Destiny 2’s Exotic Trace Rifle Divinity has been the backbone of a lot of players’ arsenals for end game content ever since it was first introduced back in the Shadowkeep expansion in 2019. Yesterday, Bungie finally announced a long-awaited nerf to how powerful it is, and while many are welcoming the change, it’s also…
Bloodborne has always given me goosebumps. It’s one of those games that, whenever I see its name or hear it in conversation, makes me shudder. Every facet of FromSoftware’s Lovecraftian homage, from the ominous soundtrack to the horrific bosses, sends shivers down my spine. But nothing in the game is more frightening…
To say that No Man’s Sky has come a long way since its 2016 launch would be an understatement. But despite all of the welcome expansions to the epic-scale space sim, gameplay elements like survival, crafting, and the interesting choice of inventory layout have remained an obstacle for some players. With the new 4.0,…
Thanks to a bunch of funny people, the most difficult aspect of Overwatch 2 right now is probably just getting into the damn game. But if you’re new to this franchise, what awaits is a whole suite of heroes with unique abilities that mesh together into a hectic first-person shooter in which teamwork is absolutely…
True to his word, Chris Pratt will not be “offending Italians” in his leading role in the Super Mario Bros. movie. In fact, his voiced performance in the official trailer was so lackluster that I can’t help but wonder: What if Mario had been more Italian? It turns out, I didn’t have to wonder for very long. There’s an…
Not too long ago, I helped a family friend rebuild their computer. At the time, I thought their choice of a power supply over 1000 was silly. Well, now who looks like an idiot? (It’s okay, I’m used to it.) Size and price aren’t the only supersized elements of the 4000-series GPUs. Based on requirements from card…
Despite being afraid of literally anything and everything on the planet, I love Halloween. Octobers mean dutifully logging a slasher a day in my Letterboxd account, or using my journal to hash out what Friday the 13th would have been if Jason were handsome under the mask (he’s a waterlogged hermit, but does he really…
Square Enix’s Valkyrie Profile series of RPGs has been dormant for quite a while, with the last full-fledged entry being 2009’s DS game Covenant of the Plume. Now, however, a brand new entry has arrived in Valkyrie Elysium, which brings with it a shift from the franchise’s turn-based combat system to a real-time…
Hey, did anything happen to get revealed yesterday? I’m kidding, yes, the first official trailer for the Super Mario Bros. movie, of course. While half the internet is losing their collective minds over the vocal performance of Chris Pratt, another, more cultured subset of the interwebs has started theorizing that the…
Patience is a virtue, as somehow it is still difficult to find a PlayStation 5 some two years after launch. But fortunately, if you’re in the market for a Steam Deck, there’s no longer any need to chase after a far-off pre-order: Valve is now shipping them right after purchase. No waiting, no queues, no $5…
Nintendo’s trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie is finally out in the world, and so is Chris Pratt’s extremely normal-dude Mario voice. The first look didn’t explain why everyone’s favorite Italian plumber lost his ass, but it does appear to confirm the recent leak of a Mario movie calendar by an alleged McDonald’s…
Nobody is excited about Chris Pratt’s Normal Dude rendition of Mario in Nintendo’s upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie, but that’s perfectly okay. The disappointment is balanced out by the sheer hype we now all have after hearing Jack Black as Bowser. It sounded like perfect casting the moment it was announced, and the…
Today, a Nintendo Direct dedicated entirely to the upcoming Super Mario movie gave us our first proper look at the film, letting us see what all the familiar characters will look like and, more importantly, letting us hear what Chris Pratt sounds like as Nintendo’s mustachioed hero. It’s all timed to coincide with…
Nintendo lobbed a grenade the size of a King Bob-omb at the social fabric of America yesterday when it announced that Hollywood leading man and charming village idiot Chris Pratt would be Mario. That’s right, the Italian plumber is finally re-appearing on the big screen after a nearly 30-year hiatus. The Marvel…
Here’s some good news for those who got the dreaded “Player is in a different version of Overwatch” error. You can still play with your friends right now. It just takes a very simple workaround.
Ubisoft’s chief creative officer, Igor Manceau, will step down next month after only a year in that position at the troubled Assassin’s Creed publisher, the company announced internally on Thursday. According to a message to staff from CEO Yves Guillemot, the move comes as part of a larger change in how some of the…
At first glance, the news revealed in today’s Pokémon Scarlet and Violet trailer seemed just lovely: You can now have a picnic with your Pokémon! But then, it turned out, everything is wrong there. Because unless the Pokémon world has been hiding pigs from us, these people are eating the Lechonks…and maybe even their…
Another year, another busted version of Skyrim. After being on the market for over a decade, Bethesda’s game that never dies just saw its Anniversary Edition update hit Nintendo Switch. (This edition, which hit other platforms last year, includes a new fishing mini-game along with other exclusive content.) You can…
Babylon’s Fall is one of the worst games of the year and a massive warning to anyone preparing to make or buy an always-online live service game. Despite bold plans for season content and continued updates, publisher Square Enix announced last month the action-RPG would be removed from store shelves and shut down…
Sometimes you really don’t need more than a headline. But as we were watching the new 14-minute trailer for Pokémon Scarlet And Violet this morning, among the news of Terastalizing creatures and Far Cry-like base battling, one thing stood out to us above all else: You can give your Pokémon a bath.
