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OpinionImpressions
Fallout 76: My First Day Out Of The Vault
Fallout 76 is out today, three years after the last game in the series, Fallout 4. Unlike its predecessor it’s not a single-player open world role-playing game, but an online multiplayer one. It also went through a lengthy beta period, with players’ progress from those sessions carrying over into official release today. As a result,…
By Ethan Gach Published November 14, 2018 -
OpinionImpressionsFortnite’s New Food Fight Mode Allows For Some Sneaky Sabotage
Fortnite’s latest patch brings a new limited-time mode, Food Fight, in which two teams defend one of the game’s restaurant mascots while destroying the opposing team’s. It’s chaotic, but it provides plenty of opportunities for backstabbing fun. In Food Fight, released today as part of patch 6.30, teams are assigned to protect either the tomato…
By Riley MacLeod Published November 14, 2018 -
OpinionImpressionsEVE Online Spinoff Shooter Will Be More ‘Tactical,’ Less ‘Run-And-Gun’
The upcoming shooter from CCP Games, code name Project Nova, was finally shared with fans during an annual EVE Online convention last month. Nova, set in the same universe as EVE, is still in early alpha, and shows a bit of promise. Kotaku was given the chance to sit down and play Project Nova at…
By Lee Yancy Published November 12, 2018 -
OpinionImpressions
Warframe’s New Expansion Features Class Warfare
Fortuna was released yesterday on PC, and is expected to arrive on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in the near future. It’s too early to know whether Fortunat rights some of the wrongs made by last year’s expansion, Plains of Eidolon, when it first released, including it felt too isolated from the rest of the…
By Ethan Gach Published November 9, 2018 -
OpinionImpressionsAfter A Rough Beta, Battlefield V Is Looking Good
Battlefield V, playable now for EA Access and Origin Premier members, takes the series back to its World War Two roots with far more spectacle than when the series premiered in 2002. I was skeptical after the game’s rough betas, and while I’ve only had a handful of hours with its latest incarnation, Battlefield V…
By Heather Alexandra Published November 9, 2018 -
OpinionImpressions
Pretzel After Dark Is A Sexy Take On Twister
There’s something very saucy about playing sexy board games. It feels like redefining innocent childhood memories, like reading Harry Potter slash fiction where Ron and Malfoy get busy on the roof of the Hogwarts Express, or finding out that The Hunchback of Notre Dame was about Frollo having a raging anger-boner for Esmeralda. NSFW Warning:…
By Kate Gray Published November 9, 2018 -
OpinionA Game Packed With Games Studies Knowledge
Games are a complicated medium with various subcultures and tons of academic thinking on matters like mechanics and design. Footnotes is an exploration game that combines study and play, introducing players to nuggets of games academia and knowledge while wandering through colorful spaces. Created by Patrick LeMieux and Stephanie Boluk, Footnotes feels like a playable…
By Heather Alexandra Published November 7, 2018 -
OpinionImpressionsWorld Of Final Fantasy Looks Rough, Plays Great On Switch [Update]
The cutest Final Fantasy adventure ever isn’t quite as cute on the Switch. While it lacks the sharpness and clarity of its PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC counterparts, World of Final Fantasy Maxima is just as enjoyable on Nintendo’s hardware. Update: A game glitch is partly responsible for the rough edges. Released in 2016…
By Mike Fahey Published November 7, 2018 -
OpinionA Surreal Multiplayer Game About Sentient Cubes
Zarvot is two different games smashed together. One is a surrealist story about voxel-blasting cubes on a journey to bring their best bud a banana for their birthday. The other is a shooty, smashy multiplayer hell-fight simulator where chaos reigns. Both bring their own silly spin on their respective genres. Zarvot’s title sounds like a…
By Heather Alexandra Published November 1, 2018 -
OpinionA Terrifying Five-Minute Horror Game
InSeptember 1999, something is wrong. A lone house holds a secret, recorded on tape. You play through the tape as it jumps through a slow descent into gore and death. The whole game lasts five minutes and 30 seconds. You play through the perspective of someone with a camera who is reviewing recorded footage. It’s…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 26, 2018 -
OpinionA Bullet-Hell Shooter About Loving Your Enemy
The Void Rains Upon Her Heartis an early access bullet-hell game available on PC. It’s all about earning randomized loot and learning to love the monsters you face. Random sequences of difficult bosses challenge the player to adjust their strategies, while special rewards augment your abilities and encourage risk-taking. It’s a colorful experience, perfect for…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 17, 2018 -
OpinionWandersong Is A Musical Adventure Game About Saving The Planet
Wandersong starts with bad news: the world is dying. The good news is that it is also packed with excellent people worth saving. Setting out from your tiny, colorful village, you solve puzzles and dispatch grumpy ghosts with music. It combines point and click adventure and rhythm games into an adorable experience full of great…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 10, 2018 -
Opinion
A Cyberpunk Detective Game About Finding Rogue Androids
In Subserial Network, humanity as we know it doesn’t exist. Instead, synthetic beings populate the world. They live mostly normal lives. There’s only one rule: don’t connect yourself directly to the net. The synthetics who disobey are deemed “Subserials.” Your job is to hunt them down. Subserial Network is an investigation game where you need…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 19, 2018 -
OpinionAn Exploration Game About Breeding Plants
Plenty of explorations games give you the opportunity to walk through colorful fields or strange, alien worlds. But sometimes it feels like all you can do is wander around. Mendel allows the player to breed plants in order to create wild and unexpected new species. Created by Owen Bell, Mendel is as much a science…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 12, 2018 -
Opinion
Tennis With a Bullet Hell Twist
10Sis a bullet-hell tennis game where each match is a frantic battle to survive. Strange dog enemies and massive bosses fill the screen with projectiles, all while you fire shot after shot at them. The amount of things you need to juggle and track to succeed is intimidating, but it makes each victory feel incredible.…
By Heather Alexandra Published August 29, 2018 -
Opinion
An Existential Doll-Making Game About The Future Of Bodies
Ship of Theseus is a straightforward game. You are given dozens of body parts with which to design and construct an android. Mixing and matching pieces until you settle on a unique creation is a lot of fun. But Ship of Theseus is also a meditation on the human body and what it means to…
By Heather Alexandra Published August 22, 2018 -
OpinionA Relaxing Game Where You Serve Coffee To Orcs
It’s a late night shift and things are quiet. That nosy journalist who always says she’s working on a book took her espresso and sat down in the corner. A dapper looking elf wanders in with his literal succubus of a girlfriend. It’s gonna be a slow night in Coffee Talk, but that’s fine. Coffee…
By Heather Alexandra Published August 15, 2018 -
OpinionA Giant Mech Game About Flirting With The Enemy
Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel about giant robots, political intrigue, and maybe even smooching the enemy. It combines evocative writing with a multi-perspective story that’s as engrossing as any anime. In Heaven Will Be Mine, a strange extraterrestrial threat has driven mankind to the stars by the year 1980. In this alternate…
By Heather Alexandra Published July 25, 2018 -
OpinionClever Puzzle Game Feels Like Sega Made An Asset Flipper
Clever game design can take advantage of even the most limited resources. Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica is a marble-rolling game set in abstract space, which is made using mostly Unity assets. For some people, that might be infuriating, but sitting down to play it shows off what smart level design can do for a game. Created…
By Heather Alexandra Published July 18, 2018
