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Exclusive: Blasphemous 2 Devs On The Sequel Being A 'More Pure Metroidvania'
KotakuKotakuNicki Minaj Is Coming To Call Of Duty, Barbs Stay Winning
After weeks of rumors, Call of Duty has announced that it’s adding a Nicki Minaj operator to Warzone and Modern Warfare II. Nicki will join Snoop Dogg (who first became a playable Call of Duty character last year) and 21 Savage as part of an in-game celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. The operators will be…
Kotaku‘Holy Grail’ Funko Pop Sells For Controversial $210K
Back in 2016, the Funko company gave away just a handful of Golden Ticket Funko Pop 2-Packs, which contained gilded figures of Willy Wonka and an Oompa Loompa, at its annual San Diego Comic-Con event. In July, one of them sold for a whopping $210,000, over double what the owner had purchased it for just a year…
KotakuTwitch Star xQc Could Be Replaced By His Own AI
If you scroll toward the bottom of Twitch’s homepage, you’ll see a curious carousel: “Probably Artificial, Hopefully Intelligent,” a subsection of livestreams dedicated to and powered by AI. It’s weird, as you’d expect, but tucked in there is something weirder. There’s an AI version of megastar Félix“xQc” Lengyel.…
Kotaku8 Games To Play After Final Fantasy XVI
So you’ve taken the fight all the way to Ultima after liberating Bearers and smashing crystals to shiny smithereens (on your own terms, no less). Now you’re in search of a fitting follow-up experience. But with so many fantasy RPGs out there, it can be tough to know which may make a worthy successor to the saga of…
KotakuDisney Kills An Iconic Dragon After Fire, Show Delayed Until 2024
Disneyland Park’s popular Fantasmic! special effects show is delayed until 2024 following an April incident where its Maleficent dragon animatronic caught on fire. The Snow White animatronic will not return when the show resumes next spring, though Fantasmic! will continue to prominently feature a battle between…
KotakuNew Mickey Mouse Platformer Is A Great Metroidvania That Ditches Combat
Disney Illusion Island isn’t technically a Mickey Mouse solo adventure, as it features Goofy, Donald Duck, and Minnie Mouse, too. But after nearly a decade without a proper Mickey Mouse platformer in the vein of popular games like Castle of Illusion or Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, we’ve finally received the next…
KotakuDouble Dragon Roguelite Is A Messy Blast From The Past
From the outside, Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons looks like everything I’d want from a retro revival of the classic arcade beat-em up series. It’s a 2D side-scroller that remixes the linear progression with roguelite elements and packages the whole thing with an appealing pixel art presentation. Too bad it…
KotakuNetflix's Next Castlevania Anime Promises A Bloody Good Time
On Thursday, Netflix unveiled a brand-spanking-new trailer for its upcoming Castlevania spin-off series, Castlevania: Nocturne.
KotakuNickelodeon's Smash Bros-Like Gets Sequel With New Characters, Story Mode
SpongeBob SquarePants, Garfield, and April O’Neil are ready to fight each other and other famous cartoon characters once more in the newly announced sequel, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2. It launches in late 2023.
KotakuOur Favorite Cosplay From Anime Expo 2023
Anime Expo 2023 is the largest anime convention in North America, which means you can always expect some top-tier cosplay to come out of that weekend. This year’s Anime Expo took place from July 1 to July 4, and there was an impressive collection of looks strutting around the Los Angeles Convention Center. Sure, this…
KotakuNew Elden Ring Patch Makes Backstabs More Powerful
Elden Ring developer FromSoftware issued an update for the open-world role-playing game on July 27, making a few important adjustments to its PvP meta, along with some more general balance changes. On Twitter, FromSoftware noted that players should “apply this patch to continue playing Elden Ring online.”
KotakuBarbie Games Changed My Life, Now They’re Gone Forever
I didn’t consider myself a serious “gamer” until I started playing Barbie makeup games on my parents’ desktop in 2003. I knew in my growing soul that I was destined to play them because their host sites, including Flash game candy store GirlsGoGames and the official Barbie site EverythingGirl, had “girl” in their…
KotakuTwo Classic Zelda Blockbusters Just Dropped For Switch
What a treat! It’s not the Link’s Awakening Remake-style makeover some (read: me) were hoping for, but Nintendo just threw two all-time great Zelda games up on its Switch Online subscription service. The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages are available to play starting July 27, and the timing…
KotakuPlay This Excellent Cyberpunk Action-RPG Before It Leaves Game Pass
Game Pass is losing a big one this month. 2021’s The Ascent, a gritty top-down action-RPG about investigating the mysterious disappearance of a megacorporation in a futuristic dystopia, is finally leaving Microsoft’s Netflix-like subscription service at the end of July. You should give it a try before it does.
