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As The Servers Shut Down, The Day Before Is No More

Controversial, PC-only shooter The Day Before is officially dead, barely a month and a half after its launch. Steam’s much-hyped zombie game, which saw developer Fntastic shutter its doors almost immediately after release, is now totally unplayable. For a few weeks following its disastrous debut, it existed in a state…

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After Playing Palworld For 6 Hours I Still Haven't Shot A Pokémon With A Gun

Over the weekend, I downloaded Palworld on my PC. I was excited. After all the weird trailers and screenshots showing Pokémon-like creatures using assault rifles or being shot with handguns, I was ready to earn official Xbox achievements as I killed Pokémon facsimiles using modern guns. It was hunting time. And then,…

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CD Projekt Red Is Ramping Up For The Witcher 4, Investigating AI

The Witcher 4 hasn’t entered the production stage at CD Projekt Red yet, but the developer is getting ready to start work on the highly anticipated follow-up to 2015’s Witcher 3. By the middle of 2024, the Polish studio hopes to have 400 people working on the game. And according to new co-CEO Adam Badowski, not a…

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New Deal Offers 8 Great Shooters For Just $10

A new deal letting you create your own bundle of shooters, with options that include new classics like Dusk or older hits like Doom, is the best way to instantly fill your Steam library with some of the best FPS games ever made for just $10 or less.

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British Army Planned To Use Fortnite In Recruitment Campaign [Update]

Join us in trying to think of something more gross than a nation’s army using a children’s video game as a recruitment tool. That was the plan of the British Army, who thought it might be rather jolly to recruit some influencers to play Fortnite, to promote joining their ranks. However, it looks like they’ve since…

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Palworld Devs Aren’t Worried About A Nintendo Lawsuit

We’re about done with the first month of the year, and 2024’s biggest game is already here in the form of Palworld. The colloquially named “Pokémon with guns” open-world survival crafting title is dominating both Steam and Twitch in spite of the controversy it’s courted, particularly around similarities in monster…

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Modders Have Already Put Actual Pokémon In Palworld

Even before it entered Early Access on January 19, Pocketpair’s monster-collecting survival game Palworld was widely being referred to as “Pokémon With Guns.” But mere days after launch, modders have already taken steps to really drive the comparison home by adding actual Pokémon characters to the mix.

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Eight Years Later, Final Fantasy's Best Ending Still Hits Hard

Brotherhood is a theme so overt in Final Fantasy XV that it’s the title of the game’s five-episode prequel anime. An outlier in a series that usually leverages expansive and diverse casts, FF15 instead focuses entirely on a road trip with four lads. Tehy spend most of their time cruising around in a convertible,…

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Palworld, Hogwarts Legacy, And More Of The Week's Biggest Gaming News

Lots going on this week! The Xbox Developer Direct event on January 18 gave us a sneak peek at upcoming games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Obsidian’s RPG Avowed. Ubisoft managed to put their foot in it by sharing an unpopular take on subscription services, and Hogwarts Legacy broke a longstanding…

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FF7 Rebirth, TLOU 2, And More Of The Week's Essential Game Tips

Practice your headshots. The Last of Us Part II is back, and this time it’s remastered. The spiffed-up version dropping on January 19 also includes a wholly new gameplay mode called No Return, if you’re looking to wile away the hours in Naughty Dog’s combat sandbox. And if you’re as excited about Final Fantasy VII…

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Indiana Jones, TLOU 2, And The Week's Hottest Gaming Takes

After a couple sleepy weeks, the gaming hype train of 2024 is finally moving at full steam. We saw the first major showcase of the year with Xbox’s Developer Direct, dug into The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and oogled MachineGames flamin’ hot digital dupe of ‘80s Harrison Ford. These are the week’s most important…

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9 Tips To Bend Time And Survive Death In Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown

Ubisoft Montpellier’s 2.5D side-scrolling Metroidvania Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is finally out on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s a long, challenging action-platforming game with lots of tough bosses and intricate puzzles. Here are a handful of essential tips to make…

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AI Video Game Characters Seem As Soulless As You'd Expect

Think of your favorite video game character. Picture them in your head, remember their stories and the actors’ performances that made them stick with you long after you put the controller down. Maybe you’re thinking of Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3, whose actor Neil Newbon recently won the Best Performance award at…

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19 Days Into 2024 And 3,400+ Video Game Layoffs Have Been Announced

Within the last few years, video game industry layoffs have unfortunately become more commonplace. In 2023, we saw near-weekly layoffs across the entire industry. When the dust had settled, at least 6,000 jobs across publishers, developers, and other video game-related companies had happened. Sadly, it appears 2024…

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All The Starfield Quests Fixed In The First Beta Update

After a brief snag that caused a delay, Starfield’s first beta update is finally here. Containing more than 100 fixes, there’s a lot to test drive in this first patch.

