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Hey, Kotaku! I’m Ben Bertoli And I’ll Be Your Enthusiastic Guest Editor

Happy Labor Day, people who have Labor Day off! My name is Ben Bertoli and boy do I have a Monday full of fun for you. Depending on your definition of fun, of course. Some (most?) of you may know me better as long-time commenter and Talk Amongst Yourselves commander GiantBoyDetective. My childhood dream was…

Ocarina of Time’s Zora Cave Gets a Next-Gen Facelift

Yeah, this is the same guy who also did The Temple of Time and yes, it is similarly pretty. That’s Unreal Engine 4 for ya. Oh, and talent. Don’t forget talent. Crafted by environment artist Michael Eurek (via DSOGaming), the map depicts Zora’s Domain from Zelda: Ocarina of Time, lovingly re-interpreted in UE4. There’s a…

My Love/Hate Relationship With Destiny

Compared to a whole lot of people on the Internet, I have not played much of Destiny at all. This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK In fact, according to an online calculator, I have spent 12 hours playing it (although it doesn’t count idle time spent in orbit or in the Tower, so it’s…

Destiny’s concept art is just…ungh. There’s so much quality, and in such volume, that for fans of this kind of stuff it’s easily one of the best games in recent years. For those fans: you can now buy $280 “high end” prints of images done by Jesse van Dijk, Jaime Jones, Dorje Bellbrook, Ryan deMita,…

The Cost Of Attending Every Big Anime Con In America

Ever wonder how much it would cost you to attend every big anime convention in the United States in a single year? No, me neither, but the numbers are still interesting! Constructing a hypothetical anime super-fan who lived in Chicago, Rae Votta at The Daily Dot decided to find out, and tallied all the major…

How Random Dungeons Are Made

Games that build their own dungeons don’t just throw a bunch of rooms together. This Gamasutra post by Starlight Academy developer Adonaac (featuring animations by TinyKeep developer Phi Dinh) explainsone way that a game can not just procedurally-generate rooms, but more importantly, have it actually work The short version: it’s magic. The longer version: it…

Dustwind got announced over the weekend. It’s a “post-apocalyptic tactical RPG”, so Wasteland/Fallout fans, looks like this one is for you.

Hobbiton, Via Minecraft, Is Just Beautiful

Just when I thought I was sick to death of seeing these kind of things, along comes a Tolkien tribute to blow my socks off. This is Tolkien’s Hobbiton, recreated in Minecraft. It’s at 1:58 scale, on a map that’s 3500×2500 blocks in size, and is terrifyingly “accurate” not just in how it sticks to…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: It’s Loopin’ Chewie’s Fault

Force Fridayturned out to be a bust for many hopeful collectors, so we’re going to take out our frustration on an innocent. Sorry, Loopin’ Chewie. Reader and frequent ‘shop contest contributor sciteach directed me to Hasbro’s Star Wars version of board game classic Loopin’ Louie, and my own disappointment with the way collectors were shafted…

Five Minutes In The Shower With Dad

Don’t worry, it’s only Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015. Or maybe worry. Up to you. Mind the video filled with pixel penis. So the other day I am standing in line at GameStop behind a man and his young son—probably around eleven or twelve—as the game advisor or whatever they are calling them was…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Don’t Need A Game To Make Mario Levels: Winner!

You can’t make this stage in Super Mario Maker. In honor of this week’s release of Nintendo Wii U Mario creation tool, last week I tasked our image-manipulation experts to demonstrate what sort of Mario we could make without a $60 game. They certainly rose to the occasion. And while the brave and valorous Hundredgunner…

Watch Kotaku’s Boss Play Destiny‘s Raid For The First Time [UPDATE: Stream Over]

Two of Kotaku’s editors—me and Kirk Hamilton—have played Destiny’s Vault of Glass raid dozens of times. But our boss, Stephen Totilo, has not. Neither has weekend editor Mike Fahey. Join the four of us—plus Kotaku deputy editor Tina Amini and our friend from Mashable, Adam Rosenberg—as we take on the Vault and get as many…

How Halo And Destiny’s Composer Got Fired From Bungie

In April of 2014 Martin “Marty” O’Donnell, then Bungie’s audio director, was fired from the company “without cause.” A court ruling issued last week in a case between the composer and his former employer sheds light on the events leading up to his termination and the hand Activision played in souring their relationship. What seemed…

The Phantom Pain PC Benchmarks Are Relatively Painless

We’re always on the lookout for games that take advantage of the latest PC hardware and although our game performance reviews have included major series such as Battlefield, BioShock, Crysis and Far Cry, we haven’t tested any Metal Gear games despite the franchise’s age and the number of titles it encompasses. I must embarrassingly admit…

PC Gaming Looked A Lot Different In The Late ’90s

Flat widescreen monitors? Glowing keyboards and mice? Controllers with analog thumbsticks? The late ‘90s PC gamer needed not such things. Or at least we didn’t know we needed them, as they either didn’t exist or weren’t widely available yet. No, as Redditor SuperBabyHix’s retro setup demonstrates, all we needed was a keyboard that worked, a…

The Most Powerful Hit In Smash Bros. Requires Four People

Have you ever wondered how hard you can hit a character in Smash Bros. in a single go, without actually using an item? Science can answer that question. It’s unlikely anyone would pull the ridiculous stunt shown off by Beefy Smash Doods off in a normal Smash Bros. game, given how chaotic it is—but damn…

Years Later, Players Haven’t Really Solved Fez‘s Biggest Mystery

Some light reading never hurt everyone, especially on a holiday weekend. As labor day grows near, it’s time for Worth Reading, our (mostly) weekly roundup of the best in games writing. Hey, You Should Read These “The Immortal Mystery of Fez’s Black Monolith” by Devin Raposo I went deep down the Fez hole when it…

Counter-Strike Champ Makes Cheating Teammate’s Life A Living Hell

Lets say you’re playing a video game and you encounter a teammate who is very obviously cheating—we’re talking, impossible headshots, the ability to see through walls, the works. What do you do? Do you A) report the player? Do you B) leave the match? Or do you C) continue the match as you would normally,…

Heroes of the Storm just put out a spotlight for the upcoming Warcraft character Manbearpig Rexxar. I love the idea of adding a beastmaster—I mean, there’s already onein Dota 2. Allowing you to manage a bunch of different animals seems like a logical next step from all the summoning-heavy specialists already in HOTS.