Xbox

EA’s throwing a Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 multiplayer beta event starting next Thursday, on January 14. The beta, which ends on January 18, will be freely available on PS4 and Xbox One. Check out the GW2 beta page for more info, and eventual download links, if your interest’s piqued.

2015’s Best In-Game Map? Assassin’s Creed Syndicate 

Let us praise a thing that matters a lot in video games: the quality of an in-game map. Zooming in, let us heap praise upon 2015’s most magnificent in-game map, the one that appeared in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. The video above is all the proof you need. This map is great. Shall we count the…

The Good, New Assassin’s Creed Expansion’s Unexpectedly Bold Depiction Of Prostitution

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’s new Jack The Ripper expansion is a compelling if rough-edged remix of the base game that cleverly works in one of history’s most famous killers. It pulls off another trick, too, going to extraordinary lengths to engender empathy for a group of people who don’t get much of it in video games:…

Microsoft has created a nifty little Year in Review page for Xbox One and 360 gamers to check out their stats for 2015. Make sure you’re logged in to your Xbox Live account and hit up the page to see how you rank. Then share your findings here!

New Trailer Shows A Little More Kingdom Hearts III

Square Enix has just put a new Kingdom Hearts trailer that showcases the series’ upcoming 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue release and ends with a couple of minutes’ worth of Kingdom Hearts III gameplay. Nothing ground-breaking, and III still seems to be a long ways off, but this is better than nothing, right? Jump to 3:38…

Minecraft update 1.8.8 goes live for consoles today, Microsoft just announced. It’ll come with a bunch of new biomes and monsters.

The Jack The Ripper expansion for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will be out for PS4 and Xbox One on December 15, a week later on PC, according to publisher Ubisoft. It stars Evie Frye and is set 20 years after November’s very good new AC. Now, what happened to her brother, Jacob? Hmmm.

The State Of The Xbox One in 2015

It must be frustrating for the people who work on the Xbox One, to have turned one of the worst-pitched gaming consoles ever into a machine that’s in several ways better than its competition. Lately, Microsoft has done so many things well. They’ve improved their box in so many ways. Surely they ask: Will you…

The Problem With The Post-Bungie Halo Campaigns

Halo used to mean quality. Its campaigns were all heroic military sci-fi, full of brilliantly-designed levels and enemies. The multiplayer was some of gaming’s best, supplying pulse-pounding firefights and thrilling victories. There was a time when a new Halo game was a guarantee of greatness. Since developer Bungie moved on and custom Halo house 343…

I Finally Like My Xbox One

I didn’t realize I hated my Xbox One until I loaded Fallout 3 on it and felt all warm and fuzzy when I saw the Xbox 360 logo and heard the Xbox 360 theme. It was Thursday, and it was the first time my Xbox One has ever made me feel warm and fuzzy. All…

It’s Time To Buy A Modern Video Game Console

Hey, you. Gal or guy who’s interested in video games but still doesn’t have a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One (or, of course, the PC equivalent). Now is the time to buy one. In November of 2013, when Sony and Microsoft first launched their video game boxes, it was hard to recommend either of them…

Star Wars Battlefront Impressions: Skimpy Singleplayer, Fun Multiplayer

What is Star Wars Battlefront actually made of? The heavily hyped multiplayer game from the makers got an early release for EA Access subscribers on Xbox One. I dove in on Thursday to see what the game is all about. Battlefront is, not surprisingly, a multiplayer-centric game. Everyone figured that, given that that’s pretty much…

The Xbox One’s New Calendar App Is Surprisingly Useful [UPDATE]

Now here’s a thing I didn’t realize I wanted: an event calendar on my console. There’s a new(ish) Community Calendar app on the Xbox One that is good and could be great. Like so many Xbox One things, this is an app you’ll have to download, then load up from the console’s app directory. It…

Touring Boston’s Freedom Trail in Fallout 4

Approaching Fallout 4 like a tourist isn’t easy. There aren’t as many Bostonians around as there are in present-day Massachusetts, and there are more Super Mutants and feral dogs. (I’m not saying it’s worse in the 23rd century.) Still, there is a sightseeing tour. A version of Boston’s red-brick Freedom Trail is in the game,…

Twenty Hours With Fallout 4

I’m 20 hours into Fallout 4, and I still don’t know whether I like it. That’s a testament to the game’s virtues as well as the game’s failings. I have no plans to stop playing. I’d rather be playing Fallout 4 than typing these words. Yet I still haven’t forgiven the game for taking so…

A Ford-Inspired Xbox Controller Is Actually Pretty Sweet

This isn’t an actual controller, it’s just a marketing stunt by Ford and Microsoft. But, uh, Ford….I would maybe buy this It’s a mock-up for an Elite controller(via Windows Central) that has some specific changes made for driving games, like a custom driving thumbstick, and some racing pedals for triggers. Other touches include a carbon…

Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 will be out on February 23. Popcap’s sequel to its plant-and-zombie-based third-person shooter, which is coming to current-gen consoles and PC, will feature a total of 8 new classes, along with a single-player mode and multiple new multiplayer modes.

New Steampunk Outfits For Assassin’s Creed Syndicate Are Nearly 1GB Each To Download

Here’s a modern day video game mystery we haven’t been able to solve: Why are the download files for new Assassin’s Creed Syndicate outfits so enormous? A new free download that gives players a single Steampunk outfit for Syndicate’s twin protagonist Evie Frye is an 820MB download on Xbox One. The PS4 lists it at…

Halo 5: Guardians: The Kotaku Review

Halo 5: Guardians is the first time I haven’t loved a Halo game. Though, thankfully, the latest chapter in the sci-fi shooter universe has a few things going for it. Development studio 343’s second Halo game since taking on the mantle of responsibility from Bungie three years ago tries to tell the story of a…

What the New Assassin’s Creed Gets Wrong (and Right), According to a Historian

Bob Whitaker, a historian of modern Britain at Louisiana Tech and the host of the YouTube series History Respawned, recommends Assassin’s CreedSyndicate, the entertaining new Ubisoft game set in Victorian London. He likes the way it successfully captures the feel of the British capital in the 19th century, and he particularly likes the way the…