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At first, things weren’t going so well with EA and Star Wars: A decade of exclusivity seemed destined to be known as the Horsemen of the Loot Boxalypse. But in 2019, Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order saved the day just before the fade to credits. The deal between the two is pretty much over, but Respawn’s moment…
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Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku’s weekly Pokémon column in which we dive deep to explore notable characters, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from throughout the Pokémon franchise. This week, we’re going to attempt to rank all the starters from Red and Blue to Scarlet and Violet.
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Because Final Fantasy XIV has somehow evolved into one of the biggest video games on the planet, Square Enix has decided to grab some of its older content out of the back of the fridge, reheat it in the microwave for a bit and serve it up to a whole new audience of players who probably weren’t around when it was first…
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Ryuichi Sakamoto, the famed Japanese musician and composer, has died at the age of 71.
Kotaku
April Fool’s Day has finally come to add a little bit more chaos to the week, as jokes and lies fly around unrestricted. But we understand what April 1 is all about—a chance for developers to sneak in some humor in our favorite games. These April Fools’ jokes are getting a little more advanced and ambitious year by…
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It’s almost poetic that, in a genre built on many people fighting to stay alive until just a few remain, so many battle royale games have launched, flopped, and died over the last few years. Not every new battle royale can find the same success as Warzone or PUBG. In fact, most will be lucky to survive at all. And…
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No two battle royale matches are alike. Clever, spontaneous tactics springing from the generative collision of varying skill levels, map layout, and randomized items, weapons, and vehicles can lead to theatrical levels of epicness and hilarity—often both at the same time. So it’s only fitting during Kotaku’s…
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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a weird phase right now, and no, I don’t mean Phase Five which began with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Over just a few short days, it became clear that the shared movie universe is undergoing a lot of change, and not for the best reasons. From actors to workers and even top…
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Kotaku
We’ve known since January 2023 that Square Enix’s failed live-service superhero RPG Marvel’s Avengers would have its life support plug pulled on September 30. At that time, developer Crystal Dynamics announced that all cosmetics “will be made available to all players for free” once the game’s final update rolls…
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Saturday is April Fool’s Day. So, as usual, companies are out here releasing joke trailers and “funny” tweets. But then you have Sega, who just published a brand new, completely free, actually real, murder mystery game on Steam that is all about someone killing Sonic the Hedgehog. That’s how you do April Fool’s,…
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I usually think “Soulslike” is a loaded term; FromSoftware’s legendarily grim and difficult 2011 role-playing game Dark Souls inspired a crowd of similarly grim, difficult games, but I don’t think any of those imitators can compare to the regal original. Except, maybe, FromSoftware’s other games and Souls sequels.…
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Overwatch has its One Punch Man skins. Warzone has playable Snoop Dogg. Fortnite has cosmetics for every celeb and IP imaginable, from The Mandalorian to Ariana Grande. But Apex Legends has something none of those other games have: style.
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Overwatch 2 players are very particular about balance and fairness and their perception of both those things. So when I looked at these new patch notes and started skimming them, I was so concerned with seeing what changes were being made that I missed the “OVERWATCH 2 WIP VERY SERIOUS PATCH NOTES – DRAFT – DO NOT…
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The director of Xbox’s indie division would like you to believe that the Game Pass is not ‘disruptive’ to the gaming ecosystem despite the company’s ambitions for massive PC growth. These comments were made in response to people wondering whether the popular subscription service would fundamentally change how gamers…
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2022 was apparently a really good year for Cyberpunk 2077 and the company that made it. After one of the most disastrous blockbuster launches in recent history, the open-world sci-fi RPG went on to make even more money last year than the one previous, signaling a staggering turnaround for a franchise that initially…
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John Wick star Keanu Reeves is universally regarded as a pretty cool guy. Maybe it’s his infectious giggle, his flowing locks, or his handling of a litter of golden retriever puppies. His roles as a stoic hitman in John Wick, a stoic supernatural detective in Constantine, or a loveable asshole in Cyberpunk 2077 don’t…
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Now that Diablo IV’s beta is over, Blizzard has shared some interesting stats about the loot-grinding RPG and the way folks played it. Some of it is expected, like the fact that The Butcher killed over one million people while Ashava the Pestilent murked some 10 million others. But alongside revealing that y’all put…
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Battle royales have managed to pull off an unlikely scenario. The genre has remained relevant for players, streamers, and competitive-level play. And it’s not just one game: The genre currently has multiple, big-budget competitors existing alongside each other with relatively healthy player counts. But there are…
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Pokémon Go has undergone a lot of changes over the past seven years, but the inclusion of Remote Raids and Remote Raid Passes have made the mobile game easier for players to participate without actually leaving their homes. However, it doesn’t sound like developer Niantic is thrilled about that. As such, it announced…
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Kotaku
More new-gen exclusives are slowly starting to trickle out onto the PlayStation 5 and developers are now trying harder than ever to explain why they needed to ditch the PS4, and why it’s worth making a game a console exclusive. Previously it was Guerrilla Games with Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC which…
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Most of the time, horror is ugly. Whether they’re chunky zombies in Dead Island 2 or grotesque titans in Attack on Titan, the objects of our attention are intrinsically repulsive to us. Hell’s Paradise tries a very different approach. The manga, which ran from 2018-2021, juxtaposes beauty with ugliness, and delicate…
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One of the biggest gripes I’ve heard about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom regards Nintendo’s decision to revisit the same location, especially given the limitations of the Switch. The fear is that we’re going to get a very incremental follow-up to one of the best games of all time. But the fact that it’s…
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For a long time, the word “Nintendo” was synonymous with gaming, and Nintendo has always been shorthand for Mario. The Japanese console mainstay has published dozens of platformers starring the overall-loving plumber since his original debut in 1981’s Donkey Kong, and we’re here to tell you which ones are the worst…
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For such a momentous period in human history, the First World War has been relatively under-served by video games. Mostly because the defining theatre of the conflict—the nightmarish trench warfare of the Western Front—is almost impossible to recreate in the medium.
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E3 is dead. Again. Probably for good this time, given the circumstances. A lot of people have a lot of feelings—a weird thing for regular folks to have, since this was an industry trade show—but one thing we should be remembering through all the tributes and dunks is that E3 didn’t mismanage its way into oblivion. Its…
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As you may have heard, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been culture-war feuding with one of Florida’s more famous corporate tenants, The Walt Disney Company. Earlier this year, DeSantis directed the state to take over control of the special district where Disney World is located. As such, Republicans appointed a new…
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Before E3, everyone gets excited for the big new announcements. But after E3, all anyone remembers—and cherishes—are the kind of screw-ups, misfires and awkward heroism you can only get when corporate executives and video game developers have to get on stage and act like salespeople in front of millions.
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E3 2023 has been canceled, as first reported by IGN. This follows multiple video game publishers and companies pulling out of the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo over the last few weeks.