Xbox

The Division’s Free 1.8 Update Is Better Than Its Paid Expansions

After numerous multiplayer-centric patches and expansions, The Division finally got a big improvement for solo players this week. The new update is shockingly large and shockingly good. It seems designed to make every type of Division player happy. Update 1.8 adds two new, enemy-filled zones called West Side Piers to the game’s Manhattan-based map, throws…

Shadow of War‘s New Online Mode Makes It Clear: They Want You To Play This Game Forever

Five of my orcs died in Shadow of War yesterday. I callously dropped them, one by one, into the game’s new online fight pits. They didn’t make it out. Rash Skull Bow, a feral marksman with little skulls for shoulder pads, got killed in 20 seconds after Ghash The Bloated struck him in the stomach…

Deciding to go up against Destiny 2‘s first expansion for some reason, The Division’s huge and excellent-sounding free 1.8 update will be out tomorrow. Check out detailed patch notes (including radical changes to Underground). The game and its DLC will be free this weekend.

The Division’s free, ambitious 1.8 update will hit the game next week, date TBD (likely Tuesday). It will expand the map with a new region that adds twists to the game’s PvE. It will also offer a horde mode called Resistance and a PvP mode called Skirmish. Oh, and it’ll overhaul the rogue system in…

Many Assassin’s Creed Origins Players Aren’t Ready For The Game’s First Post-Release Boss Battles

A couple times over the past few weeks, a giant Egyptian deity has sprung up in Assassin’s Creed Origins for players to fight. In early November, it was Anubis, god of the dead. Around Thanksgiving it was Sobek, the crocodile god. The gods weren’t accessible when the game launched in late October and they each…

New Evidence Suggests Super Meat Boy Speedrunners Cheated

Super Meat Boy’s challenging platforming and hidden secrets have turned it into a popular game for speedrunning. A new method for detecting cheaters now suggests that some famous runs might not be what they appear to be. There are two kinds of Super Meat Boy speedruns: real-time attacks, which show the entire game without interruption,…

I Love This Unrealistic Assassin’s Creed Origins Boat

I play a lot of video games, but I don’t see many great glitches. Say what you will about modern gaming’s abundance of patches, but major glitches are still fairly rare. I fall through the floor of a third-person action game maybe once every two years. I played all of Red Dead Redemption and never…

The L.A. Noire Remaster’s New Dialogue System Isn’t Specific Enough

L.A. Noire’s remaster brings the cult detective story back for another round of sleuthing. A change to the dialog system meant to fix the original game’s flaws makes interrogations more difficult than before. In L.A. Noire, Detective Cole Phelps investigates various crimes before getting swept up in a city-wide conspiracy. A major component of the…

The Xbox One X Is A Tough Sell

The Xbox One X does exactly what it’s meant to do, but who is it for? Is it worth buying the most powerful game console ever? Let’s discuss on today’s Kotaku Splitscreen First Kirk and I talk about World of Warcraft Classic, the end of Miiverse, and whether the video game industry is really unsustainable.…

What Is The Plural Of Xbox One X? [Update]

Look, I’m not suggesting that many people are going to buy more than one Xbox One X console. But if you did… how would you say that? The question of how to pluralize “Xbox One X” came up today in Kotaku’s work Slack. I asked Microsoft PR for their official stance, though I haven’t yet…

Fans Unhappy As Some Amazon Xbox One X Pre-Orders Miss Launch Day

Some frustrated Amazon customers are complaining that their Xbox One X pre-orders aren’t scheduled to arrive today, which is the launch day for the spanking new console. Fans rushed to pre-order the “world’s most powerful console” months ago so they’d be able to scale 4K pyramids in Assassin’s Creed Origins moments after getting home from…

The Reason Why The Xbox One X Is Selling Out In Japan 

Early this morning, a sign went up in front of the Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo’s Akihabara. It read 完売 (kanbai), which means “sold out.” This is just one of several stores across Japan that have sold through their stock. There is a reason for that, and that reason is that they’re only selling preorders. As…

Cuphead Developers Talk Cut Bosses And What’s In The Cups

Designing a game that manages to be both tough and fun is a difficult task, but Cuphead designers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, along with the rest of StudioMDHR, managed to pull it off. I spoke with the two brothers over the phone to learn about boss design, cut concepts, and life after a successful indie…

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds just announced an Xbox One launch date of December 12th, 2017—but it will still be in early access through the Xbox Game Preview program. The game is slated to leave early access on PC late December.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus: The Kotaku Review

The warm sun beats down on a main street in Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, just in time for the Victory Day parade. Uniformed SS march down swastika-filled streets to thunderous applause. By the old diner, two members of the Ku Klux Klan practice their German. Everyone is white and happy. And it is so…

Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Microtransactions (Mostly) Just Get You Things You Can Earn While Playing, Ubisoft Says

There are microtransactions in Assassin’s Creed Origins, as there have been in the last two big installments of the series. The game’s publisher, Ubisoft, says that most of what you can spend them on can be obtained just by playing the game, though it’s a little more complicated than that. Origins’ in-game store, which is…

Here’s November’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

Tales from the Borderlands is another one of those games I own on multiple platforms but still haven’t gotten around to playing. If you’re in the same boat, Xbox Live Games with Gold has you covered this month. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Games with Gold…

Assassin’s Creed Origins: The Kotaku Review

For all its extraordinary visual splendor, Assassin’s Creed Origins is ultimately an ordinary video game. That’s not such a bad thing, particularly if you like looking at pretty vistas and watching numbers go up. Origins is the 10th main entry in Ubisoft’s series of historical murder games. It is also the latest in the current…

Leaked on Friday and now confirmed by Microsoft through IGN, these are the first original Xbox games that will be available through Xbox One backwards compatibility on October 24. Not pictured but also due tomorrow is Black, bringing the total to 13. Which games do you want to see added to the list? 

The Evil Within 2: The Kotaku Review

When we meet Sebastian Castellanos at the beginning of The Evil Within 2, he’s a broken man. The mind-bending events of the previous installment fractured his psyche. He blames himself for not being able to save his daughter Lily from a house fire, and his wife left him. He’s been booted from the police force…