Kotaku
71-year-old Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano—best known in gaming circles for the Final Fantasy concept art he’s made for developer Square Enix since 1987—is having a great weekend. Before I sit down with him at New York’s Japan Society, which was screening his film collaboration Angel’s Egg (1985) that night, he had…
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Yesterday, the cross-platform game engine company Unity announced a controversial new Runtime Fee, which would charge developers per installation for games built with the Unity engine after those games reached a certain threshold. Everyone disliked that, and Unity’s stock prices took a pretty significant dip shortly…
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Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Teal Mask DLC may not fix all the performance issues the games have had since they launched in November 2022, but there is one thing it dramatically overhauls: the game’s godawful photo mode.
Kotaku
If you’re just starting out in Starfield, chances are you’ll come across a vessel you can’t pilot for one reason or another. Maybe it’s a ship class outside of your skill set or maybe it has parts you can’t take advantage of due to a lack of training or maybe you’re just struggling to grasp the flight mechanics.…
Kotaku
On September 12, Apple held an event showing off its entire line of iPhone 15 devices, including the iPhone 15 Pro, which features a USB-C port (thanks, Europe) and the ability to run modern AAA games like Death Stranding and the remake of Resident Evil 4. Apple predictably touted the news as the “next generation of…
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Starfield’s first update is here and its... pretty small and not very exciting. However, Bethesda has confirmed that some highly desired features and improvements, including DLSS support, will be added to the RPG via future updates.
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The full list of 36 games for Xbox Live Gold’s replacement, Game Pass Core, has been revealed a day ahead of its launch. And they’re...they’re really good.
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Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s first DLC, The Teal Mask, is finally out, and it takes the player and all their pocket monsters on an exchange student program to the land of Kitakami. In this wondrous land they’ll find new Pokémon to catch, new friends to make, and, as fans have discovered, restrooms that are…
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Square Enix is in a bit of a rough spot following financial setbacks and rocky game releases. While some titles like Final Fantasy XIV have delivered consistent quality and remained popular with fans, other entries from the series as well as newer games from the publisher have shipped in questionable states and…
Kotaku
Starfield is a massive game. With hundreds of planets and solar systems to probe, Bethesda’s spacefaring RPG tasks you with traveling from galaxy to galaxy. Unfortunately, for all the space exploration the game has you doing, doing this by fast traveling amounts to a series of loading screens that trivializes…
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The galaxy is a big place in Starfield. With an epic main quest, tons of side-quests, and so many other activities, it’s easy to overlook the smaller, environmental storytelling moments.
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Cyberpunk 2077's big, free 2.0 update and the paid Phantom Liberty expansion are around the corner. To prepare for this coming one-two punch, developer CD Projekt Red is suggesting you check your PC’s specifications ahead of time.
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Unity, the cross-platform game engine that powers games like Rust, Hollow Knight, and Pokémon Go, has introduced a new, controversial fee for developers, set to take effect next year. Indie developers quickly responded to the announcement, with many suggesting the costs of this policy would kill smaller games, while…
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Starfield launched on September 6, but was actually playable for some people on September 1. How did those folks get to play the game early? They paid extra for special editions that—along with other little trinkets and doodads—let them download and play Bethesda’s big RPG nearly a week before its “official” launch.…
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Writer Walter Isaacson spent two years following Twitter overlord Elon Musk as he worked on his biography Elon Musk, which released September 12. That thorough work paid off—readers can sleep easy knowing that one of the richest men in the world might be into Overwatch roleplay.
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Baldur’s Gate 3 can be overwhelming in its options, and that extends to its various character builds, ability loadouts, and, yes, spells. They’re so numerous, in fact, that just narrowing them down to the very best for this list was a challenge, and I’m sure plenty of people will read these selections and have…
Kotaku
Starfield lets you take the controls of massive starships to both cruise the cosmos and blast hostile spacefarers into smithereens. It also has a pretty snappy, powerful ship-building feature, so you can come up with your own ship designs or, if you’re so inclined, recreate some of science fiction’s most legendary…
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Lies of P, the upcoming Bloodborne-inspired action-RPG Soulslike based around the story of Pinocchio, featured an “All Cops Are Bastards” sign at one point. But if you go looking for it in the final game when it launches on September 19, you might come up empty-handed because the text was cut.
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Attack on Titan, arguably the shonen anime of the decade by means of its exceptionally strong start back in 2013 and its significantly stretched-out final season, finally has a release date for its final episode.
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Previews for Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the thirteenth game in the Assassin’s Creed series and first since 2020’s Valhalla, released early on September 12, and they suggest a long-awaited return to the historical fiction series’ roots. That could come as good news—in the 16 years since the first Assassin’s Creed came…
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It’s rare that a video game map will make me excited. Hell, it’s rare that I even notice them, as most maps are serviceable and little more. So before playing a few hours of Ubisoft’s open-world racing game, The Crew Motorfest, I didn’t expect to be blown away by its in-game map. And yet, I was. It might be the best…
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Recent Forza games have been trailblazers for upping the ante when it comes to accessibility. 2021's Forza Horizon 5 came with in-game sign language for cinematics, and a time-slowing option for those with slower reaction times. Incredible stuff. This October’s Forza Motorsport is aiming to push the boundaries even…
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Steam has proclaimed Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 and 2K Sports’ NBA 2K24 the first and second worst games of the year, respectively. As of September 12, 165,573 of Overwatch’s 183,780 total Steam reviews are negative, and 3,135 of 3,523 reviews for NBA 2K24 are also negative. Since 2K24 only released on September 8, it’s…
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Scrolls are some of the most useful items you can find in your Baldur’s Gate 3 adventure, letting your characters expend them to cast spells they may not otherwise know. Because of this, they can really come in handy in a pinch, when you realize you have a scroll for a fire-based spell and your enemies are…
Kotaku
A random bartender on a small back-world planet led to one of my favorite side-quests in Starfield, Bethesda’s latest and biggest open-world RPG. Just be prepared for some gravity issues.
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Ubisoft’s upcoming Call of Duty-like first-person online shooter, XDefiant, doesn’t have a release date yet, and now we know why. According to Ubisoft, the free-to-play arena FPS failed an important first-party certification test in August, delaying the entire launch process.
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Demon Slayer, the mega-popular shonen anime series about a group of samurai…slaying demons, is getting a new video game on the Nintendo Switch. But this one isn’t a typical anime fighting game, but a Mario Party-esque board game instead.
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Geeta, the League Champ from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet was a bit of a let down. Her design is a serve and her background plot (of possibly being a terrible boss all the Paldea gym leaders resent) is actually pretty compelling, but her actual team and battle strategy is so anticlimactic she’s often tagged as one of…
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In August, Toyota was forced to shut down over a dozen auto plants in Japan due to unspecified computer problems. Some theorized it was a cyberattack of some kind, but Toyota denied this and has now revealed what actually happened: Its computers ran out of disk space and everything broke.
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Earlier this year, Twitch streamer and psychology researcher Perrikaryal used her electroencephalogram (EEG) device (which records the brain’s electrical activity, but also has telekinetic research history) to beat Elden Ring, “using [her] mind for everything but movement.” Now she’s taking things even further, gunning…