Ethan Gach

The Overwatch League Goes To Texas This Weekend

I normally try to zero in on one particular esports event or theme around it each weekend for this post, but this time there is just too much god damn high-level, mouse-clicking, button-mashing, card-dropping, play-calling competitive gaming action going on not to run through all of it. First up we have the Overwatch League. Week…

Valve Is Finally Replacing Its Ugly Dota 2 Statue With A Better One

Back in 2017, some of the most dedicated Dota 2 players spent hundreds of dollars on microtransactions to win a special collectible statue. The versions that Valve shipped out were so ugly, and so poorly received, that Valve said it would make replacements. Yesterday, it said that it was finally ready to ship them out.…

PlayStation Now Has Gotten A Lot Better

PlayStation Now used to be a pricey way to stream the PlayStation’s back catalogue of games, which was only useful for people with good internet and no bandwidth caps. Last September the company added an option to download certain games directly, allowing users to play them offline. PlayStation Now is now a lot more like…

Players Are Creating Amazing Things With Overwatch’s New Workshop Tools

Earlier this week, Blizzard added a Workshop to Overwatch that makes it possible to modify in-game scripts to create all sorts of new custom modes. Players have wasted no time in doing some really cool stuff with it. When Blizzard announced the Overwatch Workshop on Wednesday, it led with the example of a level inspired…

Report: Rick Fox Leaving Esports Organization Because Of Racist Comments By Shareholder [Update]

Retired NBA star turned esports entrepreneur Rick Fox is preparing to cut ties with Echo Fox, the competitive gaming organization he helped found, after another shareholder allegedly used racial slurs during an email exchange, according to a report by Richard Lewis for Dexerto According to Lewis, the racist remarks came from an investor at Vision…

Pagan Online Mixes Diablo-Style Loot With Arcade Combat

What surprised me most about Pagan Online, a new action role-playing game that launched on Steam Early Access last week, was how meaty the moment-to-moment fighting felt. When I launched an attack and connected with a wave of enemies, it really felt like I was messing up their day. Pagan Online is a collaboration between…

SteamWorld Quest: The Kotaku Review

I never know exactly how I’m going to approach each new battle in SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. No matter how much I plan and prepare ahead of time, I can’t control the cards that end up in my hand in this turn-based role-playing card game. Perfect optimization is always a few steps out of…

BlizzCon, Blizzard’s annual convention for all things, well, Blizzard, will take place November 1 and 2 this year. Tickets go on sale May 4. The event will host all of the regular esports tournaments for games like Overwatch and Hearthstone, and who knows, Blizzard might even announce another mobile game.

Nintendo has opened up signups for a Mario Kart Tour beta set to begin May 22. The full mobile game will be released later this summer. Beta signups are currently only for Android.

Super Mario Maker 2 will be out on Switch on June 28. Nintendo dropped the news today in a tweet, but still hasn’t revealed much else about the game since February’s Nintendo Direct. We learned a ton from that trailer but questions still remain like which characters will be playable.

Block, Yoda Can Finally

Star Wars: Battlefront II came out 17 months ago. In all the time since, Yoda hasn’t been able to block attacks with his lightsaber. Luke Skywalker was able to block. Obi-Wan Kenobi was able to block. But not the Jedi master who taught them. Until now. Today’s Battlefront II update adds a new costume for…

Fallout 76 got a new update this week adding a manual in-game camera. The game technically already has a camera mode, but this way feels a little more personal. Of course you’ll have to find plans for the camera and than craft it first. Here’s a helpful map of where it spawns.

Anthem’s New Stronghold Mission Has One Really Cool Moment

I’m playing Anthem, and I’m flying through a tunnel. There are a lot of those in the game. This one happens to be filled with water. At the other end I can make out some light. I fly closer to it. Eventually I break through the surface into a sandy, sun-bleached arena surrounded by massive…

Hindsight 20/20 is a cool-looking action adventure game coming to consoles and PC sometime in 2020. Announced by Triple-I Games, an indie studio founded by former BioWare, ArenaNet, and Sucker Punch devs, Hindsight is being pitched as a Zelda-like that incorporates morality-based decision making into the gameplay.

Final Fantasy Artist Yoshitaka Amano Has Designed A Magic: The Gathering Card

War of the Spark, Magic: The Gathering’s next expansion, features the game’s largest collection of Planeswalker cards to date. Wizards of the Coast has tapped a number of different artists to create alternative versions of the cards for Japan, including Yoshitaka Amano of Final Fantasy fame. Amano produced concept art for the series up until…

For Honor gets a new samurai class called Hitokiri on May 2 for season pass owners and May 9 for everyone else. The hero wields a battle ax and serves as an executioner. The season two update will also rework the Lawbringer and Raider classes as well as add a new map.

BioWare Delays Anthem’s Big Cataclysm Event

In an Anthem update released today, BioWare lead producer Ben Irving and head of live services Chad Robertson announced that a number of updates planned for the game, including its limited-time Cataclysm event, have been delayed. “While we have delivered many of the Act 1 features on time, we are not going to hit all…

Anthem Is Less Frustrating After Its Latest Update

When BioWare’s online multiplayer loot shooter, Anthem, launched in February, it wasn’t possible to embark on missions back-to-back or swap out equipment on the fly. In today’s update, BioWare has finally changed that, helping to streamline an experience previously mired by frustrating restrictions Patch 1.1, which went live earlier today on PS4, Xbox One, and…

Insomniac Reveals One Of The Camera Tricks That Makes Spider-Man‘s World Feel So Big

Last year’s Spider-Man on PS4 offers one of the most sprawling recreations of Manhattan ever realized in a video game. Not only is the city huge, but so are some of the interiors of the buildings that you get to explore. The studio recently shared one of the camera tricks that helped the team to…

Puyo Puyo Champions is coming to PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on May 7. A variant of Puyo Puyo with a heavy emphasis on competitive play, it includes some new online multiplayer modes, an improved replay system, and eight-player tournaments.