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Why Did No One Tell Me About Uncharted 4's Climbing?
31.5.2021
I am, after extensive research, willing to concede that I might not be the first person to bring the Uncharted series to your attention. However, it seems everyone else has failed me by not letting me know just how utterly wonderful the fourth game’s climbing is.Read more
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....
‘Chartmaster’ Expects BTC Price to Tap $29K, Delta Exchange CEO Says ‘Bitcoin Hasn’t Found a Floor Yet’
18.5.2021
The price of bitcoin has dropped to a new low for the month of May, sliding to $42,100 per unit during Monday evening’s trading sessions. While a few analysts see bitcoin rebounding and gathering new highs in the coming weeks, a few crypto market strategists believe bitcoin prices could sink...
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....
Uncharted 4 Has The Perfect Video Game Ending
11.5.2021
It’s the fifth anniversary of the release of Uncharted 4, and while the developers are reminiscing over on Naughty Dog’s site, I thought I’d revisit this 2016 story I wrote about the perfect video game ending.Read more
That’s A Wrap On Backlog Month
8.5.2021
This past month was Backlog Month at Kotaku. April, our thinking went, would be fairly slim in terms of new games, bookended by two blockbusters (Outriders and Returnal) but devoid of tentpoles in the interim. What better time to play the games we already have?Read more
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...
Epic Paid $115 Million For The Borderlands 3 Exclusive
4.5.2021
As the bizarro-world bunfight between Epic and Apple enters its second day in court, more extraordinary information is coming out in court documents. Like, how Epic paid Take-Two/Gearbox one hundred and fifteen million dollars for the exclusive rights to sell Borderlands 3.Read more
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...
Harold Halibut, You Have My Attention
7.4.2021
We last saw Harold Halibut at GDC 2018, but the folks at German indie studio Slow Bros. are back with another fascinating preview of this unique game.Read more
Clap Hanz’ First Non-PlayStation Golf Game Is My New Happy Place
7.4.2021
Japanese developer Clap Hanz has been making colorful cartoon golf games for PlayStation consoles since 1999’s Hot Shots Golf 2. The studio’s first non-PlayStation game, Apple Arcade’s Clap Hanz Golf, is more of the same, only now all it takes for me to tee up is a few taps of my iPad screen.Read...
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...
John Wick Director Working On A Ghost Of Tsushima Movie
25.3.2021
Sony is developing a movie adaptation of last year’s terribly decent Ghost of Tsushima, Deadline reports. John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski is, you guessed it, directing.Read more
Serious Sam 2 Gets Massive Update 15 Years After Release
23.3.2021
Croatian studio Croteam has partnered with independent developer Nathan “DwK” Brown to release a huge update to Serious Sam 2 today, more than a few years removed from the first-person shooter’s late 2005 launch.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...