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ReviewsToysSecret Warriors Dolls Bring Marvel Characters To A New Audience
Two years ago DC and Mattel launched the DC Super Hero Girls toy line, bringing comic book characters to the woefully underserved audience of young women. Now Marvel and Hasbro follow suit with Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors, a line of dolls that highlights the publisher’s diverse roster of young adult heroes, including the Unbeatable Squirrel…
By Mike Fahey Published November 9, 2018 -
ReviewsPS4Tetris Effect: The Kotaku Review
Tetris Effect takes the pure, near-perfect game design of the classic puzzle game and injects a cocktail of hallucinatory visuals mixed with a sublime soundtrack. It’s a refreshing, modern update to a classic with an optional virtual reality component and more than anything, it’s also the kind of game that I think we desperately need…
By Paul Tamayo Published November 9, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatformStarlink: Battle For Atlas: The Kotaku Review
In Ubisoft’s toys-to-life adventure, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, players are given access to a virtual (or physical) armada of starships and set loose in a gorgeous alien solar system, where they’re free to do the same seven or eight things over again until the game ends or they get bored. The opening moments of Starlink…
By Mike Fahey Published October 26, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatformRed Dead Redemption 2: The Kotaku Review
From tip to tail, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a profound, glorious downer. It is the rare blockbuster video game that seeks to move players not through empowering gameplay and jubilant heroics, but by relentlessly forcing them to confront decay and despair. It has no heroes, only flawed men and women fighting viciously to survive…
By Kirk Hamilton Published October 25, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatformCall of Duty: Black Ops 4: The Kotaku Review
The fourth installment of Treyarch’s Black Ops series might be the first Call of Duty to forgo a single-player campaign. But after a spate of less-than-fully-satisfying entries in the once-reliable series, putting the full force of its efforts behind the multiplayer has paid off: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 finds the perfect middle ground…
By S.E. Doster Published October 15, 2018 -
ReviewsSwitch
The World Ends With You: Final Remix: The Kotaku Review
If you have never played The World Ends With You before, the Nintendo Switch version released on Thursday night is not a bad way to get into it. Final Remix retains the game’s great sense of humor, its fantastic music, and Tetsuya Nomura’s most restrained character designs. But if you have played it before—say, if…
By Gita Jackson Published October 12, 2018 -
ReviewsSwitchSuper Mario Party: The Kotaku Review
“Who are you rooting for?” I asked my housemate, a non-player heckler watching a full-up game of Super Mario Party. Without missing a beat, he responded gleefully: “Chaos!” Mario Party is a video board game series that’s all about swing. You get a star. You move a few spaces. You lose a star. You steal…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published October 5, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatformAssassin’s Creed Odyssey: The Kotaku Review
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is huge. Each new boundary is broken down the moment you reach it, the game world spilling out and expanding further and further than you can possibly imagine. It is big in the same way the Great Pyramids or Empire State Building are big, the result of untold amounts of labor and…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 5, 2018 -
ReviewsNBA 2K19 MyCareer: The Kotaku Review
Oh no, not this again. For the longest time, if you wanted to play a proper singleplayer sports game, the NBA 2K series was your only option. Its MyCareer mode, which lets you create a fictional player then live through their career in the NBA, helped (along with Fight Night) pioneer the idea that a…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 4, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatform
Mega Man 11: The Kotaku Review
Mega Man 11 is a fine game, and a worthy eleventh entry in a series that once set the bar for tricky platformers. It also feels oddly shallow, the latest iteration of a formula that has gone largely unchanged for decades. Mega Man 11 is great at being a Mega Man game. Maybe that’s why…
By Jason Schreier Published October 2, 2018 -
ReviewsETC
Moving: The Kotaku Review
I recently left my apartment in northern California and drove a U-Haul full of my belongings to a new place in southern California. Although it’s a game that’s played by millions every day, I cannot recommend Moving Moving is a musty, moth-devoured sweater of half-completed game concepts and narrative threads. It is a lengthy experience…
By Nathan Grayson Published September 28, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatformDragon Ball FighterZ: The Kotaku Review
Dragon Ball games are for Dragon Ball fans. Fighting games are for fighting game fans. Dragon Ball FighterZ is both of those things, and it’s for everybody. This piece originally appeared 1/30/18. We’re bumping it today for the game’s release on Switch. Combining a beloved series spanning 34 years of manga volumes and anime episodes…
By Mike Fahey Published September 28, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatform
Valkyria Chronicles 4: The Kotaku Review
Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a game of extremes. Its romantic attitude towards soldiers clashes with a desire to tell a tale of mass violence and corpse-laden battlefields. It is as intimate as it is loud, and each moment captivates even if the parts are often greater than the whole. This post originally appeared 9/10/18. We’ve…
By Heather Alexandra Published September 25, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatform
Destiny 2: Forsaken: The Kotaku Review
Destiny 2’s new expansion, Forsaken, turns the game into something that people can play as much as they want without running out of things to do. If anything, its tantalizing new pursuits, designed to satisfy the appetites of the series’ most voracious players, may be too life-consuming. Viewed from the outside, Destiny 2 looks largely…
By Kirk Hamilton Published September 21, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatformShadow of the Tomb Raider: The Kotaku Review
The new Tomb Raider’s freshest idea is the floating of a question: What if all this tomb raiding that Lara Croft does indicates that she is a treasure-plundering jerk who wrecks other people’s cultures and, worse, their lives? This piece originally appeared 9/10/18. We’re bumping it today for the game’s release. Despite the navel-gazing self-reflection…
By Stephen Totilo Published September 14, 2018 -
ReviewsPS4Spider-Man: The Kotaku Review
Insomniac Games’ new Spider-Man adventure on the PS4 is a fun comic book brawler with some good story beats elevated by a system of acrobatics that features some of the most intuitive and exhilarating movement I’ve ever experienced in a game. It’s extremely fun, if you’re okay with a version of New York City that…
By Ethan Gach Published September 7, 2018 -
ReviewsPCWorld Of Warcraft Battle For Azeroth: The Kotaku Review
“Well, it’s more of the same” is generally my answer when people ask me how I’m enjoying World of Warcraft’s seventh paid expansion, Battle for Azeroth. Then I spend several minutes explaining why that’s not a bad thing. Blizzard has spent the past six years transforming World of Warcraft from a tired massively multiplayer online…
By Mike Fahey Published September 4, 2018 -
ReviewsMultiplatformDragon Quest XI: The Kotaku Review
Dragon Quest XI is the best game in the 32-year-old series. It wasn’t until watching a rough cut of my 36-minute video review of the game on my television at midnight on Sunday night that I decided to make this declaration. I had grappled with saying it in the script I wrote for the purpose…
By Tim Rogers Published September 4, 2018 -
ReviewsBoard GamesCaptain Sonar: The Kotaku Review
Captain Sonar is a board game about submarines, but it’s also so much more than that. There are boards (several, in fact), and rules and competition and cooperation, but to call Captain Sonar a board game would be to massively undersell the experience. It’s a crucible for friendships. It’s a drunk gamer’s worst nightmare. It’s…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 27, 2018 -
ReviewsBoard Games
Flamme Rouge: The Kotaku Review
Flamme Rouge is a game about early 20th- century bicycle races, and I promise you, it is a lot more fun than that sounds. While unable to actually use the words, since it doesn’t have the license, Flamme Rouge—a “Red Flag”, waved when a race is one kilometre from the finish—is based on early Tour…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 22, 2018