Culture

All I Do In Final Fantasy XIV Now Is Play Mahjong

This week’s 4.5 update for Final Fantasy XIV brought players an exciting new raid encounter featuringa Final Fantasy XII cameo, a new dungeon to explore and the first half of the conclusion to the exciting Stormblood storyline. It also added multiplayer Mahjong. Guess what I’ve been doing for the past two days. Competitive Mahjong is…

Track: Unshaken | Artist: D’Angelo | Album: Red Dead Redemption 2 (OST) Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Don’t Think Twice. Tokyo, Japan. By Davide Sasso | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

The Slightly Sketchy 1990s ‘Computer Fairs,’ A Major Part Of My Gaming History

If you asked me to list some of the games I bought or played in 1994, I’d probably start off with Donkey Kong Country and Final Fantasy III, and it would likely take me a long time before I ever mentioned Barneystein 3D. But it was part of my gaming world in 1994, and there’s…

Just A Couple Of WWE Stars Cosplaying As Team Rocket

Wrestling star Zelina Vega cosplays all the time, but here she’s joined up with Andrade Cien Almas for some fresh trouble. Make it double. The pair, who are usually a wrestler-manager couple but who also team up sometimes in the ring, are dressed up here out of it as Pokemon’s Team Rocket. If Nintendo and…

I Really Like The Darkwing Duck Game That Capcom Rejected

Here’s a failed game concept that I really wish had managed to survive the gauntlet of development: Headcannon’s Darkwing Duck pitch. Earlier this week, the developers of Sonic Mania revealed that they’d previously approached Capcom about making a spiritual successor to the company’s 1992 NES game. Obviously, they were unsuccessful. The studio has since released…

Track: Voyager | Artist: Paul van Dyk & Alex M.O.R.P.H. | Album: Music Rescues Me Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Neo-Tokyo. Tokyo, Japan. By Davide Sasso | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Steam Bug Keeps Popular Indie Game From Being Recognized As ‘Real’ For Five Months

Wandersong is a side-scrolling rhythm adventure game that is—pardon my language—charming as all heck. Its combination of inventive mechanics and comedic, heartfelt writing have caused many to fall in love with it, myself included. And for five months Steam wasn’t sure it was a real game. As part of Valve’s ongoing effort to weed out…

Atlas, As Told By Steam Reviews

When Atlas first launched last month, it didn’t cannonball into the high seas so much as belly flop. The resulting wet slapping sound continues to echo around in the game’s Steam review section to this day. Even though the game is still eliciting cringes and jeers from its reviewers, Atlas has somehow also become hugely…

Hollow Knight Speedrun Has A Tense Finale

Hollow Knight is a quiet game of exploration and difficult bosses that can take dozens of hours to complete. Last Sunday at Awesome Games Done Quick, a speedrunner beat it in under 90 minutes. The run was a highlight of precise, masterful movement. And the ending had the audience on the edges of their seats.…

The Stories Behind Assassin’s Creed Mercenaries Are Terrific, But Easily Missed

You don’t need to know the backstory of Shoeless Ogarneos, a mercenary who may try to kill you in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but the word in the game is that this ancient Greek killer-for-hire only wore bandages on his feet and “liked the red tint they had at the end of each day.” I can…

The Week In Games: Mario Brothers Of Days Past

Not one but two older entries into the Mario Bros. canon resurface this week, because in the world of video games what’s old is eternally new again. And I do hope you like new old games, because otherwise you’re out of luck. In a test of just how many Nintendo fans will buy games they…

Track: Fade Into You | Artist: Mazzy Star | Album: So Tonight That I Might See  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Pink Boat Towards Happy Beach. Mactan, Cebu. By Martin Tan. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Red Carpet Superstar

JungAh Lee is a senior concept artist at Blizzard, and has worked on stuff like Overwatch You can see more of Lee’s work at her ArtStation page

The Best-Reviewed Steam Games Of 2018

More so than perhaps even playing them, Steam is a place where people go to yell about games. Here are the games they yelled most positively about last year. Steam reviews are kind of a mess. The positive/negative binary squelches nuance and doesn’t translate well into an overall percentage score, and the system is easily…

Every Christmas, There’s A Cosplay Spectacular In Florida

Holiday Matsuri has quickly grown to become one of the biggest and best cosplay shows in the US. And it’s not hard seeing why: who wouldn’t want to escape the winter chills for a resort in Orlando in the middle of December? Below you’ll find a selection of video and photos taken by Mineralblufrom the…

The Internet Reacts To Soldier 76 And His Ex-Boyfriend

Tracer is no longer the only canonically LGBTQ hero in Overwatch. Today, Blizzard released a new short story focusing on steely sniper grandma Ana and grumpy military dad Soldier 76. The latter, it turns out, used to be involved with a man named Vincent. In the short story, titled “Bastet,” Ana encounters Soldier for the…

Middle Eastern Fortnite Players Start Massive Protest For Dedicated Servers

Alaa “DvLZStaTioN” Ebrahim has been missing his sniper shots. The popular Fortnite YouTuber, who has three million subscribers, says it’s not his fault. Nor are the times when his opponents’ shots hit him even as he moves away from the rain of bullets. Ebrahim, who lives in Bahrain, a small island country in the Middle…