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Tips For 2023's Biggest Games And What To Watch Out For In Early 2024

Maybe you finally got Baldur’s Gate 3 this past week after pining for it for months and want some help tackling its tactical battles, or maybe you’re more interested in looking ahead to what early 2024 has to offer. Whatever the case, our roundup of tips and informative posts likely has something for you.

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Genre Bests, Personal Top 10 Lists And More: One Last Look Back At 2023

This week, we continued taking stock of 2023 with looks back at how the Switch and the Steam Deck fared, our picks for the cream of the crop among shooters and role-playing games, and more juicy commentary on everything the year had to offer.

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Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom And Everything Else That Blew Me Away: Ethan Gach’s Top 10 Games Of 2023

I love the idea of annual top 10 lists until it comes time to actually make one. Then my perpetually indecisive brain freaks out about whether the game I spent 100 hours playing was actually any good, the tension between an interesting game and a fun one, and the cries of all the games I never finished or even got…

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Your GOTY Picks, Favorite Holiday Gaming Gifts And More Of This Week's Opinions

As we round out 2023, we asked you to chime in with your own Game of the Year picks, as well as your own memories of wonderful gaming gifts from holiday seasons past. We also give you the lowdown on a PS5 controller that promises never to raise the spectre of drift. Venture forth for this and more, and we’ll see you…

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Christmas Miracles, Terrific Memes, And More Of The Week's Best Gaming News

From a secret Santa at Valve making one user’s day to a look at what how an upcoming Star Wars game could fulfill our Han Solo dreams, here are some of the best news stories from the past week.

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My New Year’s Gaming Resolution: Spend More Time Gaming On Consoles

I’m a fairly recent convert to PC gaming. In 2016, I spontaneously picked up a Steam Machine, Valve’s early attempt to fuse Steam with a more console-like experience. It was my first real introduction to the breadth of the Steam library and performance that outpaced my PS4. I was hooked, so I got my hands on a Dell…

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Chinese Chess Champ Stripped Of Title After Taking A Dump In A Bathtub

When you accomplish something big, like winning a major tournament, how do you celebrate? Maybe you jump around in excitement, salty rivulets streaming down your face in a rush of emotions. Maybe you pop a bottle of champagne and spray it around like an NFL player after the Super Bowl. Or, if you’re a 48-year-old…

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Pokémon’s 2023 Showed The Darker Side Of The Pikachu Machine

Pokémon’s profit margins probably don’t reflect it, but the franchise had a rough year in 2023. Without a new mainline role-playing game to dominate the series’ headlines, Pikachu and friends were, instead, shrouded in controversies throughout the past 12 months. Between Pokémon Go angering swaths of its community,…

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This PS5 Controller Will Never Drift, But It's Not All Good News

The design of the video game controller as we’ve known it has largely remained the same for the last 20 years: a d-pad, two analog sticks, four face buttons, and four shoulder buttons. It persists from the first PlayStation’s DualShock, all the way through to the modern PS5’s DualSense, as well as various Xbox and…

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The Best RPGs Of 2023

The last few years have been full of amazing RPGs, but 2023 took things to a whole new level. It was the year we got Final Fantasy XVI, Diablo 4, and Bethesda’s long awaited Starfield. It was also the year Baldur’s Gate 3 appeared and blew them all out of the water. Fans of stat-based combat, meandering side-quests,…

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Kotaku Readers Share Their Favorite Holiday Gaming Gifts

Earlier this week, I shared a story about my favorite Christmas gift. It was an Xbox 360 I had begged my late grandma for, which she bought alongside a copy of Gears of War and a second controller for my bestie and I. This gift would set the course for my life’s current trajectory, one neither I nor my family thought…

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Xbox Slammed For AI-Generated Art Promoting Indie Games

‘Tis the season to promote indie games with AI-generated junk, apparently. A Microsoft Twitter account recently posted low-effort, energy-intensive art promoting indie games on Xbox before later deleting it after getting roundly mocked by fans and developers alike.

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The Best Shooters Of 2023

2023 was yet another solid year for fans of shooty-shooty-bang-bang video games. While the Golden Era of shooters might be slowing down as the year wraps up, we still got some dang good ones, both in first-person and third-person variants, over these past 12 months.

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January's PS Plus Games Bring B-Movie Thrills, Plague-Ridden Chills

A new month is nearly here, as well as a new year, and that means updates to the PlayStation Plus catalog. January kicks off 2024 with three new games available for Premium, Extra, and Essential members to download starting on January 2, as well as some goodies if you happen to be a space ninja.

