Xbox

New King’s Quest Is Love Child of Dragon’s Lair and The Princess Bride

I took our 5-year-old daughter to see Pixar’s Inside Out a week ago. I wish we had been able to play the new King’s Quest together instead. Like Inside Out, the new King’s Quest is close to a perfect piece of family entertainment. Unlike Inside Out, it would be far less likely to turn a…

30 More Hours With Fallout 3, Which Is Still Damn Good

Seeing the reveal of Fallout 4 at E3, I found myself compelled to return to Bethesda’s first entry in the series, Fallout 3. There’s just something about it, a special kind of magic that few games have. Initially, I didn’t plan to spend much time with Fallout 3, but it sucked me in. Within two…

Pre-order incentives are pretty dumb, and the Terminator being a pre-order character for WWE 2K16 might be the dumbest, but Arnold Schwarzenegger re-doing his naked-Terminator scene with WWE’s Daniel Bryan, Finn Balor, Paige and Dean Ambrose? Funny.

New Tomb Raider Will Come To PC and PS4 In 2016

Windows players will be able to play Rise of the Tomb Raider a few months after it launches on Xbox. PS4 gamers will have to wait a year. There’s been anger and disgruntlement at the exclusivity of Rise of the Tomb Raider, which was initially announced as an Xbox platform exclusive last August. Turns out…

Developers, Please Copy These Player-Friendly Ideas From Arkham Knight

You might celebrate a video game for its gameplay, graphics, or its story, but let’s briefly celebrate the excellent little things Batman: Arkham Knight does to respect the time of its players. Oh, if only more modern games did these things. These ideas aren’t all brand-new, but they’ve been implemented in Arkham Knight with a…

A new trailer for Platinum’s upcoming Transformers: Devastation game will give gamers of a certain age flashbacks to their childhood. It’s still hard to tell if this game is much more than an arena brawler, though there do seem to at least be some transformation-based moves. For PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS4.

All Maps Cleared

Assassin’s Creed Rogue didn’t stand a chance when it met an AC obsessive like me. All three game maps cleared after some 36 hours spent playing on my PS3. If you’re wondering about that boat in the lower left of the North Atlantic, I got that too: To contact the author of this post, write…

An Illustrated Guide To Why I Can’t Stop Playing Assassin’s Creed

I have once again returned to an Assassin’s Creed game and found great things. Specifically, I have learned a lot about open-world video games, how Ubisoft makes them, and why I love them so much. I must show you. I’ve gone back to Assassin’s Creed Rogue, the underhyped last-gen (and PC!) release that was overshadowed…

Arkham Knight Should Let Batman Play With All His Toys

I didn’t love Batman: Arkham Knight, but I did like it. Just not at first. For at least a few hours, I worried that I was going to give the game a “No” under Kotaku’s binary rating system. I ended up getting to 95 percent completion—falling one tank battle and a couple hundred Riddler trophies…

Japan, the Xbox One Isn’t Giving Up on You Just Yet

Even if it seems that Japan already has. The Japanese Xbox One launch was an utter disasterand recent console sales have been shockingly bad. No wonder that today in Tokyo, newly minted Microsoft Japan boss Takuya Hirano was asked during in a Q&A whether or not the Xbox One was going to be pulled from…

Three Very Different Upcoming Games That Impressed Me In Los Angeles

As I look over my notes from the big E3 show in L.A. earlier this month, three games stand out that I wanted to be sure to praise. I’m eager to play more of all of them. Chibi Robo: Zip Lash This one is for the Nintendo 3DS and comes out in early October. It’s…

Korean Gamer Destroys an Xbox 360, Alleges Microsoft Isn’t Trying

A South Korean gamer named XBOX∞ is infinitely not happy. Today, he uploaded a post titled, “I got a sledge hammer. Message for Microsoft Korea.” The gamer was upset about the Batman: Arkham Knight Korean localization. Or rather, the lack thereof. “Arkham Knight for PS4 got an official localized release while the Xbox One version…

That New Game From Inafune And The Makers of Metroid Prime Sounds Cool

No offense to the lead creator of Mega Man, but the words “From Keiji Inafune” in the debut trailer for a new Xbox One game called ReCore weren’t what excited me most. It was what came next: “and the makers of Metroid Prime.” And that was before I even found out what the game actually…

Thanks To 73,000 Supporters, They’re Making A Successor To Banjo-Kazooie

For about the last seven years, Grant Kirkhope has been trying to convince people in the gaming industry that it’s time to make a game similar to 1998’s Banjo-Kazooie, one of the great 3D platformers of the Nintendo 64 era. Says Kirkhope: “I was told: ‘Grant, you’re talking nonsense. No one wants this game. Platformers…

“4J studios has been doing a great job, and we’ll continue to [work with them]” — PlayStation’s Adam Boyes to us at E3, confirming 4J will keep improving Microsoft-owned Minecraft on PlayStation platforms. Boyes wore a Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary pin when he talked to us, but Mario isn’t coming to PlayStation.

The Next Big Assassin’s Creed Adds A Dash Of Batman And A Helping Of GTA

I judge an Assassin’s Creed, crazy me, by the overall quality of its world design and the quality of the high quantity of things these games give us to do. I therefore cannot judge the not-yet-released Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, of which I’ve only played for five minutes in the South Hall of the Los Angeles…

Batman: Arkham Knight: The Kotaku Review

If you are so into the Arkham games that you are going to be wounded by learning anything at all about Batman: Arkham Knight—what characters may or may not be in it, for example—please don’t read this review. Go play the game! You will like it, mostly. The spoilers in this review are minor, in…

Xbox One Reaches a New Low in Japan

Just when you think Microsoft could do no worse in Japan, the console proves that, yes, it can do even worse. Much worse. After a dismal Japan launch and thenhorrible sales, the latest weekly Xbox One sales for Japan are, simply put, awful. During the week of June 8 to June 14, Microsoft sold a…

Mass Effect 1 Runs Faster, Smoother on Xbox One

The first Mass Effect was a game that sometimes struggled to perform well on Microsoft’s last home console. But, it looks like BioWare’s sci-fi creation is a much better experience on the Xbox One. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that backwards compatibility will be coming to their latest home gaming machine and Mass Effect is…

Snapping on Xbox One is moving to the left with the system’s new user interface update later this year. Based on user feedback, Microsoft told us at E3.