Kotaku
The chess world is never short on scandals, and the latest one is incredibly on brand. Top-ranked former world champion Magnus Carlsen recently showed up to a tournament in jeans, refused to change, got fined, and then threatened to back out of the event altogether. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) then…
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The term “pay to win” is typically attributed to competitive games with microtransactions that give players an edge in battle. An example would be an item you can buy that makes your character more powerful than that of someone who didn’t cough up real money. However, some Marvel Rivals fans are throwing the…
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Each live-action Sonic movie introduces another beloved character from Sega’s speedy platformers to the film universe in a post-credits scene, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is no exception. Though the new addition to Sonic’s growing family of anthropomorphic animals doesn’t have any spoken lines in the movie’s stinger,…
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Marvel’s latest Disney+ animated series is called Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and it’s another origin story for the webcrawler, but with one brings some hefty changes with it as it explores an alternate history that exchanges Tony Stark’s tutelage for a mentoring Norman Osborne. The first trailer is full of…
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Writing a review is a tall order. Especially at a place like Kotaku, where we have a whole headline format meant to declare our “definitive” word on a game, movie, or show. It can come off as if we’re putting an authoritative stamp of approval or disapproval on whatever we’re critiquing, which can be pretty daunting.…
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2024 was a really good year for video games. (But not so good for the people who make them.) And while it featured a ton of new games, both big and small, this was also a year with a lot of remasters and remakes.
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We’re in the final days of 2024, a chance to look back and assess the year that was. What were the highs and lows, the disappointments that left us bereft and the surprises that reignited our love for games? And, importantly, how did Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo navigate this awkward period in which all of their…
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On December 26, Microsoft confirmed that its Game Pass cloud streaming platform wasn’t working as expected. Over 24 hours later, many players are still complaining about long waits and disconnects. This outage comes at a time when Microsoft has been pushing a new marketing slogan that claims everything connected to…
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There are only two episodes left in Marvel’s animated anthology series What If...?, and one of the multiverse’s most disgruntled employees is finally getting reprimanded by upper management. In the third-to-last episode of the series, Uatu, better known as The Watcher, was visited by three other Watchers—The Eminence,…
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Finding out how to get Units in Marvel Rivals is a surprisingly difficult task. The game doesn’t outright tell you how to earn them anywhere. And, when you do earn them, it’s hard to tell where they’re coming from. However, this galactic currency will be very important in-game.
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A bizarrely quiet and slightly squeaking scream in the middle of Kraven The Hunter is one of the weirdest movie moments I’ve experienced in 2024, and more people need to see it.
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Astro Bot’s titular character is cute enough on his own, but that didn’t stop Team ASOBI from filling this new adventure with plenty of costumes to unlock. Whether it’s random cute outfits or costumes that let you cosplay as famous PlayStation characters, there are no shortage of fun options to choose from. Here’s how…
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Has this happened to you? You just opened your new PlayStation VR2 and everything seems fine. The setup goes swimmingly. You’ve got a handle on the controls, and you enter a game of your choice. Except, hold on a second—why don’t some of the buttons on your controller work? Everything worked before you were in a game,…
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After weeks of rumors, Warner Bros. and DC confirmed today that The Batman - Part II has been delayed again. The planned Batman sequel is now set to land in theaters in 2027, five years after the release of the first movie and nearly eight years after Robert Pattinson was cast as the iconic DC hero.
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Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is out in theaters now, and as we’ve long known, the third live-action movie about Sega’s speedy mascot is heavily inspired by Sonic Adventure 2. The 2001 Dreamcast game introduced a new brooding antihero in Shadow the Hedgehog, and expanded the Sonic mythos into some dark territory. Sonic 3 isn’t…
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The Switch is running on fumes. It might not be gong out with a whimper, but the needle is past empty. The 2024 release calendar was spotty at best, and even some of the more notable games that did come to the handheld hybrid, of which there were strikingly few, struggled to run on the nearly eight-year-old tech.…
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Earlier this month, an anonymous Reddit user popped up with claims of having seen a Switch 2 model firsthand. The Verge and others found him to be a potentially credible source, but fans eager for morsels of information about Nintendo’s long-awaited next console had to settle for mere written descriptions. Now that…
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My life changed when I first played Final Fantasy VII in the late ‘90s. The narrative-focused RPG chronicling the struggle of misfit adventurers on a quest to save the world held my attention like little else. Its slow-burn story told through text boxes on pre-rendered backgrounds, all backed by a soaring melodic…
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After more than three years of waiting, today the new season of Squid Game is finally on Netflix for our masochistic viewing pleasure. After season one ended with Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), also known as Player 456, choosing to search for the people behind the game instead of boarding a flight to Los Angeles to reconnect…
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If you’re a fan of the Indiana Jones films, you won’t want to miss “Father and Son,” a well-hidden optional objective in Great Circle’s Vatican City. It does require you to go a little out of your way, but you’ll be rewarded with an exclusive Adventure Book, a couple of Field Notes, and a small callback to the third In…
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Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of live-action remakes of popular animated movies. Will Wallace & Gromit ever get a Disney-like live-action remake movie? The duo’s creator has a simple answer: “NOOOOO.”
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Teamwork in Marvel Rivals is essential. Coordinating with your teammates to devise a strategy for the perfect Ace kill is a great way to play, and both voice and text chat make that easier. Of course, sometimes you don’t want to listen to the occasional toxic jerk or someone unaware their microphone is on. Muting…
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The LittleBigPlanet franchise effectively died earlier this year when Sony took down the servers for and later delisted LBP3. But a group of self-described “hobbyists” are working on Restitched, a game that will likely be just what some sad LBP fans are missing. And a new trailer for it arrived as a last-minute…
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Anime steampunk spin-off Arcane just wrapped up its second and final season on Netflix. While the League of Legends show cost $250 million to produce and didn’t make that money back, Riot Games cofounder Marc Merrill now says the company still considers the show a success because of how much fans loved it.
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Christopher Nolan could make any movie he wants, and for his next project, he’s opted to make an adaptation of The Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic poem about the gods fucking with a war-weary guy by stranding him and his crew at sea for a decade as they fight to overcome cyclopes, sirens, and all manner of other…
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This was a really weird year for Xbox. You could argue that Microsoft’s gaming brand had an amazing year or that it had one of its worst, and either way I’d likely find myself nodding in agreement to most of your points.
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The PlayStation 5 has entered the latter stage of its lifecycle, Sony announced back in February. The fourth anniversary of the console has been marked by impressive victories and surprising setbacks. 2024 felt like an inflection point for the PS5, with Sony unofficially turning the page on the PS4 and paving the way…
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Wow! Another year down. It feels like 2024 went by in a flash, and also feels like I spent half my life slowly trudging through this mostly awful year filled with a lot of bad news.
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In a lot of ways, 2024 was a worse year for the video game industry than 2023. And that’s really depressing to think about considering how bad 2023 was for game developers and the media covering the industry. Still, even a shitty year can have nice moments and wonderful surprises.
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It took six episodes, dozens of burning bodies, some Spice snorting, and too many betrayals to count, but Dune: Prophecy’sfirst season has finally come to an end. And, as did much of the first season, the finale is already creating possibilities that’ll have ramifications in the next season as well as the next Dune mo…