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SteamWorld Heist II snuck out last year in early August and didn’t create as many ripples as some of the other genre spin-offs in its quirky robotic universe. That’s a shame because the bones of this tactical RPG are some of the strongest around, even if the surrounding fluff can get in the way sometimes.
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Stern Pinball is back with another new machine and this time it’s a tribute to Dungeons & Dragons following the tabletop RPG’s 50th anniversary. The table comes with all kinds of whimsical bells and whistles and an all-star voice cast, and it can be yours starting at $7,000. Or you could pay nearly double that for the…
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In a recent interview with Games Industry.biz, Ken Levine disparaged his most famous and popular game, BioShock, as “a very, very long corridor.” He uses this description pejoratively to distinguish the 2007 first-person mystery game from his current project, science fiction FPS Judas, a game he says is being made…
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For so many years, so many have been lamenting the dire state of Pokémon Go’s monthly Community Days. What should be events that encourage players to fill local parks for a fun series of challenges have become repetitive, desultory events that can be completed almost without trying. And now they’re doubling in price!
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There are a lot of great fan-made Sonic the Hedgehog games out there. Sega has been notoriously chill with fans of the Blue Blur using its characters in their own projects, and there are even a handful of community-driven remakes of old games that could use a modern touch-up. The one we’re talking about today is Sonic…
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The holidays are over, but discount season will stretch into mid-January 2025 thanks to Sony’s ongoing New Year sale on PlayStation 5 and PS4. There are some really steep discounts on a ton of great games. A perfect time to grab some neat stuff that you’ve been meaning to tick off your backlog.
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Apple TV+ is a strange ol’ streaming service, spending wads of Apple’s infinite money on incredibly expensive prestige television and movies, and then hiding it all as best it could. In recent months, it’s occurred to the company that perhaps it’d be good if people saw the stuff it’s making, adding the service as an…
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You may have not noticed it, but Tom Holland wasn’t on your movie screen in 2024, and that could become an extended reality in the not-too-distant future. In his recent Men’s Health cover story, the 28-year-old actor revealed his plans for life after acting, including what life change has to happen for him to walk…
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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is getting a Squid Game event this weekend following the hit Netflix show’s recent return with season two. Unlike previous events, however, this one will lock some of its best rewards behind a paid event pass. Think of it as a battle pass within a battle pass, on top of an already $70 game.…
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Apple has certainly carved itself a market for selling extremely well-made products at ludicrously high prices. Given an audience willing to fork out eye-watering amounts for its laptops and phones, it’s perhaps not surprising that the company assumed it could do the same in the cursed world of VR with the $3,500…
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Before Balatrothere was Luck Be a Landlord, a roguelike deckbuilder about manipulating a slot machine to try to pay rent amid an ever spiraling out of control cost-of-living crisis. Despite the gambling aesthetic, there’s no part of the game that actually includes gambling with money, real or virtual. But that hasn’t…
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Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is heavily based on the events of the 2001 Dreamcast game Sonic Adventure 2. The live-action movie doesn’t recreate the platformer’s story beat for beat, but it introduces Sonic’s revenge-driven rival Shadow, explores villain Doctor Robotnik’s family, and the moon gets blown up at one point, too.…
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Helldivers 2 was one of the biggest surprise success stories of last year, selling over 10 million copies and becoming a cultural phenomenon. The alien shooter’s creative director kicked off 2025 by asking fans about their hopes and dreams for Arrowhead Game Studios’ future projects, culminating in a brief exchange…
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Wicked, the magical movie musical phenomenon that has been taking the internet by storm for the past two months, is finally available on digital platforms. So now you can try to belt Cynthia Erivo’s “Defying Gravity” battle cry from the comfort of your own home. The digital version of the movie includes some special…
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It’s finally 2025 and Switch 2 speculation is hitting a new fever pitch. A new patent published this week shows how Nintendo could use AI-upscaling to make new games look better without taking up tons of space, while alleged leaks of a motherboard have fans debating just how powerful the new hardware might be.
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In a gaming world where cease-and-desists are the most typical response to fan-made remakes or tribute games, it’s incredibly refreshing that Bethesda tolerates such projects. Following 2024's free player-made Unity remake of Daggerfall, 2025 looks set to finally see the release of the long-developed total conversion…
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PlayStation Plus’ free games for January includes Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a year after the live service shooter’s critically-panned launch. It joins the paid monthly subscription service just in time for players to experience the final season and access the long-requested offline mode.
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Available on PC and PlayStation 5 for the last four-and-a-half months, 2024's smash hit Black Myth: Wukong is still conspicuously absent on Microsoft’s consoles. Exactly why has been a matter of some controversy, with the Xbox makers previously suggesting it’s nothing to do with its tech. However, now Game Science CEO…
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Another year is in the books and that means that backlog season is officially upon us. We used to get several months for catching up on old stuff as the new year got off to a slow start, but now the season barely lasts a couple of weeks. January might be a good time to give your wallet a rest before the February…
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If you wind up on the wrong side of Reddit or YouTube, you’ll likely come across bold declarations proclaiming “what gamers want.” Nine times out of ten, these takes are given in bad faith, often by people more concerned with imposing what they want than with understanding what the majority of players are truly…
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Every year we play a ton of great games that we celebrate in December, and those games can be great for all sorts of reasons: amazing level design, incredible atmosphere, outstanding combat or exploration, you name it. But more often than not, it’s the heroes and villains of a great game that stick with us the…
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Steam’s latest mini-sensation has arrived and it’s called MiSide. The meta thriller in the vein of Doki Doki Literature Club has already racked up one of the highest ratings on Valve’s storefront just a couple weeks after its completely under-the-radar launch, thanks in part to streams by Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach…
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Cinematic continuity be damned, Jason Momoa is putting the fish gills down for tattoos and violence. According to reports from Deadline, the man known around the world as Aquaman formally announced his return to the DC universe as the invulnerable Lobo in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
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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…