton in a person’s closet that calls their reputation into question.…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

How is it Friday again? This keeps happening. It’s almost like there’s no way to slow the pitiless advance of time. As is our custom, it’s time to ask what you’ll will be playing over the weekend. (Side note: I’ve been enjoying reading the comments on these posts. It’s cool to know what all our…

The Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti looks wild. Described as a “music-sampling, platforming, rhythm laser-light guitar solo kind of game,” it’s about a musician on a psychedelic journey to create a stage persona. Creatures have sounds, and you can sample them to make your own.

Nintendo Is Leaking Like Crazy

In 2013, when I visited Nintendo’s Redmond HQ for a feature on the company’s Treehouse localization team, staffers there opined that secrecy was essential to their operations. “We’re keeping things confidential until we’re ready to share them with the world,” Treehouse manager Leslie Swan told me then. “We work really closely with the development teams…

Fan Edited Trailer For The New Ghostbusters Is So Much Better

If you were a little underwhelmed by yesterday’s Ghostbusters trailer, this fan edit makes a convincing case it could have used more time in the editing room. As a huge fan of Ghostbusters and just about everyone involved in this movie, I’m rooting for this to kick ass. The original trailer felt a little flat…