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ReviewsMultiplatformKentucky Route Zero: The Kotaku Review
After seven years, the haunting episodic adventure game Kentucky Route Zero is finally complete. The game’s first chapter came out on PC in 2013. Tomorrow’s Act V marks the end of the story. A new “TV Edition” for consoles collects all five acts—the main story pieces of the game—and four interludes—side content that ties back…
By Riley MacLeod Published January 27, 2020 -
ReviewsMultiplatformJourney To The Savage Planet: The Kotaku Review
We get a lot of funny video games. We get a lot of strange games. But wacky video games are rare. Journey to the Savage Planet, a short new sci-fi first-person shooter, is, despite some flaws, wonderfully wacky. In this game, you don’t punch enemies. You slap them, complete with a comedic thwack sound. Alien…
By Zack Zwiezen Published January 27, 2020 -
ReviewsMultiplatformYou Should Play Life Is Strange 2
The final episode of Life Is Strange 2, “Wolves,” released on December 3 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. When I try to understand why people did not react with an open outpouring of excitement and glee for Life Is Strange 2 after the success of its predecessor, I think of Marvel movies. Superhero…
By Gita Jackson Published December 4, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformArise: A Simple Story: The Kotaku Review
Arise: A Simple Story might seem familiar, but looks can be deceiving. It’s not necessarily breaking any molds in its minimal art style and platforming, but its heartfelt story took me on a journey that hit me like a ton of bricks. Arise is available today for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. It starts out…
By Paul Tamayo Published December 3, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformShenmue 3: The Kotaku Review
Shenmue has always straddled the line between the epic and the everyday. Yu Suzuki’s ambitious adventure game series is a story of globe-trotting vengeance and magical relics. It is also a story about helping an old lady around town, or wasting a day at the arcade. Shenmue III feels exactly like the classic that started…
By Heather Alexandra Published December 3, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: The Kotaku Review
There hasn’t been a better time to be a Star Wars fan. As this is being written, the ninth and final entry in the saga that began with George Lucas’ 1977 film Star Wars is one month away from release, concluding a story over forty years in the making. The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star…
By Joshua Rivera Published November 19, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformDisco Elysium: The Kotaku Review
The most important thing about Disco Elysium, an oddly titled role-playing game that came out last month for PC, is that it’s funny. Set in a beautifully ugly world of smudged watercolors and throbbing noir music, Disco Elysium appears at first to be the type of game that might take itself too seriously. It seems…
By Jason Schreier Published November 8, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformCall of Duty: Modern Warfare: The Kotaku Review
Across thousands of years of existence, we as a people have come to regard war as pretty bad. Senseless violence and the loss of irreplaceable lives, usually in the service of petty men who wield the power of nations indiscriminately, is just fucking stupid. Yet it still happens, and in America, the necessity of the…
By Joshua Rivera Published November 4, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformDeath Stranding: The Kotaku Review
There is no elevator pitch for Death Stranding. Every inch of Death Stranding teems with meaning or implication. Even the stupidest and most pretentious developments build to create a multi-layered game, one with numerous potential points of attack to analyze. It is a story about fatherhood. It is a broad dig at the gig economy.…
By Heather Alexandra Published November 1, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformThe Outer Worlds Will Rattle Your Idea Of A Perfect Planet
The very first quest in The Outer Worlds, Obsidian’s highly anticipated first-person RPG out October 25, asked me to make what felt like an impossible choice. On one side was a community of outsiders frustrated by corporate control. Their outpost was something like a worker’s paradise—they were well fed and mostly happy, surviving by relying…
By Gita Jackson Published October 22, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformThe Brilliant Outer Wilds Breaks Many Of Gaming’s Unwritten Rules
In the indie sci-fi exploration game Outer Wilds, you play as a four-eyed alien setting off in a rinky-dink rocket on an outer space mission. That’s all very exciting, at least until the sun explodes and demolishes your galaxy. That galactic destruction kicks off a mysterious time loop that brings you back to 22 minutes…
By Maddy Myers Published October 15, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformKiller Queen Black Brings A Perfect Arcade Game Home, With Some Issues
Since its 2013 release, the 90 Killer Queen arcade cabinets scattered across the states have become one of those underground sensations in urban gaming circles and among in-the-know indie connoisseurs. The 10-player competitive game has amassed a cult following, and is often breathlessly described as “perfect” to anyone who asks, “What’s Killer Queen?” If you…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published October 10, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformGhost Recon Breakpoint Is An Infuriating Mess
I have never played a game as inconsistent as Ghost Recon Breakpoint. In its finest moments, when the stars align, it delivers stealth action on par with the best in the genre. When it falls apart, as it usually does, a tangled weave of glitches and half-baked systems reveal a game compromised by bland AAA…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 8, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformFIFA 20 vs PES 2020: Which Is Better?
I can’t remember the last time both of these games so underwhelmed. In recent years both have had their individual highs and lows. FIFA’s last pre-Frostbite seasons were rough, and PES has long been walking a knife’s edge between eccentric brilliance and outright embarrassment. Every time one stumbled, though, the other was there to carry…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 24, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformBorderlands 3: The Kotaku Review
Take a bag of potato chips—any brand, anywhere—and you more or less know what you’re going to get. Crispy, greasy salt and oil delivered via thin layers of starch, they make a mess of crumbs and grease, and they’re terribly delicious, extremely difficult to stop eating once you’ve caved into the first, and likely to…
By Joshua Rivera Published September 20, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformUntitled Goose Game: The Kotaku Review
The way Untitled Goose Game’s goose moves, I think, is what makes it so endearing. Its self-assured waddle. The way it leans its feathered neck forward, with an almost innocent inquisitiveness, before turning on some poor guy’s sprinklers and drenching him. How it flaps and flutters after its plans have been thwarted by a human,…
By Nathan Grayson Published September 20, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformSayonara Wild Hearts: The Kotaku Review
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a shining example of using a game’s design to say something meaningful while also making it look cool as hell. The game controls simply with the analog stick and a single button. What makes it stand out is its music, its look, and its mood. Sayonara Wild Hearts tells the story…
By Paul Tamayo Published September 18, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformNBA 2K20 MyCareer: The Kotaku Review
NBA 2K20 is one of the best sports games I’ve played in a long time. It’s also a giant scam that is perpetually gross, and sometimes even terrifying, to be around. This might sound weird considering this is a sports game, but 2K’s basketball titles are some of the hardest things I ever have to…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 17, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformGreedfall: The Kotaku Review
In many ways, Spiders’ latest, Greedfall, does what it sets out to do. It provides a role-playing adventure comparable to BioWare’s most compelling narratives, with companions to meet and recruit, quests to discover, and more. But Greedfall’s tendency to settle for the barest possible option constantly weakens it. Whether that is an unwillingness to reckon…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 17, 2019 -
ReviewsMultiplatformFinal Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers: The Kotaku Review
Shadowbringers, the latest expansion to Final Fantasy XIV, released two months ago, and I cannot begin to fathom the amount of time I have spent in the worlds of Eorzea and Norvrandt. Shadowbringers is one of Final Fantasy’s finest stories, buoyed by powerful music and sweeping gameplay changes that make job classes sleek and enjoyable.…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 13, 2019