Darling In The Franxx Doesn’t Make Good On Its Promises

Darling in the Franxx is a show about children fighting monsters in giant robots, but through its 24 episodes, it undergoes a metamorphosis from teen melodrama with mecha to a galactic-scale conflict. This transition isn’t very smooth, however, and by the finale, Darling feels like a beautifully animated series that never quite sticks the landing.…

Contest Winners Use Labo To Turn Switch Into A Zelda Piano

The standard Nintendo Labo kits include designs like robot arms, mini pianos, and fishing rods, but some players have been able to use the raw materials to create other stuff, like this steering wheel for a motorized wheelchair. Over the weekend, Nintendo encouraged people to get even more creative with a contest for the most…

Glitched Half-Life Speedrun Teleports Through The Game In Under Seven Minutes

A team of speedrunners have annihilated Half-Life, crafting a speedrun that uses a strange teleportation glitch to finish the game in a little over six minutes. The run was performed by members of the SourceRuns community, which is dedicated to hosting speedruns for games that use the GoldSrc (called “Gold Source”) or Source engine. It…

The PS1 Strategy Game That Nails Robotic Destruction

In Front Mission 3’s 18th battle, I’m on a naval base facing down two giant walking artillery cannons, four Gundam-like mechs, and an apache helicopter. It isn’t the most challenging tactical role-playing game from the PS1 era, but like lots of games from that era it’s prone to the occasional difficulty spike. Unlike many other…

Nathan Fillion Made An Uncharted Fan-Film, And It’s Excellent

The official Uncharted movie may be stuck in development hell forever, but actor Nathan Fillion and his crew have made their own 15-minute cinematic tribute to the iconic action-adventure franchise. It is wonderful. This short fan-film—which I sure hope Sony doesn’t try to take down—is just about everything you’d want from an Uncharted movie: witty…

The Week In Games: Sonic And Chicken Assassins

It feels like we’re right in the middle of summer, but lucky for you there are a lot of games to sink your teeth and time into coming out this week. If you’re the kind of person who likes a retro romp, you might enjoy the revamped stylings of Sonic Mania Plus, an even-more-stuff edition…

Magic: The Gathering Is An Unfortunate Victim of U.S.-Canada Trade War

The CBC reports that Magic: The Gathering cards are part of the $12.6 billion in goods from the United States that are now subject to a 10% tariff by Canada. Won’t they think of the Canadian planeswalkers? The United States has been embroiled in a trade dispute with Canada since May 31st, at which point…

World Cup Player Celebrates Goal With Rude Fortnite Emote 

In the World Cup final between France and Croatia, player Antoine Griezmann celebrated in the rudest way possible: with an emote dance from Fortnite “Take the L” is an emote in Fortnite that truly, brutally taunts other players. As you can see in the video below, the character puts their hand up to their face…

Heat Maps Of Battlefield V Are Beautiful

Earlier this week the Battlefield V development team released a blog post chock full of information about what they learned from the game’s recent closed alpha. It also contained a couple beautiful heat maps. Heat maps are ways of visualizing certain kinds of data that are distributed across space. In the screenshot from Battlefield V…

‘Shop Contest: Palpatine Deserves To Be Everywhere

Dice have decided that Emperor Palpatine is too powerful, so they have removed him from the game until he can be brought down to normal human power levels. That dude’s a Sith lord, though, so he should be powerful. And he should also be everywhere. I have a lot of love in my heart for…

Listen To Us Talk About Octopath Traveler

Tim Rogers and I have both played a lot of Octopath Traveler, the next big role-playing game for the Nintendo Switch, and you can hear us talk about it on this week’s Kotaku Splitscreen Kirk’s off this week, but Tim’s around to help me dissect what’s good and bad about Octopath Traveler. We both love…

Sunday Comics: Scary Cuddle

Hello! It’s time for Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published July 9. Read more of Awkward Zombie Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published July 12. Read more of Corpse Run Double XP by…

Silent Hill 2 Players Discover Hidden Mini Map

Some intrepid Silent Hill 2 players have recently discovered a hidden mini map in the game alongside a much-needed “save anywhere” feature. Twitter user punk7890 posted about the discovery on July 13, linking to a page on The Cutting Room Floor where the conditions to be met and the button presses necessary are laid out…

Fixing A Typo Makes Aliens: Colonial Marines Better (But It’s Still Bad)

Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t a great game. It was plagued by a troubled development, and Kotaku’s official review flatly called the game “awful.” However, a modder has discovered a critical spelling error in the game files that might be responsible. In a post on ModDB linked in a thread on Resetera, Colonial Marines modder jamesdickinson963…

The Game Boy Sewing Machine Is Still Very Cool

There have been a lot of peripherals in the history of video games. Light guns, fishing rods, and that giant Steel Battalion control board have graced store shelves and personal collections alike. But you might not know about the sewing machine for the Game Boy Color. In a video posted this week, video game YouTuber…

Final Fantasy XV Modder Brings 1997 To The Game

Steam Workshop support for Final Fantasy XV has created some great costume creation opportunities, but this “1997 Retro Noctis Outfit” takes the cake. Modder Kyriya has created some great costumes for the PC version of Final Fantasy XV so far, including Lifeguard Gladiolus and Chef Ignus, but this 1997 skin outdoes those in its sheer…

‘Shop Contest: Create More Fortnite Mysteries, Winners!

Fornite keeps upping the ante with its strange world developments from season to season, and last week’s ‘Shop Contest was all about adding even more mysteries to the pile. I’ve had a chance to play in the altered, post-anchor world of Fortnite since last weekend, and I have to say that the game would be…

Snake, do you remember the sinking of that tanker two years ago? We’re sneaking our way through (hopefully) all of Metal Gear Solid 2 live now on Twitch!