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Stellar Blade: The Kotaku Review
24.4.2024
In many ways, Stellar Blade is awesome. The action is awesome, the soundtrack is awesome, the world is awesome. However, when you peel back the curtain just a bit and peer behind all the flash and style, you find that Shift Up’s character action game can also be quite tedious. It’s a game...
Rise Of The Ronin: The Kotaku Review
21.3.2024
Rise of the Ronin feels like a game that’s already one or two generations old. Developer Team Ninja has called it their “most ambitious” title to date, but that ambition is overshadowed by lackluster graphics, outdated design concepts, and performance issues that put the game more in line with...
2018’s Best Co-Op Game Almost Made My Partner Dump Me
12.2.2024
There is a lot of advice out there about how to maintain a healthy relationship with your significant other. Communicate effectively, set aside time to spend with each other, things like that. Having been in a relationship with my partner for nine years, I like to think we are pretty good at these...
The Baldur's Gate 3 Cats, Ranked
27.12.2023
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....
2023's Best Video Game Villain Isn't Who You Think
25.12.2023
Mech pilots have feelings, too. Armored Core VI is a game about blowing up everything in sight with a smorgasbord of overpowered weapons. But it’s also a game about vain, self-righteous men who think it’s their God-given right to take over a planet. While you only know them as codenames, characters...
Modern Warfare III Multiplayer Is A Helluva Nostalgia Trip
13.11.2023
Say what you will about Modern Warfare III—it was developed in a confusing rush, hence why its campaign mostly sucks, and it’s currently the worst-rated Call of Duty game in the franchise’s 20-year history—but god damn, does its multiplayer make me feel like I’m in college again. Read more
Kotaku’s Weekend Guide: 6 Games To Welcome In November
3.11.2023
Oh my god, it’s November. Don’t ask me how or why. I don’t make the rules and I have no answers. What I do have, however, is a solid list of game recs for your weekend.Read more
Alan Wake Creator Says Sequel Is 'More Intense, More Brutal'
25.10.2023
The other day, the official Twitter account for Alan Wake 2 tweeted, “You must write to escape…” and I felt my blood run cold. As a writer who knows the agony of writer’s block—the fear of looking inside myself and having to face all the doubts and insecurities lurking in my dark places as...
Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.0 Update Feels Like A Different Game
14.9.2023
Cyberpunk 2077’s one-and-only expansion, Phantom Liberty, is coming out on September 26, but the 2.0 update—which brings some pretty significant systemic changes to the RPG that has been getting incremental changes since its disastrous launch in 2020—is coming out for free for all players...
Interview: Final Fantasy Artist Yoshitaka Amano Working On New Game, Old Art
13.9.2023
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)...
This Persona-Inspired Dating Sim's Ending Is Worth The Bumpy Ride
11.9.2023
Eternights, a hack-and-slash dating sim by Studio Sai, wears its Persona inspirations on its sleeve. When I played the game for the first time earlier this year at Summer Game Fest, I said its action combat felt flimsy and its characters seemed generic, though I was at least interested to see...
Lollipop Chainsaw Re-review: Grindhouse For The Girls
21.8.2023
Dragami Games announced this month that its Lollipop Chainsaw remake release was getting delayed to 2024. Never having played hack-and-slash Lollipop before, but eagerly awaiting the remake, I decided to cope rationally: I spent $40 on a game made 11 years ago, and hauled my friends’ grimy Xbox...
Lollipop Chainsaw Re-review: Grindhouse For The Girls
21.8.2023
Dragami Games announced this month that its Lollipop Chainsaw remake release was getting delayed to 2024. Never having played hack-and-slash Lollipop before, but eagerly awaiting the remake, I decided to cope rationally: I spent $40 on a game made 11 years ago, and hauled my friends’ grimy Xbox...
My D&D Game Fell Apart, But Baldur’s Gate 3 Saved The Day
18.8.2023
As is the case with many Dungeons & Dragons groups, my band of outcasts fell apart. I’ve lamented the loss over the last few months, but now, I finally have a piece of that joy back thanks to Baldur’s Gate 3.Read more
Baldur’s Gate 3 Makes It Impossible To Know If I’m Making The Right Choices, And I Love It
16.8.2023
The more I play of Baldur’s Gate 3, the more I realize how unsure I am of what I’ve done. This extraordinary, enormous game has me in deep, meticulously exploring its every tiny detail, getting involved in every aspect I can find, and the further I get, the less certain I am about every choice I’ve...
2023’s Best Horror Game Death Scenes
13.7.2023
We’re done with half of 2023 and many of its fantastic horror games, though there’s more on the way (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alan Wake 2, and the Silent Hill 2 remake are still due out). That means we’ve willingly subjected ourselves to lots of stone-cold death scenes—enough to compile in...
The Horror Game Of The Year Is A Doom II Mod
7.7.2023
To some of MyHouse.wad’s biggest fans, the free mod for 1994’s Doom II might even be the best horror game released this year. There are two reasons for this: the technology and the people.Read more
This Horror Game Gives You A Virtual Girlfriend From Hell
5.7.2023
Fairy tales and Drew Barrymore movies taught me that a girl with butterflies in her stomach might be easily inconvenienced by some weird guy (either a literal beast or an everyman who acts like one), but the fluttering is a product of purity, clear like a raindrop. Without a sword or a big-shot...
Steam Breakout V Rising Is A Stellar Survival RPG
31.5.2022
I have complicated feelings about the modern vampire story. Violence is cheap. Tasty humans are plentiful. And skyscrapers provide ample shelter from the sun. The sanctity of human life doesn’t mean much to creatures that will kill people over a simple meal. It can feel powerful to be so...
V Rising's Huge Success Has Even Taken Its Developers By Surprise
25.5.2022
V Rising came out on May 18, and I would bet that on May 17 almost none of you would have ever heard of the game in your lives. One week later and it’s sold over 500,000 copies, and as I type this is being played by more people on Steam than Elden Ring.Read more