KotakuThe 26 Best Steam Deck Games
Steam Deck, Valve’s mega-powerful mini-PC, only arrived last year, and while there are many reasons to check out one of the most exciting pieces of gaming hardware available today, the amount of great, hassle-free games available on the device is proof enough of its success.
KotakuDeath Stranding Players Discover Troy Baker Can Bite Your Freaking Ear Off
A Death Stranding player just discovered that if you don’t put up enough of a fight in its climactic boss battle, antagonist Higgs will pull a Mike Tyson and bite your character’s ear off. It’s not just an attack animation, either. Once bitten, a good chunk of Sam’s ear is gone for good.
KotakuLeaked: All 15 McDonald's Pokémon Cards That Will Immediately Sell Out In 2023
While not (yet) officially announced, new leaks indicate that McDonald’s is once again teaming up with The PokémonCompany to offer fans a fresh collection of 15 Pokémon cards to snatch up and flip on eBay for hundreds of dollars, or enjoy quietly at home. But probably eBay.
KotakuBaldur's Gate 3 Devs Hired Intimacy Coordinators To Help With Its Sex Scenes
In a recent interview with the BBC, an actor in the upcoming fantasy role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 revealed that developer Larian Studios used intimacy coordinators to help actors feel safe and comfortable when depicting the game’s more intimate moments.
KotakuNew Xbox Dashboard Looks Great, Still Has Too Many Ads
Microsoft’s long-awaited dashboard redesign for the Xbox Series X/S is finally rolling out for everyone starting today. It’s a welcome update that lets players highlight their favorite game art while also opening more options to get around the Xbox home menus more quickly. If only it didn’t still include so many Game…
KotakuResident Evil 4 Plus Doom Equals…2D Side-Scroller?
Sometimes a game is so good that it never dies, it just evolves and adapts with time. Such is the case of Resident Evil 4, a game that continues to be remade, modded, remastered, and tweaked by Capcom and fans alike. The latest stab at reinventing the classic horror game turns it into a 2D side-scroller that looks…
KotakuStar Wars Open-World Game Won’t Be An 'Unfinishable' 300-Hour RPG, Devs Say
You might shudder at the thought of one Star Wars: Outlaws planet being about the size of two Assassin’s Creed Odyssey zones, but you don’t have to worry about it being some bloated RPG you’ll never finish, the devs told IGN.
KotakuThe 11 Best Futurama Episodes Of All Time
Good news, everyone! Futuramais back (again), with new episodes currently airing on Hulu every Monday. I’m very happy to have more Zoidberg in my life. And the other characters, too, I guess. But as we find ourselves in this strange new world of “More Futurama Episodes,” let’s figure out the best episodes of the…
KotakuFinal Fantasy XVI Devs Are So Over The Trolls
Final Fantasy XVI is the latest game to spark an intense discourse, from debates around difficulty to whether it’s even a true Final Fantasy game. And producer Naoki Yoshida has grown absolutely tired of the negativity.
KotakuPokémon Scarlet And Violet Giving Rare Charizard Away For Free
The Pokémon Company is giving all Pokémon Scarlet and Violetplayers a formidable Dark–Tera Type Charizard in honor of card expansion pack Scarlet & Violet—Obsidian Flames’ release on August 11.
KotakuFortnite’s Futurama Crossover Is Perfect Now That We’ve Seen It In Action
Good news, everyone! We’ve got our first look at what Futurama characters actually look like in Fortnite now that the collab has gone live in the battle royale shooter. Fry, Bender, and Leela are now available in the Item Shop as playable outfits. There are also some neat variants on these outfits, a new gun, and…
KotakuThe Next Big Wave Of Video Game Layoffs Is Here [Update]
Despite a booming job market overall, 2023 kicked off with the biggest tech companies laying off thousands of employees. Cuts at Microsoft hit Halo Infinite devs at 343 Industries and other game teams across the company, including at Bethesda. Months later, layoffs are continuing across other pockets of the video game…
KotakuAssassin’s Creed Publisher Axes Sequel To BotW-Like That Was Pretty Good
The 2020 action-adventure game Immortals Fenyx Risingwon’t be getting a sequel after all. Drawing clear inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the game seemed like the start of a fresh new franchise for Ubisoft, a company that’s struggled to ship new original hits. But a sequel has now been…
KotakuDiablo IV: How To Pick Your New Character
If you’re jumping into Diablo IV for the very first time, you may not know which class to start with. And since each season in Diablo IV requires you to make a new character, if this isn’t your first rodeo you might want to check out a class you haven’t played before.
KotakuYou Can Be An Extreme Storm Chaser In This Game
Every time I watch Twister, Jan de Bont’s 1996 film about a ragtag group of storm chasers trying to figure out how to better predict tornadoes, I think to myself: “Boy, do I wanna do that.”