Even by the loose standards of video game marketing, calling Far Cry 6 one of 2021's games of the year was a stretch. But Ubisoft went ahead and did it anyway. It didn’t stop there, either. The French publisher will also be charging $120 for this spruced-up release of its 2021 sequel. That’s the price of two GOTYs,…
As November 18 slowly crawls toward us, Nintendo is increasingly raising the hype for the first all-new mainline game in three years. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet received their latest enormous 14-minute trailer today, and you can see the whole thing right below.
The PlayStation Stars program, Sony’s revamped reward system for players, is out in the wild starting today. It’s also just about as confusing as you might expect from the company that brought you nine different editions of Horizon Forbidden West and made PlayStation Plus into a confusing, multi-tiered service. Here’s…
Two days after Chess.com released a 72-page report detailing Grandmaster Hans Niemann’s repeated history of online cheating on its website, the beleaguered pro is now, much to everyone’s surprise, competing in 2022's U.S. Chess Championship. And while the internet has cracked plenty of jokes about how, exactly,…
It’s time once again for Steam Next Fest, a one-week period in which Valve’s gaming storefront becomes flooded with tantalizing demos for promising upcoming games. One major takeaway from this year’s event is that, yes, there are indeed a hell of a lot of awesome games on the horizon. And the best part? You can play…
If you’ve been having trouble getting into Overwatch 2 on launch, you’re not alone. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra announced on Twitter that the Overwatch 2 servers are currently undergoing a “mass” distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which typically occurs when something is maliciously flooded with traffic…
“It feels like being punished for being poor,” Overwatch player Richard Meunster told Kotaku over email. Along with 19 million other people, Richard and his brother both use Cricket Wireless, one of the prepaid phone services that Overwatch 2 will not accept for its newly instated, mandatory two-factor authentication…
If you weren’t able to log in and play Blizzard’s highly anticipated hero shooter sorta-sequel, Overwatch 2, you weren’t the only one. After months of developer updates the free-to-play game’s launch day was met with not just one, but two DDoS attacks, forcing players to suffer through ungodly-long queues only to be…
Fans of Electronic Arts racing series Need for Speed might not have to wait long for the next game because new leaked images show its upcoming game hit the internet, and y’all it’s looking anime AF.
It’s been over a month since Madden NFL 23 launched and was promptly dragged by fans and some NFL pros alike. Unfortunately, despite some updates, it doesn’t sound like the “most polished version” of Madden in years has improved a ton, and a few players are starting to give up hope.
The news of Happy Meals for adults seemed like a neat little publicity stunt for McDonald’s, and a fun story for everyone to chortle along with. Cactus Plant Flea Market-style four-eyed toys of the old McDonald’s characters, in a box for the grown ups, seems a certainty for viral success. However, it turns out it’s…
Elden Ring has an official free-to-read manga. It’s a comedy, something totally unexpected and truly nothing like the game itself despite some characters fitting their roles to a T. And now, after a new set of chapters has dropped for a limited time, I can confidently say that Elden Ring: The Road to the Erdtree is…
Matthew Judge, or Twitch streamer and YouTube creator DarkViperAU, has been working on his “pacifist run” of GTA V for three years. You might know “pacifism” as abhorring all violence, but pacifist video game runs have a more Machiavellian approach to world peace: It’s okay to kill, as long as the killing is a…
When Pokémon Go added Cosmog at the start of its latest quarterly season, the Season of Light, it was (of course) done in the most confusing manner possible. This fan-favorite pocket monster was finally part of the mobile game but in a form that apparently couldn’t evolve. Well, starting today, with the launch of the…
HoYoverse has always struggled to satisfy its hardcore Genshin Impact audience, but the tension came to a boil when the studio confirmed on October 1 that it will not add more endgame content. The endgame dungeon Spiral Abyss will remain the only way players can test their most competitive compositions. And a lot of…
Cyberpunk 2077’s been having a bit of a renaissance lately. The hit Netflix spinoff anime Edgerunners, which fellow Kotaku staff writer Isaiah Colbert described as “Studio Trigger at its finest,” has pulled people into the dark and gritty world of this game once more. Add to that a number of patches and improvements…
On Tuesday evening, The Wall Street Journal published a high-level overview of a report produced by Chess.com, all about Hans Niemann, the player suspected of cheating at the Sinquefield Cup against reigning five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. (Possibly, the internet has repeatedly joked, with the help of…
Hans Niemann, who sparked the internet’s favorite anal bead meme last month after beating chess world champion Magnus Carlsen in a stunning upset, is now accused of cheating in over 100 online matches, according to a new unprecedented 72-page report by Chess.com. The world’s most popular website for online chess…
The spooky season is upon us and a lowkey stacked October for Xbox Game Pass is bringing the rat kings, H. R. Giger body horror, and twee trick-or-treating to celebrate. Whether you just want to go medieval against online strangers in Chivalry 2 or bask in the striking beauty of A Plague Tale: Requiem’s beautifully…
