Uncategorized

Both Zelda And Prey Make Climbing (And Falling) Fun

On the surface, Zelda: Breath of the Wild doesn’t have much in common with the new sci-fi thriller Prey. While the games are different in a lot of ways, both are well-made simulations that reward experimentation and exploration. And both give you fun ways to climb around. Navigation and traversal are fundamental aspects of any…

Graphic Novel About D&D‘s Creator Is Enchanting, But Falls Into A Familiar Trap

Storytelling was never the same after Dungeons & Dragons. When players, guided by a dungeon master, knit a dense narrative whose many threads are each supported by their neighbors, it makes the case that many voices are greater than one. This is the pitch on which Dungeons & Dragons stakes its brand. We see the…

Eleven-Year-Old Gets Used Copy Of GTA V, Finds Bag Of Meth [Update]

According to Havana, Florida mom Kayla McAllister, her 11-year-old son was flipping through the manual of a used game purchased from GameStop on Sunday when he came across a plastic bag containing a white substance. They called the police and yep, it’s meth. According to McAllister, who wrote about the incident in a Facebook post…

The Secret World’s Bizarro Free-To-Play Relaunch Arrives June 26

Funcom’s pay-to-play, modern-day paranormal MMO The Secret World relaunches on June 26 as the free-to-play Secret World Legends, delivering the same exact content in a slightly different way. As a player of the original game, the whole thing is downright weird. I spent a couple of months playing through The Secret World back when it…

These are the top two reviews for Civilization VI on Steam at the moment. I wonder what happened between the 773d and 774th hour to make him think, no, you know what, this is a bad video game.

Here’s A $900 Chun-Li Statue

Pop Culture Shock Collectibles are releasing a Chun-Li statue that comes in three distinct varieties. The cheapest are not cheap by any definition of the word. The three versions are a classic Street Fighter II outfit ($925), her Street Fighter Alpha skin and her “battle dress” from Street Fighter V (both $900). They’ll all be…

Persona 5’s New Game Plus Is Great

I finished Persona 5 a few weeks ago and, unable to get my magical high school friends out of my head, decided I’d jump back in and give its New Game Plus mode a try. It’s not something I normally do with games, but I’m sure glad I did it here. I don’t usually bother…

Overwatch’s Hanzo Mains Don’t Think They Deserve All The Hate

In Overwatch, “Hanzo main” is a dirty word. The Japanese marksman has become a joke, an insult bandied about by hardcore players and school children alike. But people keep picking him, sometimes heedless of team composition and multiple all-caps insults. Why? I asked a whole mess of Hanzo mains to find out. The majority of…

Metal Gear Artist Draws Some Cool Art For Call of Duty

If you start to get Metal Gear Solid vibes off of the new Zombies Chronicles expansion for Call of Duty: Black Ops III, there’s a good reason: Treyarch has tapped artist Yoji Shinkawa to create portraits of the game’s characters. “To be able to work with him and have him realize our main characters in…

Bath Scenes, Of All Things, Are Adding Depth To Our Game Heroes

Bathing is a well-used trope in film and TV. The “shower of angst,” for example, is usually a stand-in for an emotional moment happening to our hero. It might make us empathize more with the person lowering their head under a flow of water. A few video game bathing scenes over the years have let…

Cube World Hasn’t Been Updated In Years, But Some Fans Still Play Every Day

In 2013, voxel exploration game Cube World blew up, amassing millions of viewson YouTube and video game sites. Despite the hype, Cube World’s creators became infamous for going radio silent, while the paid alpha for the game hasn’t updated since July 2013. Many fans have probably asked themselves, “What happened to Cube World?” And yet,…

The Zelda Escape Room Is A Little Disappointing (And Not Really An Escape Room)

When I first heard that there was a Zelda escape room coming to the United States, I imagined a labyrinth of elaborate puzzles, growing more challenging and complicated with each subsequent chamber. I did not expect to be solving brainteasers at a conference table. But I am pleased to report, dear Kotaku readers, that my…

Overwatch YouTuber Gets Harassed After Redditor Makes False Accusations

Over the past few years, Reddit has become the go-to destination for those who feel they have been mistreated and want to hold powerful figures accountable. But the popular website, which refers to itself as “the front page of the Internet,” is also a breeding ground for mobs that require little evidence before embarking on…

Announced last weekvia hoodie unzip, the eight remastered maps of Call of Duty: Zombie Chronicles will be available May 16 on the PlayStation 4 for $29.99. A copy of Black Ops 3 will be required to play.  

Behold, Four Different Systems Running On A Single Monitor

You’ll probably never need to play Prey on PC, Wonder Boy on PlayStation 4, Mario Kart 8 on Switch and Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 on Xbox One all at the same time, but it can be done with Phillips’ 40-inch 4K curved monitor with MultiView. While I am still in the midst of…

Injustice 2‘s Mobile Game Is A Little Rough, But It’ll Do

While Injustice 2 doesn’t come out until May 16, the free-to-play mobile version is available in soft-launch on iTunes in the Philippines. The three-on-three fighter is far from perfect, but more than up to keeping players in the action during bathroom breaks. The mobile version of Injustice 2 is a free-to-play fighter in which teams…

Figure Skating Anime Yuri On Ice Is Very Realistic, Says Olympic Skater

It’s not just the skating that the show nails. According to former champ Johnny Weir, the show is filled with little details that shows Yuri On Ice’s creators really know their stuff. While in China late last year, Weir gave a somewhat in depth interview about the anime. He talks about how got into the…

Only 90s kids will remember Mega Man’s nightmarish mascot visage. From Blake J Harris’ book Console Wars, via VideoGameArt&Tidbits

Hot Cartridge Art For Nintendo Games That Do Not Exist

Oh hey, it’s time for Famicase, an annual exhibition held at Japanese indie games store Meteor which invites artists from around the world to design Famicom cartridges for titles that do not actually exist, but maybe should. You can see a range of highlights below. Note that the last one, a homage to Sega’s pissing…

Let’s Appreciate This Fine Video Game Hair

Johan Lithvall is a character artist at Starbreeze who specialises in hair. Which sounds crazy, until you take a moment to appreciate just how much hair a modern video game character has, and how good it looks blowing in the breeze. Lithvall got to work with Guerrilla on Horizon Zero Dawn, which means he’s one…