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OpinionAnimal Crossing: New Horizons‘ Hourly Themes, Ranked
My favorite part of Animal Crossing games is the unique music for every hour of the day. In New Horizons, the tracks appear after the island’s Resident Services building is upgraded, giving players 24 individual themes to enjoy. A little bit of Ian Walker lore: I used to freelance as a music critic. It never…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressionsThe Division 2‘s First Season Is Pretty Good, So Far
With the release of Warlords of New York last month, The Division 2 added a big new playable area to the game. But this large update also added seasons, complete with special events and battle passes. We are now a few weeks into the first season and so far, so good. For the most part.…
By Zack Zwiezen -
OpinionImpressionsAnimal Crossing‘s Bunny Day Mascot Is A Lot To Deal With Right Now
The passage of time is a big deal in the Animal Crossing series. New Horizons players were today treated to a ton of changes as their islands transition into spring, which brought with it new critters to catch and cherry blossom trees to diversify the landscape. But with the game’s first holiday right around the…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressionsMount & Blade II: Bannerlord Is Blowing Up On Steam And I Can’t Stop Playing It
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is an open world third-person strategy game that overwhelms you with options and choices and helps calm you back down by letting you rampage across giant medieval battlefields. Even though it’s a janky early access game, all I want to do right now is keep playing it. Clearly I’m not…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionK.K. Slider Sold Out
Yesterday, after a couple weeks playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, K.K. Slider finally made an appearance on my island. But the traveling canine guitarist has apparently become hot shit over the last two decades, so much so that he wouldn’t deign to visit until I took painstaking steps to bring my island up to his…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressionsIn Moons Of Madness, Outer Space Is Just As Scary As Alien Monsters
I’ve never had any grand aspirations of being an astronaut, even as a kid. But in playing Moons of Madness, the latest first-person adventure from Norwegian studio Rock Pocket Games, I was given definitive proof that I just couldn’t hack it in outer space, long before the eldritch abominations started showing up. Moons of Madness…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressionsI Spent An Afternoon Playing The New Xbox Game Bleeding Edge And Have Already Forgotten Everything About It
Last week Ninja Theory and Xbox Game Studios launched Bleeding Edge, an Overwatch-style online hero brawler for PC and Xbox One. It has 11 unique playable characters and two competitive game modes. It’s going to take more than that to hold my interest. In a world where Overwatch and Paladins exist and Battleborn has come…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsIron Danger Is A Fantasy Role-Playing Game With Superhot-Style Time Dilation
In Iron Danger you can rewind time whenever you need to in order to save your life and land the killing blow. It’s a cool idea and works well enough in practice, but that fun premise doesn’t stop the rest of Iron Danger from being an otherwise pretty middling isometric role-playing game experience. Out on…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsBorderlands 3’s Latest Expansion Gives The Series Its First Good Boss Fight
Guns, Love, and Tentacles, yesterday’s major update to Borderlands 3, revolves around a gay wedding on an alien planet. While that’s fantastic in its own right, the rest of the expansion is pretty great too, combining fresh aesthetics with a bevy of cool new guns and what is arguably the series’ only good boss fight…
By Ian Walker -
OpinionImpressionsGood Job! Turns Office Nepotism Into Something More Fun
I haven’t been into the office in weeks. If your job can be done from home, and your employer isn’t a heartless monster, you probably haven’t either. Good Job!’s workplace carnage is a perfect substitute. I only wish every office was this much fun. Developed by Dutch game studio Paladin and published by Nintendo, Good…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsUltimate Alliance 3’s Fantastic Four DLC Is An Epic Epilogue
The first two installments of downloadable content for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 added new multiplayer game modes and challenges. Fantastic Four: Shadow of Doom, the third and final bit of paid DLC, adds a playable epilogue to the game’s story starring Doctor Doom and his four best pals. After two helpings of relatively narrative-free additional…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsControl’s First Story DLC Is Just As Good As The Main Game
Control’s new downloadable content, The Foundation, is neither a simple add-on nor an afterthought. Rather, it’s a fully-fleshed out expansion that pulls you deeper into the mysteries, paranormal combat, and sprawling exploration that made Control one of the best games of 2019. In fact, much of The Foundation measures up to the quality of the…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsI’m So Happy There’s A Wheelchair In Animal Crossing: New Horizons
There is a wheelchair in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s nothing fancy. It doesn’t roll. The power wheelchair I use in real-life would crush it like a monster truck. But it is there, in the game, and it makes me very happy. I’ve been paralyzed from the chest down for two years. Half of my…
By Mike Fahey -
OpinionImpressionsHow Dare You, Animal Crossing: New Horizons
As Kotaku’s resident arachnophobe, I find Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ handling of tarantulas, vis-a-vis forcing me to handle a tarantula, completely unacceptable. I do not do well with spiders. People tell me that I am a very large person and spiders are very small, but that just means more of them can fit on my…
By Mike Fahey
