I haven’t done one of these in a few weeks. Blame E3. But! A record must be kept. My favorite Kotaku stories must be logged. How else would my staff know how much I love them? Here are my five favorite Kotaku stories from the past week (or so).
- Why Destiny Players Feel Screwed Over | Kirk explains what last week’s latest Destiny hullaballoo was all about. “I feel as though I have been chronicling a video game community’s ongoing tug-of-war with their chosen game’s developer.”
- Batman: Arkham Knight And The Art Of A Good PC Port | Nathan tackles last week’s other big shitstorm, the catastrophic release of the PC version of Arkham Knight. We covered this story throughout the week, reporting on the problems and the publisher’s eventual suspension of sales of the PC version. We dusted off the old Disaster Watch rubric we’d used when EA’s newest SimCity launched, and Nathan even listed some mods you could use to put Batman in other, more functional PC games. My favorite piece out of all of that was the first one I’m linking here, a smart and at times funny argument about what kind of PC port a top-flight game should get and what a publisher should do to make it. Delaying a PC port is okay, he argues, if you’re going to cater to what gamers actually want from PC versions of video games.
- Stop Preordering Video Games | That Batman drama inspired Luke to push once again for people to stop pre-ordering games. Yes, there are caveats to that, as he explains in a piece that was pleasingly popular with readers.
- Arkham Knight’s Harley Quinn DLC Is Terrible | Any staffers here can tell you that I’m often asking the team to write more about DLC, since DLC is yet another element of gaming that most of the gaming press tends to write about in the future tense but fails to cover when it comes out. For months, people snarked about the day-one, quasi-exclusive Harley Quinn DLC for Arkham Knight. Well, was it any good? Evan bothered to check it out and let people know. I was also very happy with new critic-at-large Chris Suellentrop’s review of the main game, too, though I regret not publishing it with the stiffer story spoiler warnings we wound up adding just a few minutes after publication. Live and learn. Chris is a great writer and manages to say a lot of smart things about the game in not many words. Impressive!
- League Of Legends Player Lands Pentakill Right As His Team Surrenders | Yannick has been doing heroic work managing to both tell stories about MOBAs that hardcore MOBA players would find interesting while also explaining it to MOBA-ignorants like me. Here, he found an incredible moment in a League of Legends match and explained its insanity for all of us to appreciate. Yannick LeJacq, everyone: a hero, a champion. (Yannick, please let me know if I used those terms correctly and whether I should rename this column My PentaFavorite Stories From Last Week.)
Of course there were other good pieces from last week, including Brian’s insightful comparison of Yokai Watch theme songs, Evan’s format-perfect preview of No Man’s Sky (great lede, bullet-point details, no waste of space), Nathan’s novel Steam Backlog Event proposal, Mike’s wonderfully sweet video about his kids (“that one!”) that got me misty in its final minute, Patrick’s handy compilation of pricy retro games being sold at GameStop, and Patricia’s ongoing owning of all things Fallout Shelter. Also, some idiot bothered to actually write a proper week’s worth of posts for the site, for once, about frivolities like where Shigeru Miyamoto sits, what Reggie Fils-Aime is thinking, what the guy who led development on Metroid Prime is up to, and more. I’ll consider keeping him around.
Since I didn’t do this round-up for the last few weeks, I did want to highlight a pair of pieces from recent weeks that I think are among the best we’ve published in 2015:
- How A Video Game Is Released In 2015 | Marvelous satire from Luke with killer top art by Gawker Art’s Tara Jacoby.
- The Real Stories Behind E3’s Glossy Game Demos | From Patrick, possibly the best piece of reporting I’ve read about what happens at E3 and certainly the best we’ve ever run.
Best GIF we ran last week (it’s from Highlight Reel, of course):
Got thoughts about what we published last week or about stories you’d like to see on the site? Let me know.
To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo. Top image is of cosplayer Jason Isenberg; full story and photo credits are in Luke’s inspiring post about Isenberg from last week.