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Everything We Know About Xbox’s Big Indiana Jones Game

First announced in 2021, Bethesda and Xbox’s Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is shaping up to be the game Indy fans (myself included) have long wanted. Sure, Uncharted and modern Tomb Raider games served up plenty of pulpy video game adventures, but finally, the world is getting the big-budget, AAA Indiana Jones…

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The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: December 2023 Edition

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Here's Why Palworld Limits Multiplayer Numbers On Xbox

Palworld, Pocketpair’s “Pokémon With Guns” survival game, is popping off after entering Early Access today, January 19. Shortly after launch, it boasted 300,000 concurrent players on Steam, but for those playing the game through Xbox Game Pass on PC or console, there are some limitations to its multiplayer features.…

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Kotaku’s Weekend Guide: 5 Games To Escape The Cold

This past week, January has been happy to give those of us who live in cold-weather-prone areas a reason to look forward to spring. One look at how things are outside and I am ready to make plans to move to warmer climates (despite being from the east coast, I can’t tolerate anything under 35 degrees). But in light of…

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Donkey Kong Coaster Jumps The Rails, Just Like The SNES Games

At Universal Studios Japan, Super Nintendo World’s “jumping” Donkey Kong ride puts visitors in the mine-cart action of the video game, broken tracks and all. That’s right, you’ll be experiencing a very realistic simulation of being in Kong’s cart and jumping onto a completely different rail on this coaster set to open…

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Everything We Know About Square Enix's Visions Of Mana

It’s been 15 years since the last mainline entry in Square Enix’s Mana series, and the wait for another one is coming to an end. The publisher revealed during December 2023's The Game Awards that Visions of Mana, the upcoming action RPG in the long-running franchise, is set to launch later this year. And at Xbox’s…

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Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s New Game Plus Seemingly Locked Behind $15 Paywall

Locking key game features behind paywalls feels very 2024. This is the move Sega appears to be taking with Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. PC Gamer has spotted that the game’s New Game Plus mode is listed as limited to premium versions of the game, which cost at least $15 more than the Digital Standard edition.

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Hellblade II and Alan Wake 2 Are Signs of A Worrying Trend

Senua’s Saga: Hellbade II is Xbox’s next big console exclusive video game coming this year. We learned a lot about the upcoming action game during Thursday’s Developer Direct. We also learned, afterward, that Hellblade II won’t get a physical release, continuing a trend of big AAA console games skipping discs and…

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23 Years Later, We've Discovered An Amazing GameCube Easter Egg

Have you ever heard of GameCube’s squeaks? Perhaps we’re revealing some embarrassing gap in our collective knowledge at Kotaku in admitting we hadn’t, but we have now. And we’ve scientifically tested it. There’s a bizarre start-up Easter egg on the 2001 Nintendo console, and it makes it get all cute.

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Halo Actor Didn’t Want Master Chief To Get Laid

The Halo TV series on Paramount+ was always billed as a non-canon take on the universe and characters from the iconic franchise developed by Bungie and 343 Industries. That didn’t stop fans from lamenting the “changes” made to characters like Master Chief and Cortana—and freaking out when season one contained a sex…

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Pokémon With Guns Game So Popular The Servers Can’t Handle It

Palworld, or the game more colloquially known as “Pokémon With Guns” is out today, January 19, and it’s quickly found a rather large audience interested in gunning down cute creatures. While Pocketpair’s monster-taming survival game is also available freely to Game Pass subscribers, a lot of people are diving into the…

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Everything You Need To Know About Final Fantasy VII, Before Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is out on February 29, 2024. But if you haven’t played 2020’s Remake, or any of the other games in the FF7 universe (known officially as the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII), you might be wondering where to start, what order you should play the games in, and whether or not you should play…

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Essential Tips For Playing The Last Of Us Part II Remastered

It’s time for a second trip to Seattle in The Last of Us Part II Remastered. Originally shipped in 2020, Part II amps up the scope of the series, as well as the violence. The result is a dynamic, stealthy survival horror romp that takes place decades after a world-ending pandemic. It can be a tough game to play, and Re…

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Everything To Know About The Last Of Us Before Playing Part II Remastered

Naughty Dog kicked off The Last of Us franchise back in 2013 on the PS3. With a gritty, harrowing tale of survival in a fallen world that captured the attention of fans and critics alike, the sequel, The Last of Us Part II, finally arrived in 2020. The original game received a remake in 2022, shortly before the…

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11 Essential Tips For TLOU 2's Roguelike Mode, No Return

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