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Shovel Knight dev Yacht Club Games has announced the release date for their game’s upcoming expansion: September 17. Plague of Shadows will feature a new character, the Plague Knight, and will be released for all versions of Shovel Knight in a free update. Trailer for it is above, in case you missed it last month.

Take A Break From Metal Gear And Play Nova-111

Have you heard of Nova-111? I barely had, but now I must show it to you. It’s a wonderful surprise of a video game. It’s partially turn-based, partially real-time. It’s action mixed with puzzles. Its on Xbox One, PS4, PS3, Vita, PC and Mac and is coming to Wii U. It just came out. It’s…

I Can’t Stop Collecting Stuff in Video Games

Here’s something I wish more game designers understood: If you put an interaction in your game, I am going to interact with it. Anytime a game responds to its players, the rats—or at least this rat—are going to press the lever for more cocaine pellets. Jenova Chen, during a talk about the design of Journey…

Batman Arkham Knight DLC Still At A Drip-Feed, Still Needs Something Great

We’ve been hard on the six-month downloadable content roll-out for Batman Arkham Knight, because, so far, it just hasn’t been that good. The newest morsel, released yesterday, isn’t much of an improvement, but this month does bring promise of a potential turnaround. Yesterday’s addition was a $1.99, 76.2MB bundle of extra battle maps called the…

FTC Slams YouTube Group For ‘Deceptive’ Xbox Marketing Campaign

Around the launch of the Xbox One, the YouTube network Machinima held a special campaign for its clients: Make a positive video about Microsoft’s newest console, and you’ll get paid extra. Also, you’re not allowed to talk about any of this. Seems sketchy, right? The U.S. Federal Trade Commission certainly thought so, and after an…

Mad Max: The Kotaku Review

A little more than 10 years ago, not long after I quit my job to become a freelance writer, a colleague warned me that sometimes the work could be grueling and unrewarding. “I want to talk to you when you’re writing a story only for money,” he said. It took a decade, but I finally…

New Xbox One Controller Is Gorgeous

Alongside a new bundle announcement, Microsoft showed off this new Xbox One controller today. It’s official name is the “Xbox One Special Edition Lunar White Wireless Controller”. I like it a lot. The gold d-pad and central buttons are flashy enough to flash but restrained enough not to overwhelm the entire design, while the switch…

The Next Deus Ex Launches in February

Square Enix has given a launch date of February 23 for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided in a recent press release. The accompanying PS Blog post also describes the pre-order bonuses for the game. It’s one of those “get more people to pre-order, get more stuff” kind of deals, capped by a four-day early release reward.…

The first playable episode of Blues and Bullets, the noir adventure that really impressed Nathan and Mike, is now out on Xbox One. $5.

You’re a Disembodied Head in Double Fine’s Next Game

See that head with the jetflame coming out of it? Yep, that’s you. Aptly enough, the game is called Headlander In Headlander, you, as a head, land on various bodies, taking them over—thus netting you all kinds of new abilities, be that new weapons, new methods of locomotion, or dance moves. The game itself is…

Fallout 3’s Point Lookout Set The Standard for Great DLC

Point Lookout is one of those add-ons that sticks with you. In a world where downloadable content is often forgettable, Bethesda crafted an interesting new addition to Fallout 3 and populated it with some of the best quests they’ve ever produced. Expansions are hard to pull off well. All too often, developers release something that’s…

Fallout 3 Isn’t Really An RPG

Fallout 3 doesn’t follow the same basic formula for open-world sandbox games that has produced some truly great games, from Grand Theft Auto V to The Witcher 3. But what if Bethesda wasn’t making an open-world sandbox RPG at all? When Grand Theft Auto III released in 2001, it was a revelation. Sure, open-world games…

Gears of War Weapons, Ranked

As a series, Gears of War likely has the best weapons in any shooter, period. Many of these weapons are surprisingly creative—a chainsaw on an assault rifle?!—and nearly all of them feel great to use. What I’m saying is: ranking the Gears of War arsenal is tough. In any other game, many of these weapons…

Realistic/historical RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance discusses its first-person melee combat in its most recent video, also talking about the “thousands of hours” of research that went into developing it. Looks fun! The swordfighting, that is, not the research. Video’s embedded below, so make sure to give it a watch. Dayshot is an image-based feature that…

Homefront: The Revolution’s Demo Didn’t Deliver, Fingers Still Crossed for the Game

Last year, before E3, and back when Dambuster Studios was still called Crytek Nottingham and hadn’t been sold to Deep Silver, I saw a presentation of Homefront: The Revolution in action. I thought it looked fantastic, like an open-world version of Half-Life 2’s City 17. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK At this year’s…

Unfortunately, Quantum Break Looks a Bit Rubbish

For two years, we’ve wondered what Quantum Break actually is. Having seen it, I’m now worried that Quantum Break is a bland-looking shooter interrupted with 20-minute episodes of bad television at the end of every chapter. It should be so much better. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK The setup is that you play…

I’m a Bit Worried About Halo 5’s Campaign

You can always rely on the Halo series to have great music, and even though it was a piece from the original game, hearing it kick in as Master Chief and the other three members of Blue Team hurtled through space towards a Covenant-infested ship in Halo 5 did make me go all gooey inside.…

Always Eat Your Video Game Vegetables

The rewarding but occasionally unpleasant video game Beyond Eyes has one exceptional idea: You’re blind. Or you’re Rae, rather, and Rae is blind. Because she can’t see, you can’t see. Instead, this young blind girl pieces together a visual picture of the world around her by using her other senses—mostly sound, but also smell and…

I Already Like Dark Souls 3 More Than Dark Souls 2

Look, I didn’t like Dark Souls 2 all that much, alright? There was something missing. Something that Dark Souls 3 appears to have. That thing is majesty. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK I don’t want to go off on Dark Souls 2. It is still a great game – even a mildly disappointing…

Five Unreleased Games From Rare, Revealed

It took two whole days, but someone has finally unlocked the videos in new Xbox One release Rare Replay that show off a quintet of games that the studio behind Blast Corps, Jetpac and Banjo-Kazooie started working on but never released. Some look pretty cool, especially Kameo 2 The videos could only be unlocked by…