Why I Sympathize With Shenmue III’s Most Hardcore Fans

One day in late 2013, I woke up to dozens of e-mails and Twitter messages from people with accounts like “@Shenmue5K” and “@SaveShenmue.” They wanted me to help them save Shenmue, a video game series I’d barely heard of. I’d just interviewed Sony VP of publisher/developer relations Adam Boyes at the PS4 launch event, see,…

How To Get Every Riddler Trophy In Batman: Arkham Knight

Do you want to 100% Batman: Arkham Knight? Then you’re going to need to get every pesky Riddler trophy hiding around Gotham—and there are a ton of ‘em. Luckily, Batman Arkham Videos is here to help. The YouTube channel has gone ahead and created a video walkthrough for every trophy, divided by island/area in Arkham…

One of Comics’ Best Writers Has America and Canada Fighting an Ugly War

We don’t know why the United States Canada are at war in We Stand on Guard #1. But it sure seems like America is the bad guy that deserves to get its ass handed to it. In the year 2124 of this new comics series’ fictional future, there’s been a war raging between North America’s…

The Five Best Moments In Dragon Ball Super’s First Episode

I can’t believe this is true, but: Dragon Ball is back, and it’s better than ever. Dragon Ball Super, the new DBZ TV show that takes place after Goku defeats Majin Buu, started airing in Japan last weekend. As a result, English fan translations are also floating around. The first episode clocks in at about…

I Love The Frustration Of Ambiguous Video Game Endings

I recently played a game with no real ending, closure, or sense of reward. It was infuriating. You may have heard about Her Story before, since it’s been talked about a few times on Kotaku recently. tl;dr it’s absolutely worth your time, and one of my favorites in 2015 so far. I am not going…

Heroes Of The Storm’s New Butcher Character Seems Overpowered [UPDATE]

Iconic Diablo villain The Butcher has been terrorizing people in Heroes of the Storm since he arrived in the game last week, and not always for the right reasons. Despite being a very cool and well-designed hero, many HOTS players feel that he’s ridiculously overpowered at the moment. If you take a look on Twitter,…

Why Some People Are Calling Fire Emblem Fates ‘Homophobic’

Last month, Nintendo announced that gay marriage would be included in the strategy game Fire Emblem Fates, a first for a series that has long included straight romantic relationships. This month, many are calling the game “homophobic” and criticizing it for allegedly featuring “gay conversion therapy,” all based on a Tumblr translation of the game,…

The Akira Trailer Remade With Simpsons Characters

This is probably how Springfield will look like in a few decades. Until then here’s an impressive remake of Akira’s classic trailer, made by the folks over at the Bartkira project, turning everything Akira into everything Simpsons. They’re redrawing pages from the manga also with Simpsons characters for a while now (and it’s really good!),…

Star Wars Episode I: Racer was one of the better things that came out of 1999’s The Phantom Menace, and Mon Gazza Speedway was one of its best tracks. While there’s no new podracing game on the horizon, Victor Lammert’s cool tribute is a really close match to a shot from an imagined modern version.…

These One Piece Characters Are Too Damn Big

Not all the One Piece characters are tall. But the ones that are are freakin’ huge. In the image below, which has circulated online in Japan for a while and recently popped up again, we can see a handful of One Piece characters compared to a sumo wrestler, an elephant, a giraffe, and even pole…

Live-Action Pokémon Done Right

I know if, for some crazy reason, there is ever a live-action Pokémon movie, the Pocket Monsters will probably all be CG. However, that might not be the best choice. In this spot for the latest Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game, a handful of Pocket Monsters come to life thanks to people in Pokémon suits. I…

The Future Of Video Game Hair: A Hilarious Shampoo Commercial

NVIDIA HairWorks is a cool and interesting piece of tech that already exists in games, but you probably never use it, because it absolutely kills performance (hi, Witcher 3). Still, development and progress continues, and here’s what you can do with HairWorks’ version 1.1 when you don’t have to worry about things like in-game framerates.…

Take Me Back To Vice City, Please

Espen Sætervik is a concept artist who has worked for companies like Massive Black. You can see more of Espen’s work at hisArtStation 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 the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine…