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What I Learned From A Year’s Worth Of Overwatch Coaching

One year ago, I dropped from Platinum rank to Gold in Overwatch’s competitive mode. Even though it was just a number, it felt like a huge defeat. Since then, over the last year, I’ve been working with a coach to improve my game. I thought I was just chasing after my old rank, but I…

Red Dead Redemption 2 Will Have Some Sort Of Timed PlayStation Exclusivity

One of the video game industry’s most grating trends is timed exclusivity, when a console manufacturer like Sony or Microsoft pays a publisher money in order to deprive content from other platforms for a certain timeframe. It looks like Red Dead Redemption 2 will be following suit. Today, developer Rockstar announced a bunch of bundles…

FLCL: Progressive‘s Premiere Is Good, But Tame

“There is no amount of weed that will make this make sense,” said a college boyfriend a few minutes into the iconic 2000 anime FLCL. After 18 years, demented and amazing teen angst anime FLCL is getting two sequels, the first of which airs June 2. Its premiere episode is easy to watch and, disappointingly,…

Eiichiro Oda Draws One Piece‘s Luffy As An Old Man

Monkey D. Luffy is a young man in One Piece, but what will he look like as an old one? Eiichiro Oda recently did a “what if” drawing of the iconic pirate. In the SBS of the most recent One Piece, Oda drew Luffy and Ace at 40 years old as well as at 60…

Spanish Team Welcomes Japanese Soccer Player With Anime And Cosplay

Takashi Inui, who plays on the Japanese national team, is joining Real Betis. The team announced the news in a Twitter clip that’s packed with numerous manga, anime, and video game nods. The stuff with Doraemon is kind of messed up Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking…

The World’s Ugliest Car Returns For An Anime Tribute

The Mitsuoka Orochi, which our colleagues at Jalopnik called “the world’s ugliest car,” is back for a special one-off anime tribute. The Orochi, named after the legendary eight-headed Japanese serpent, went into production in 2006. By 2014, coach builder Mitsuoka decided to call it a day, slaying the Orochi. Mitsuoka didn’t ramp up Orochi production…

Minatogawa-Jinja Temple. Kobe, Japan. By Helmut Perchu. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

What Overwatch’s Maps Look Like From The Outside

You normally only get to enjoy Overwatch maps from the ground level, so this clip that jumps outside their boundaries is a really cool new way to see what they’re made of. The video is by Noobinabox, and was made simply to “show just how beautiful this game is”. Only the first half of the…

Europa Looks Absolutely Beautiful

This is Europa, a “stylized exploration adventure game.” It’s the creation of Helder Pinto, a senior environment artist at Blizzard. It tells the story of “the last sentient droid, a millennia after singularity ran amok.” There’s not much to it other than that teaser, but I thought it was so pretty—with such a strong “Studio…

Magic Is Currently Being Dominated By A Little Goblin

This weekend was Pro Tour Dominaria, the first major professional play event taking place after the recently released Dominaria set of Magic: The Gathering, and the most important person in the entire tournament was a fun little goblin with a jump rope. Well, it might be a chain. And that goblin might be whirling that…

Cinematic Tours of Cities: Skylines Megacities Are So Relaxing

Cities: Skylines is a game that I keep going back to. Even though new and interesting content packs come out for it regularly, I find myself drawn to the scale of the game more than its content. I mean, it’s big, and flying through it set to a calm soundtrack is the ultimate soothing experience.…

Matthew Mercer Explains How To Be A Good Dungeon Master

Being a good steward of a tabletop game experience is hard work. Any Dungeon Master can tell you that setting the right tone and crafting the perfect story is difficult, fiddly work. I asked Matthew Mercer, famed Dungeon Master, how he’s so good at what he does. As the Dungeon Master of Critical Role, probably…

A Fan Recreated Dark Souls In A Lego Game

A very creative person has recreated Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls within Lego Worlds. I dare you to name a more iconic duo. Lego Worlds is a big, sprawling building game where you play with digital Legos, collect more Legos, and generally just have the most amazing time of your entire crafty life. Dark Souls…

Popular Twitch Streamer Makes An Example Of Her Harassers

Annemunition, a popular Twitch streamer with over 300,000 followers, was just trying to be a decent teammate and call shots in Rainbow Six Siege. Then, over voice chat, came the questions: “Are you a man or a female?” And the accusations: “You stole my fucking content. You’re shit at the game. Get out.” Annemunition, a…

Evolve’s dedicated servers are shutting down on September 3, publisher 2K Games announced today. While peer-to-peer multiplayer will still be around for Legacy Evolve, the free-to-play version called Evolve Stage 2 will be going away. Ranked Hunt mode will also disappear, along with leaderboards and in-game store.

Fortnite Players Blame Stream Snipers For Update That Hides Streamers’ Names

If you’re a streamer, getting trounced by stream snipers is a pain. Some players, though, live for the thrill of coming face-to-face with their favorite streamers in games—and maybe even besting them. A new Fortnite feature that anonymizes streamers’ names, then, could represent something of an impasse. Fortnite is a game with a lot of…

Bungie Gets $100 Million For New Non-Destiny Game

Bungie has been quietly working on a non-Destiny new game for some time now, and today the studio acknowledged it for the first time, announcing a partnership with Chinese publisher NetEase that will raise them $100 million. “Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve entered into a new partnership with NetEase to help us explore…

Fallout: New California, a New Vegas mod that’s been in development for nine years, will finally come out this October. Its creators announced the news with a new trailer and said that in the meanwhile they’ll be adding more side quests to it as well as running a beta starting in July.

Sword Art Online‘s Gun Gale Online Is A Meh Anime, But A Cool (Fake) Game

Here we are, in 2018, with a new Sword Art Online anime series, this time about a woman playing as a loli avatar in a VR battle royale game. It’s not wholly bad, but like its predecessor, it fails to live up to its intriguing premise so far. Definitely not plucked out of a trash…

What We Liked (And Didn’t Like) About Solo

There’s a new Star Wars out, have you seen it yet? It’s more likely than ever that the answer is “no.” Solo: A Star Wars Story, the origin tale of everyone’s favorite stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder, has been struggling hard at the box office since its release on May 25. What’s behind the audience…