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The Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Beta Is Good–Mostly

As I noted this morning, Call of Duty is one of those rare things I like. I like the campaigns because the stories are usually decently told and efficiently delivered—I can play through each new one in a couple sessions, and playing them again never feels like a daunting proposition. And I like the multiplayer…

“You may pose with a prop in a brandishing manner, so long as no reasonable person would interpret for anything other than dramatic effect. ” The cosplay rules for the North American League of Legends Summer Finals are an entertaining read.

The Metal Gear Franchise, Sorta Explained In Under 12 Minutes

Metal Gear lore is remarkably complicated and goofy. Michael Huber at GameTrailers tries to quickly sift through it all and distill it down to the main points. I think it pretty much works! There’s a ton of noise in these games (I mean Para-Medic talked about movies so much, and that one guy kept shitting…

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 beta is now open to all PS4 players. Previously you needed a PSN download code to play. The PS4 beta ends Sunday night, and the Xbox One and PC betas will start Wednesday, August 26

Alpha Protocol Is The Great RPG Of Last Gen

In the “objective video game review” sense, Alpha Protocol is pretty much the worst. It’s super irritating to play, and every time I speak with somebody from Obsidian, the studio that made it, they just shake their head. But on the Phil Owen “Was This A Big Waste Of Time?” Scale, however, Alpha Protocol comes…

Welcome To The Philtaku Weekend of Positivity

Hi, it’s me, Phil Owen. The mean guy. I’m going to be hanging out here on this cool web site all weekend, and I’m going to try something new. As many of you know, I’m kinda a negative person. After my last stint here as guest editor, dear leader Stephen Totilo made a profound suggestion…

Watch Me Play Super Mario Maker

Today, I am going to attempt Mario Maker’s “100 Mario challenge,” a mode where you are given 100 lives to clear a set number of courses created by other players. Who knows what I will find? (Probably not the princess. She’s never at the castle. Jerk.) If you’d like, you can watch me undertake this…

Witcher 3 Mods Have Gotten Weird

Juggalo Geralt says hello. Witcher 3’s new mod tools might leave something to be desired, but that hasn’t stopped modders from injecting the game with a cackling dose of fuckweird. Let’s look at a few of the less… expected mods that have come out in the past week. Geralt face fusion This one lets you…

Riot’s Jeffrey Lin has amended his statements about how ranked League of Legends players will be punished for having chat restrictions or temporary bans this season. On Twitter and in a new ask.fm post, he said that only a specific subset of ranked players won’t be eligible for 2015 rewards. Read the full update here.

Pac-Man 256 Is Endless Pac-Man With A Fun, Glitchy Twist

Walls have always been an important part of Pac-Man. Your little yellow guy (or lady) is stuck in a maze with some deadly ghosts. The walls of the maze frame the action and give it structure. So… what if one of those walls didn’t exist, and the maze became endless? That’s the idea fueling Pac-Man…

The Fascinating Story Behind Nintendo’s Biggest Flop

It’d be really nice if it was Friday, right? You’re in luck! Not only is it Friday, but that means another installment of Worth Reading, our weekly roundup of the best games writing around. Hey, You Should Read These “How the F.B.I. Made ‘Winners Don’t Use Drugs’ the Arcade Motto of the ‘90s” by Sean…

Offworld takes a look at how gaming terms have influenced Chinese slang, and it’s a fascinating read.

“SEGA is currently not planning to release the PS4 version of Phantasy Star Online 2 outside of Japan,” a representative for the company tells Kotaku. Still no word on the other versions, which they announced for U.S. release back in 2012 but haven’t said a thing about since. Sorry, guys.

In Eltingville Club, The Worst Nerds in the World Have Grown Up and It’s Just Awful

They bitch about character changes. They make fun of other fans for not knowing as much as they do. They hate on cosplay. Look in the mirror and pray that you are nothing like the babymen of the Eltingville Comic Book, Science Fiction, Fantasy Horror & Role-Playing Club. I first encountered the four guys of…

The Five Biggest Problems With Twitch

Twitch is a popular service, and there’s a good reason Amazon paid nearly $1 billion for it. But as a streamer and viewer, I’ve come to realize it’s not perfect; there are lots of problems, actually. It’s not an exaggeration to say Twitch is largely responsible for popularizing (and democratizing) the live streaming of games.…

Riot’s Idea For Punishing Ranked League Of Legends Players Seemed Harsh [UPDATE]

UPDATE (5:30 pm): Riot’s Jeffrey Lin has issued a follow up statement to the one this post originally covered, saying that he had made “a huge blunder” in his ask.fm post about the developer’s plans for the 2015 season rewards. While he originally said that all League of Legends ranked player who received any kind…

Arkham Knight PC Is Still Broken And Will Be For A While

We’ve been waiting for Warner Bros. to release a huge patch for Batman: Arkham Knight on PC to address the game’s huge technical shortcomings, but it’s not coming for another “few weeks.” Last we heard, it was supposed to come out this month. If you’re not familiar with what went wrong with Arkham Knight on…

Even If You Don’t Like Football, Watch The Madden 16 Commercial

You might have wondered, after last year’s incredible Madden Season commercial, how EA Sports would top themselves. Wonder no more. For Madden NFL 16, which comes out on Tuesday, EA got a bunch of actors and football stars—miss you Rex—to participate in what might be the most preposterous commercial ever made, complete with dinosaurs, tragic…

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…

Marvel’s Putting Cosplayers on the Covers of Its Biggest Comics

Usually, superhero cosplay goes in one direction: from the pages of a comic book out into the real world. But a bunch of cosplayers will be winding up on the covers of series featuring the Marvel characters they dressed up as. Pretty cool. The House of Spidey just announced a suite of covers as part…