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The Year In JRPGs, 2015
At the beginning of 2015, I announced that my four-year-old JRPG column, Random Encounters, was coming to an end. The genre had thrived so much, I explained, that it would feel quaint to compartmentalize my JRPG writing in a single weekly column. [This post originally ran on December 22, 2015] Nearly a year later, that…
By Jason Schreier Published January 1, 2016 - Kotaku East
The Five Best Anime of 2015
There have been more than a few great anime this past winter, spring, summer, and fall. But now, as the year comes to a close, it’s time to look back one last time and pick the five best anime series of 2015. [This post originally ran on December 29, 2015] First, some rules: 1) The…
By Richard Eisenbeis Published January 1, 2016 -
Kotaku EastBiting a Leather Sofa on Japanese TV To See If It’s Chocolate
It’s that time again! Time for Japanese New Year’s television to have a panel of celebrity guests bite into things to see if they are made of chocolate or candy. In Japanese, these are “sokkuri sweets” (そっくりスイーツ), with “sokkuri” meaning “looks like” or “spitting image.” So, is this a leather chair or a chocolate chair?…
By Brian Ashcraft Published January 1, 2016 -
UncategorizedStar Wars: The Force Awakens Minus the Movie Stars, the Expensive Effects, and Hollywood
Star Wars movies aren’t cheap. They are filmed all over the world and require numerous practical and digital effects. That costs money. But what if you made The Force Awakens trailer with friends on a budget? A very low, low budget. Then, I guess it would look like this. Nice work, penny pinchers! This isn’t…
By Brian Ashcraft Published January 1, 2016 - Kotaku East
Just a friendly reminder that Capcom’s Dark Souls-eque game Deep Down is still M.I.A. There’s no real news last year since the spring and the official Twitter account hasn’t been active since March 2015! The game was announced in 2013 and is slated for the PS4.
By Brian Ashcraft Published January 1, 2016 - Uncategorized
The 100 Most Popular Kotaku Stories Of 2015
In 2015, you liked reading about Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3. You liked lists of top games. You mourned the passing of gaming icons. You craved scoops and post-release coverage (phew!), and you enjoyed getting excited about the Final Fantasy VII remake. You also liked reading about sex. Hey, nothing bad about that! What…
By Stephen Totilo Published January 1, 2016 - Uncategorized
My Favorite Comics Moments of 2015
Lots of things got shaken up in the comics I enjoyed from the last twelve months, with characters and themes getting re-invented, resurrected and repurposed in surprising or clever ways. Here’s what I’ll remember from the comics I read in 2015. Spoilers follow. A Superman who can’t fly. A female Wolverine. An Archie who isn’t…
By Evan Narcisse Published December 31, 2015 -
UncategorizedThe Gamers Of the Year, 2015
If games are a truly interactive medium, then it stands to reason that the people who play them have an unusual amount of influence on this creative form; more than they do on others. With that, we present, for the fourth year running, Kotaku’s Gamers of The Year. ZeRo, The Smash Bros. Champ There were…
By Stephen Totilo Published December 31, 2015 - Culture
A Year’s Worth Of Dating Advice For The Modern Geek
Another year is ending, and with it another year of our Ask Dr. NerdLove advice column. The Doc—real name Harris O’Malley—kept his usual office hours this year, turning up a couple times per month to answer reader questions and, hopefully, help a few people on the way to a happier, healthier love life. Here are…
By Kirk Hamilton Published December 31, 2015 - CultureSplitscreen
Podcast: Every Single Game* That Came Out In 2015
Let’s talk about Games of the Year. And by Games of the Year we mean literally every game that came out this year. Today on Kotaku Splitscreen, we’re going back through all of 2015 for a month-by-month breakdown of this year’s games, from Dying Light through Trails of Cold Steel. Although we didn’t hit every…
By Jason Schreier Published December 31, 2015 - Uncategorized
Oculus has announced that its Touch controllers won’t ship until the “second half” of 2016. The Oculus Rift itself, however, is apparently still on track for early next year. The delay is disappointing; the Touch devices were the highlight of my last VR demo.
By Patrick Klepek Published December 31, 2015 - Uncategorized
Shout Out To This Poor Assassin’s Creed Guy
In Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, there’s a guy whose entire job is to stand on a boat and get knocked into a river. That’s it. That’s his whole life. This man is a hero. If you’re running along in Syndicate’s version of London and happen to cross the Thames, you’ll probably see this guy. He’s all…
By Kirk Hamilton Published December 31, 2015 - Uncategorized
NeoGAF users noticed the hardcore platforming Umihara Kawase games have been removed from Steam and certain PSN regions. This comes not long after the closure of the game’s publisher, Agatsuma Entertainment. If you already bought one of the Umihara Kawase games, you’ll still be able to download it.
By Patrick Klepek Published December 31, 2015 -
UncategorizedHackers Get Pokémon Running On A PS4
Ever wanted to play Pokémon on your PlayStation 4? You can’t. But at least you can watch someone else do it? Using an exploit involving the PS4’s web browser, the fail0verflowhacking team figured out how to crack open Sony’s console and install a full version of Linux, which they demonstrated this week by using it…
By Jason Schreier Published December 31, 2015 -
UncategorizedWhat Goes Into Making Fallout 4’s Impressive Atomic Explosions
Ever notice Fallout 4’s awesome mushroom clouds? They look damn convincing! Here’s how Bethesda did it. Simonschreibt dives into the technical details that go into producing a mushroom cloud in Fallout 4, and it’s a fascinating watch: Basically, in order to nail the motion of an explosion, the textures of the mushroom cloud are moved…
By Patricia Hernandez Published December 31, 2015 -
UncategorizedOnly a few weeks after Just Cause 3 was released, it appears the modding team behind Just Cause 2’s spectacular multiplayer mod have already cracked the sequel. There’s no indication when the rest of us might be playing Just Cause 3 with friends and strangers, but hopefully it’s not far off!
By Patrick Klepek Published December 31, 2015 -
UncategorizedFinal Fantasy IX Is Coming To PC And Phones
Final Fantasy IX, one of the best Final Fantasy games, is coming to PC and smartphones at some point in 2016, Square Enix announced today in Japan. Square didn’t announce a western release but it’s safe to say one will follow, given that every other Final Fantasy mobile and PC port has made it to…
By Jason Schreier Published December 31, 2015 - Uncategorized
Clever Mario Maker Levels Contain Dialogue And JRPG Menus
People are making all kinds of stages in Super Mario Maker. There are brutally hard stages, traditional stages, clever stages, and others. These are clever ones. The interesting thing these two stages have in common is their use of comments. Nintendo intends for comments to be exactly that: comments on a level. But with some…
By Patrick Klepek Published December 31, 2015
