How To Cook In Dungeons & Dragons

A few months ago, I proposed a wild idea: Dungeons & Dragons—except you cook what you kill. After a little tinkering, I’m happy to report that my mechanics for cooking in D&D are now widely available. There aren’t always easy-baked ways for players to collaboratively role-play in every D&D game. Cooking is a great way…

Bad Reporting Leads To Widespread False Rumor About The Game Awards

This morning, I woke up to a string of headlines declaring that journalist Geoff Keighley had teased a major announcement at this week’s Game Awards. OK, I thought, clicking one of the articles, only to find out that he had done it during an interview with… me. Wait, what? Maybe it started on Twitter, or…

The Week In Games: Curse Of More Loot

Destiny 2’s first DLC expansion arrives this week which means too many of us will be magically drawn back into its universe and grinding for loot whether we want to or not. Last week Bungie laid out a number of small changes coming to the game when Curse of Osiris arrives as well as some…

Turning Real People into Anime Art

Real life looks different from anime and manga. That’s okay! But here’s what three dimensional humans might look like if they were two-dimensional drawings. This is called “nijigenka” (二次元化) or “2D-ification” in Japanese. It’s not only popular in Japan, but pretty much anywhere people are interested in anime and manga. Some 2D-ified images created by…

The Best Cosplay Of The Tokyo Comic Con

The Tokyo Comic Con just wrapped up, so let’s check out some of the best—and most entertaining—cosplay of the show. Held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, the Tokyo Comic Con kicked off last Friday and ran through Sunday. Since this is Comic Con, cosplayers mostly portrayed Western comic book, video game and movie characters,…

In Japan, Family Mart Opening Fitness Gyms

Japanese conveniences are already great, but they’re getting greater. Family Mart is opening a string of fitness gyms on top of its convenience stores. According to Jiji, Family Mart plans to open 300 gyms over the next five years, with the first hitting Tokyo’s Ota Ward in February 2018. Dubbed “Fit & Go,” the 24-hour…

Hunter x Hunter‘s Latest Hiatus Will End Next January

Manga creator Yoshihiro Togashi takes lots of breaks from Hunter x Hunter. His most recent one started in September. It’s now been announced that Togashi’s manga will return on January 29. According to IT Media, the most recent Weekly Jump confirms that Hunter x Hunter will be back late next month. Before his most recent…

Nei-Hu District. Taipei, Taiwan. By Keith Andrew Chan. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line!   

The Joker Wishes You All A Very Scary Christmas

One Bad Day, probably the best Joker cosplayer on the planet, would like you all to have a wonderful Christmas this year. And to make sure of it, here he is wearing a bad sweater and drinking eggnog. There’s something about the colour scheme and antique glassware that is legitimately terrifying me. You can see…

Mingjue Helen Chen is a Disney artist who has worked on movies like Wreck-It-Ralph and Big Hero 6. Here, though, is her shot at Final Fantasy XIII, part of a show on now at the Nucleus Gallery in LA

PS3 Emulation Makes Huge Strides, Can Now Play Uncharted

The team behind RPCS3, an emulator designed to let you play PS3 games on a PC, have made a ton of progress since we last checked in on the project, with the program now able to run—if not perfectly play—some of the biggest and best games on the PS3. The reasons why are of course…

2K & 4K Texture Packs Have Mass Effect Looking Sharp

For as long as we’ve had Mass Effect, we’ve had fans working to improve the PC versions of the series. That effort has hit a new high recently with a compilation of 4K textures for Mass Effects 2 & 3 that have them looking a bit more 2017. The Mass Effect 2 packs can be…

It Might Be Time To Rethink Difficulty Menus

This is the difficulty menu for Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. In a callback to the original games which also showed up in The New Order, the menu’s telling you only babies play the game on easy. It’s funny on the surface, but also an insidious kind of peer pressure. Don’t listen to it. At…

Pro Gears Of War Players Put On A Taunting Clinic

A top-level Gears Of War player should exhibit certain attributes: accuracy, dexterity, quick thinking, and communication. At this weekend’s Dallas Open, several teams showed it’s also beneficial to be skilled at trash talk. Sure, it’s a pro gamer stereotype to launch into a flurry of taunts after sufficiently owning your opponent, but to be honest,…

The Xbox One X Points Toward The Future Of Backwards Compatibility 

Mirror’s Edge took people by surprise when it released back in 2008. The first-person parkour game was transportive, making you feel the air rush past you as you bolted across rooftops. It’s also one of the games that you can upscale to 4K on the Xbox One X. Almost a decade later, not only play…

Team Secret Is In The Driver’s Seat Of The Dota Pro Circuit

The Dota 2 pro circuit is starting to shake out, and over the course of the year thus far, one team has stood out in particular. With a huge win in Sweden today, Team Secret is cementing its place as the team to beat going into 2018. It isn’t just the points tally that sets…

How Video Games’ Biggest Award Show Comes Together

Veteran game journalist Geoff Keighley joins Kotaku Splitscreen this week to talk about what it’s like to produce The Game Awards, how he decides which trailer to debut, and the hilarious request he got from the people who make Doritos. First we talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (12:52), Skyrim’s composer’s disappearing Kickstarter, andthe Destiny…