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E3 2021: 20 Games Missing From The Show
16.6.2021
Silence screams volumes. Over the past five days, video game publishers have shouted announcements for the biggest games from the rooftops. But that chorus has been drowned out by the far more deafening din of what wasn’t announced at E3 2021.Read more
Ratchet & Clank Is The Best Mascot Platformer In Ages, But It Doesn't Have Much Competition
11.6.2021
The prehistoric 1990s were a different time for video games. Mascot platformers roamed the untamed jungles, with Mario and Sonic eternally duking it out while Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Croc, Rayman, and countless imitators scattered underfoot. Fast forward to now, and “mascot platformer” is barely...
Mass Effect Is Back, But It Seems Like Morality Meters Are Gone For Good
28.5.2021
Will you save the orphans or eat them? Will you blow up the planet or give it renewable energy and free healthcare? Will you hug Leonardo Da Vinci or let his outstretched arms wither? For a minute there, it felt like games were characterized by binary choices like these—even if their prevalence...
Half-Life: Alyx Almost Had Enemies Who Reacted When You Flipped Them Off
21.5.2021
Hands. You wouldn’t have human civilization without them, meaning you wouldn’t have video games, either. Or, like, houses. But even though hands are front and center in many games, we don’t talk about them all that often. On this week’s episode of Splitscreen, we stop keeping hands at arm’s length....
F*ck, Marry, Kill: Mass Effect Party Member Edition
14.5.2021
It certainly says something about the video game industry that the most anticipated release of the year so far is a remaster of a sci-fi RPG trilogy from a decade ago. Mass Effect has some memorable characters—and a lot of less memorable ones, a fact that many people have fittingly forgotten....
Resident Evil Village's Lady Dimitrescu Was Worth The Wait
7.5.2021
After the internet spent months pining and meme-ing, she’s finally here: Lady Dimitrescu—and also Resident Evil Village, I guess. But was she (and, I suppose, the game) worth all the hype and marketing-driven hoopla? On this week’s village- (and Village-) themed episode of Splitscreen, we find...
Don’t Worry, You Can Still Make-o The Mako Horrible In Mass Effect Legendary Edition
7.5.2021
If there’s one universal truth about the original Mass Effect, it’s that the Mako is the worst. Or the best? I don’t know, I’ve never played the first Mass Effect, so I will think whatever you want me to think—which puts me in lockstep with developer BioWare. In the upcoming remaster, you’ll...
Sometimes You Just Have To Let Backlog Games Go
23.4.2021
Most of us will probably never play every game we own right now, let alone all the others we’ll buy or download in the future. In that sense, backlogs are like the universe: infinitely expanding and confounding to physicists. Sometimes you just have to make peace—or force yourself to make...
Why Video Game Loot Is So Addictive, According To The Creators Of Diablo
16.4.2021
Colors mean different things to different people, but very specific colors mean the exact same thing to everybody who plays video games. You know the ones: gray, green, blue, purple, and gold. You covet the latter and revile the former. Loot is a universal language at this point, but it wasn’t...
In 2007, Video Game Memes Took A Dark Turn
10.4.2021
Memes. These days, they’re everywhere. They are the pillars upon which internet culture—and by extension, pop culture—stands. But once upon a time, memes dwelled in the internet’s dankest sewers, traded in the darkness by geeks, nerds, and outcasts. On this week’s Splitscreen podcast, we examine...
Single-Player Games Are Finally Making A Comeback, Sort Of
3.4.2021
Once upon a time, Shigeru Miyamoto famously said, “A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is bad forever.” It’s a statement that felt like it would never fall out of fashion, until it did. Modern games are never finished. Bad games become good. Good games become bad. Games of all stripes...
Where Did Gamer Snacks Come From, Anyway?
27.3.2021
There are snacks, and then there are snacks for gamers. Through chalky chemical combinations of dubious repute, they will somehow make you aim better in Fortnite. How did we reach the point where snacks for a hobby that takes place primarily on the couch are basically workout supplements? On this...
Magic: Legends Open Beta Is Go
23.3.2021
Cryptic Studios’ free-to-play Magic: The Gathering-meets-Diablo action card-playing game has launched into open beta via Arc Games and the Epic Games Store, giving players all over the world the chance to play the game Kotaku’s Ash Parrish said several nice things about. Read more
Video Game Companies Keep Coming Up With New Ways To Take Our Money
19.3.2021
Video games are expensive. They have been expensive for a very long time, and they keep getting more expensive. To an extent, it makes sense: Game developers need to eat! But after a certain point, it gets excessive. Loot boxes, gacha, and now NFTs are signs of that excess. On this week’s...
How Plague Inc Evolved Once A Real Global Pandemic Came Along
13.3.2021
Somehow, horrifyingly, it has been nearly a full year since most of us went into lockdown to wait out covid-19. And while there is a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a slowly, confusingly distributed vaccine, we’re still in the thick of it. On this week’s episode of the Splitscreen...
Why Do We Call The Hardest Video Game Enemies 'Bosses,' Anyway?
19.2.2021
In real life, if you encounter a large being hell-bent on beating the crap out of you, you call them “an asshole” or “a fully grown polar bear, but in my backyard, like in those nightmares I have.” In a video game, you call them “a boss.” That’s weird! Plenty of people want to fight their bosses...
Ash Parrish's Top 10 Games Of 2020
22.12.2020
Ahh! My first “Top 10 Games” post for Kotaku, so exciting! Arriving here has fundamentally changed my relationship with gaming. I have a lot more time to play a lot more brand-spankin’ new games, versus the slow arrival to already well-beloved titles that was typical of my pre-Kotaku life. So...