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ReviewsBoard Games
Wasteland Express Delivery Service: The Kotaku Review
I never knew being a truck driver could be so much fun. Wasteland Express Delivery Service is a new board game from Pandasaurus, designed by Jon Gilmour (Dead of Winter), Matt Riddle (Fleet, Back to the Future) and Ben Pinchback (Fleet, Back to the Future). It pits 2-5 players against each other as couriers in…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 21, 2017 -
ReviewsAgents Of Mayhem: The Kotaku Review
If Overwatch had a single-player story mode, it would be Agents of Mayhem. If a big-name developer devoted the time and energy to do a G.I. Joe game right, it would be Agents of Mayhem. If Crackdown had more personality and jokes about balls, it would be Agents of Mayhem. The Saints Row spin-off is…
By Mike Fahey Published August 15, 2017 -
Reviews
Azio Retro Classic Keyboard Review: The New Vintage
Inspired by the old-fashioned typewriter and designed with luxury in mind, the Azio Retro Classic is a mechanical keyboard sporting rounded backlit keycaps, a zinc aluminum alloy frame and a genuine leather base. The nameplate says “Elegantly Fierce.” It’s not wrong. Last year Aziointroduced the MK Retro, a lovely little typewriter-inspired keyboard. You may have…
By Mike Fahey Published August 11, 2017 -
Reviews
Vortex Race 3 Keyboard Review: The 75 Percent Solution
Tenkeyless keyboards lose the number pad on the right side in favor of a more compact footprint. I say, why stop there?Vortexgear’s 75 percent Race 3 features nearly all the functionality of a tenkeyless board in a smaller, sleeker package, and it’s gorgeous to boot. While I’ve been a tenkeyless keyboard fan for ages, it’s…
By Mike Fahey Published July 28, 2017 -
ReviewsHardwareGame Systems
New Nintendo 2DS XL: The Kotaku Review
If you don’t care about 3D anymore—and even Nintendo’s interest in it seems to be fading—then the New Nintendo 2DS XL is the absolute best model in Nintendo’s line of portable gaming hardware. It’s a shame the company makes adding new devices such a burden. Nintendo’s nomenclature for handhelds has turned into alphabet soup, as…
By Chris Kohler Published July 27, 2017 -
ReviewsSplatoon 2: The Kotaku Review
The first Splatoon gave us a new way to play multiplayer shooters, a genre that sometimes feels stale. Two years later, Splatoon 2 doesn’t revitalize shooters all over again but instead refines Nintendo’s unusual, brilliant take. Splatoon 2, out now for the Switch, is a third-person shooter in which you battle with ink, not bullets.…
By Patricia Hernandez Published July 24, 2017 -
Reviews
Pyre: The Kotaku Review
Pyre is a sports game about starting a revolution. In a worse game, that would be a joke, but Pyre takes both its sports and its politics seriously and combines them in an unexpectedly compelling way. This new game is from Supergiant, the small studio behind the lauded Bastion and Transistor games. Their first was…
By Gita Jackson Published July 24, 2017 -
Reviews
Splatoon 2 Splat & Chat Headset: The Kotaku Review
Just about any headset you can use with a phone or tablet can be used with Nintendo’s Switch app to chat with friends during rounds of Splatoon 2. You don’t have to pick up Hori’s official licensed headset, but there are a couple of reasons you might want to. First off, just look at the…
By Mike Fahey Published July 21, 2017 -
Reviews
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age: The Kotaku Review
One of the strangest features in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, which comes out today, is called the gambit system. This system allows you to write out a sequence of if-then statements, like “if you see an enemy, then attack it” or “if your HP goes below 100%, then use a Potion.” You can…
By Jason Schreier Published July 11, 2017 -
ReviewsFinal Fantasy XIV Stormblood: The Kotaku Review
I haven’t completed the final battle in the Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood expansions’ main story line. The titular quest has been sitting in the top left corner of my screen for a week, and I’ve been doing everything I can to ignore it. I don’t want it to end. Being a highly successful massively multiplayer…
By Mike Fahey Published July 10, 2017 -
Reviews
8Bitdo Controllers: The Kotaku Review
8Bitdo’s small, portable control pads are perfect for those times when…look, let’s be real, for when you’re playing emulated Nintendo games on a mobile device. WHAT THEY’RE FOR: Most 8Bitdo controllers are not frontline control pads, designed to replace stuff like a DualShock 4 or Switch Pro. These are small, light controllers designed primarily for…
By Luke Plunkett Published July 5, 2017 -
ReviewsBoard Games
Star Wars Armada: The Corellian Conflict: The Kotaku Review
Star Wars Armada is a great gameto play every once in a while. But committing to play a lot of it in the name of an organised campaign is another story. The Corellian Conflict, released last year, is an attempt by Fantasy Flight to add a bit more weight to your fleet engagements by linking…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 27, 2017 -
Reviews3DS
Ever Oasis: The Kotaku Review
The sad decline of the Mana series has been difficult to watch, and it’s equally unfortunate that its spiritual successor Ever Oasis suffers from similar problems—solid action RPG mechanics and moments of creative brilliance hampered by an experimental gameplay structure that drags everything down with it. Ever Oasis is the latest 3DS collaboration between Nintendo…
By Chris Kohler Published June 22, 2017 -
ReviewsCooler Master MasterKeys L PBT Keyboard Review: A No-Nonsense Mech
Despite evidence to the contrary, a mechanical gaming keyboard doesn’t need to have bright glowing LED lighting. Cooler Master’s MasterKeys L PBT favors style over substance, losing the light show and adding some lovely thick keycaps to create an excellent sub $100 keyboard. Known for its computer cases, power supplies and cooling solutions,Cooler Masteris also…
By Mike Fahey Published June 21, 2017 -
ReviewsArms: The Kotaku Review
Arms may look like a Mario Party mini-game, but it doesn’t play like one. Charming and involved, Arms toes the line between a party game and an entry-level fighter with moderate depth. While Arms succeeds as an easy-to-pick-up brawler, its ambitions as a hardcore game for serious players are less certain. Arms does one thing,…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published June 20, 2017 -
Reviews
Order Of Battle: World War II: The Kotaku Review
You might remember that back in 2015 I reviewed a game called Order of Battle: Pacific, and liked it a lot. In the months and years since, developers The Aristocrats have been working on a bunch of new campaigns that take the game well past its original scope, incorporating battles ranging from the Chinese countryside…
By Luke Plunkett Published June 7, 2017 -
ReviewsTekken 7: The Kotaku Review
In 1994 Namco released Tekken, an outstanding 3D fighting game with a loose story based on the struggle between a father and his powerful son. In 2017 Bandai Namco gives us Tekken 7, an outstanding 3D fighting game with a loose story based on the struggle between a father and his powerful son. You know…
By Mike Fahey Published June 6, 2017 -
Reviews
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier: The Kotaku Review
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is a series defined by contradiction. The third season of Telltale’s successful narrative game franchise, which comes to a close this week with the release of final episode “From The Gallows,” is full of interesting characters the player won’t care about. It’s painfully human but insufferably cliche. The season…
By Heather Alexandra Published May 31, 2017 -
ReviewsBlame!: The Kotaku Review
Tsutomu Nihei’s Blame!, first published in 1998, is a masterpiece in comic story-telling. Its 2017 animated adaptation, recently released on Netflix, is nothing like it. Blame! the manga is a sprawling, desolate exercise in environmental story-telling, about a gunman wandering the ruins of an endless cyberpunk cityscape. It doesn’t have much to say, and makes…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 30, 2017