Kotaku
Are you feeling a bit tired of all the big games this year or all the online service games that seemingly never end? Looking for something weird, fun, and only about an hour long? Well, then stop reading this (Editor’s note: Don’t do that.) and go play the recently released Chop Goblins, one of the year’s coolest…
Kotaku
Warzone 2.0’s been out for a little while now, but not everyone’s been happy with some of the changes the battle royale received in its latest iteration. When, where, and how you access loadouts saw one such unpopular change. Raven Software, however, has recently announced that Buy Stations will once again grant you…
Kotaku
Pokémon saved the Switch in 2022, which was also the year that the console officially started to feel old.
Kotaku
Racing to the last possible helicopter to flee an increasingly radiated map, my heart is pounding. I know the chopper is going to sit there for nearly two minutes, and here I am running, alone and vulnerable. I sped halfway across the map in a truck to outrun the radiation and must now defend my position to escape. I…
Kotaku
With over 400 games included, Xbox Game Pass continues to be one of the best deals in gaming. Defining the industry, this year Game Pass pushed Sony to finally capitulate and relaunch PlayStation Now as a competitive service, yet one that still feels a few steps behind. For $10 a month, Game Pass gives you access to a…
Kotaku
Sony’s new PS5 controller, the wireless DualSense Edge, looks normal enough. It has the right number of buttons and enough space to rest your hands on its boomerang-shaped plastic. But its extreme customization presumably explains why it costs $200, almost three times the base price for the standard PS5 controller. A…
Kotaku
Activision Blizzard president and Chief Operating Officer Daniel Alegre is leaving the company to become CEO of blockchain company Yuga Labs, which owns famous ugly NFTs like Bored Ape and CryptoPunks. Alegre, who was named in a February lawsuit alleging Activision Blizzard misled the SEC about its contested Microsoft…
Kotaku
InSight—or, less elegantly, the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission—is a robot that NASA’s JPL (with help from the European Space Agency) sent to Mars back in 2018.
Kotaku
John Carmack, legendary game designer, rocket guy and VR enthusiast, has announced that he is leaving both Meta/Facebook, and the virtual reality business itself, behind after a decade as one of its most prominent champions.
Kotaku
We have this on record, I know, but in case anyone needs reminding: Dark Forces is the best Star Wars video game ever made. It might not be the best video game made using the Star Wars license, but it is the most Star Warsy. So it is very cool seeing the game given a fresh coat of paint thanks to the work of a…
Kotaku
Wacky shooter High On Life, only a week after its initial release on PC and Xbox Game Pass, is currently the most popular game on the service, beating out big-name Xbox titles and long-running games like Minecraft. It’s a sign the shooter has a lot of fans, but also an indication of just how sparse Xbox’s big,…
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Kotaku
Video game merch is rarely cool. You’d be hard-pressed to find wearable merch worthy of any place other than the gym, or household items you could display in a mid-century modern living room. It’s also rarely inspired or unique—my cabinet is full of slightly chipped Call of Duty coffee mugs, my storage bin overflowing…
Kotaku
I only consider myself a “gamer” in a literal sense—I play video games every year, but only a modest handful of those already familiar to me, like my darling Bloodborneor Super Smash Bros. I started working at Kotaku this year, though, and by demand, 2022 became my most “gamer” year ever, with lots of new games…
Kotaku
Today, Japanese video game developer Kojima Productions celebrated its seventh anniversary and gave everyone workspace envy by showing off what its new game studio looks like. And boy howdy, this studio is just as over the top as you’d expect, given that its repertoire includes a video game with a 31-minute cutscene.
Kotaku
In a recent interview, The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin said that the original game contained the “greatest story ever told” in the history of video games. Not only is this statement silly, but it also continues this weird pattern of people trying to rewrite history to make Naughty Dog’s original PS3 adventure…
Kotaku
For a game that’s still technically in beta, Call of Duty’s DMZ sure has been one hell of a fun experience. DMZ’s latest twist concerns a new playable area selectable when loading into DMZ—but you’ll need a keycard to get in. You can find keycards for this new area throughout Al Mazrah. So, want one? Worry not: This…
Kotaku
Video games are very hard to make, take years to finish, and require many people to work together to create them. As a result, video games are incredibly complex and more prone to delays than movies, books, or TV shows. So just because a game is set to come out in 2023 doesn’t mean it actually will…
Kotaku
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Charizard tera raid event has concluded, and Game Freak has already announced what’s next: Cinderace. The Galar fire-type starter is not typically available in these games, and as such, will only be available through this raid. If the Charizard raid is any indication, it’ll be a tough…
Kotaku
The Witcher 3’s next-gen upgrade has been delightful…when the game works. While there haven’t been any huge issues on Xbox Series X/S and PS5, PC is another story. CD Projekt Red now says a new hotfix released on Monday should help reduce at least some of the issues players have encountered with frame rate stuttering…
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Marvel Snap may only be two months old, but it has started with a bang. The card-based battler from the mind behind Hearthstone has very quickly become part of the zeitgeist, gathered and enormous army of players, and with it, all the feedback in the universe. In response to all this, developer Second Dinner has laid…
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Epic Games will pay a whopping $520 million combined settlement after a Federal Trade Commission investigation found it invaded children’s privacy and tricked some players into buying stuff in Fortnite that they didn’t want. The FTC announced on Monday that it’s the largest penalty ever assessed in the history of the…
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Back in August 2021, Riot Games—the developers of League of Legends—signed a sponsorship deal worth tens of millions of dollars with cryptocurrency exchange FTX. You know, the exchange that is now bankrupt, with its founder arrested and facing serious fraud and money laundering charges.
Kotaku
Like a lot of other people around the world, streamer xQc put a bet on the World Cup final earlier tonight. Unlike a lot of other people, however, he claims he threw down half a million dollars, then publicly bragged about it before kick-off.
Kotaku
For most players, Pokémon games are a pretty straightforward affair of attacking enemies’ weaknesses and scoring that sweet one-shot. But Pokémon can become incredibly overwhelming once you start playing competitively. What’s an IV? What’s an EV, if not the cute brown fox who can evolve into a bunch of other, more…
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Blizzard is now taking pre-orders on a large, nearly $100 special Diablo IV collector’s box which includes many things. But it doesn’t include the game. And while Blizzard isn’t trying to trick people into accidentally buying this game-free box, it still seems very odd that there’s not even an option to get the game…
Kotaku
2022 wasn’t just the year that I started here at Kotaku, or the year that I accidentally went viral for daring to ask rich guys to dress nice at awards shows—it was also the year that I forced myself to stretch outside of my comfort zone.
Kotaku
2022 was the year that Genshin Impact’s developer rebranded to HoYoverse to convey its ambitions for expanding its offerings to global audiences. It was also the year when players left the Japan-inspired region behind in order to explore Sumeru—a nation based on Southwest Asia, South Asia, and North Africa (SWANA).
Kotaku
Every year there’s at least one game that’ll get me emotional enough to the point that I start tearing up. For me, this year, it’s Aka, a game about recovering from past violence and trauma. It plays out in a lite farming sim featuring cute characters, each of whom have a problem to solve as you try to build a life of…
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