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Lord Of The Rings Moneyball Is the Perfect Meme To End 2023

I didn’t think it was still possible, but Twitter just served up my favorite crossover of the year: Lord of the Rings Moneyball. You see, you take the plot of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and then talk about it using Moneyball quotes. It’s simple, stupid, and so satisfying I can’t believe nobody thought of it before.

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The Baldur's Gate 3 Cats, Ranked

Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios’ award-winning role-playing game (which you’ll find ranked rather high on Kotaku’s Game of The Year list), is known for its incredibly immersive world, its fantastic characters, and the tough choices you’ll have to make during its 50 to 100 hours of gameplay. But it’s also garnered…

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From Chill Jusant To Punishing Lies Of P: Levi Winslow’s Top 10 Games Of 2023

2023 is nearly over, finally, but at least there were some great games to get us through it, right? This year was full of great releases, but marred by myriad layoffs across sectors (including the games industry), and larger, global issues that made it hard to find the light in the dark. But video games, with their…

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The State Of The Nintendo Switch In 2023

The Switch is going out with a bang. Ahead of the likely reveal of the Nintendo handheld hybrid’s successor next year, the aging hardware continued receiving an amazing slate of new games in 2023, including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, one of the best entries to date in the long-running fantasy adventure…

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The Steam Deck Crushed It In 2023

Valve introduced the world to the Steam Deck in 2022 and it was an instant hit with countless Steam users who jumped at the chance to take their games just about anywhere. As we close out 2023, the Steam Deck remains one of the best pieces of portable gaming hardware you can buy, both on the hardware and software side…

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2024 Is Starting Out With An Avalanche Of Video Games

2023 was a messy and horrible year that, despite itself, gave us some excellent games. You could even argue that this year gave us too many games! If you were looking for a break to catch up on what you missed, well, next year doesn’t seem to be offering much of a reprieve—at least not at the outset. Big titles like Fi…

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You Might Have Missed 2023's Coolest Shooter

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Good News, Tekken 8 Is Bringing Back The Series' Best Character

I know you all were worried and losing sleep about this, so I’m happy to be the one to bring you this very important news: Kuma the bear will be in Tekken 8.

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RoboCop To Spider-Man: Zack Zwiezen's Most Captivating Games Of 2023

Last year, I said 2022 was an odd year for games, with some feeling that it was largely devoid of great releases and others, myself included, finding them plentiful. But this year was even stranger, as it was better than ever while simultaneously being the worst in a long time.

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Say Hello To 2024 With January’s Game Releases

Happy New Year! Well, almost. 2023 will soon be behind us, and that means a whole calendar year of new releases to look forward to lies ahead. January might arrive with a brisk selection of titles, but it’s a pretty sweet way to kick off 2024.

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User Needed One More Steam Point To Hit 69,000 And Valve Delivered

A Steam user on Christmas Eve had a question: How do you earn just one measly little Steam Point? They were at 68,999 points and wanted to hit 69,000 because, you know, it’s a nice number and all that. However, because of how Steam Points are earned, there seemed no simple way to get that one measly point. But then a…

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28 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing Starfield

Starfield is finally here and it is big, complex, and often overwhelming. There’s a lot of stuff in this game and it’s easy to get lost trying to do it all and see everything the game has to offer. So to help you avoid getting lost in space, we’ve collected over two dozen tips and tricks to help you get started in…

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The 17 Best Games For Sony's PlayStation 5

Now that we’ve reached the end of 2023, we can comfortably say that Sony has given the PlayStation 5 a solid three years of game releases. That’s good news if you’re new to the console, or if you’re just wondering about which games to pick up to fill out your PS5 library. Whatever the case, we’re here to help with our…

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19 Things We Wish We Knew About Spider-Man 2 Before We Started

After years of hype and numerous teasers, Spider-Man 2 is finally here. And lucky for all of us, it’s really good! If you are just hopping into the game now and want some useful tips, we have some! These 19 tips and tricks should help make saving NYC as either Miles Morales or Peter Parker just a bit easier.

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Alan Wake 2, Zelda: TotK, And More Creative Triumphs: Carolyn Petit’s Top Games Of 2023

To some, 2023 was one of the best years for video games in a long time. It didn’t quite land that way for me, but that’s okay. Even if I don’t rank the likes of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Baldur’s Gate 3 among the year’s best, I still admire the impulse they exhibit to try something fresh and new, or to make the…

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A Parent’s Guide to Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Good parenting is a lot like being a solid player two. You want to be supportive, curious, and competent. You’re there to have a good time, and understand going with the flow is key to harmony. This can be a challenge with kids and video games when you’re actually, literally, player two, especially if you’re a gamer…

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