Culture

This Week In Business: The Quest For Fame

QUOTE | “You get that hit of attention and it makes you feel good, then you come back down. Then you build up a tolerance for it, so you need it just to feel normal, like if you have too much caffeine or something.” – Framed developer Joshua Boggs, talking about his self-destructive quest for…

CHKN Is A Survival Game Where You Build Monstrosities

As far as survival games go, CHKN is certainly… unique. CHKN has some of the usual survival trappings: you’ve gotta eat to live, collect/kill to eat, and the game world’s god just said “fuck it, I’m tired” when faced with the idea of creating any shape other than a cube. But it also has creature…

Counter-Strike Pro Destroys Other Team Seconds After Hosts Question His Strategy

The $1 million Counter-Strike MLG Columbus Major has been running for a few days now, and it’s produced no end of crowd-flooring highlights. The latest? An oddball play that decimated an entire team in seconds. The moment couldn’t have been better if somebody had scripted it. With his team down 14-6 against Ukrainian powerhouse Natus…

GTA Players Almost Miss Their Flight

Today on Highlight Reel we have skeleton naps, spooky Rainbow 6 kills, jumps, secret admirers and much more! Watch the video above or on our Youtube Page, then talk about your favorite highlight in the comments below. Be sure to check out, like, and share the original videos via the links below Assassin’s Creed Syndicate…

Why It’s Taking Years To Shave Seconds Off The World Record For Super Mario Bros.

The fastest anybody has ever beaten the original Super Mario Bros. is with a time of 4:57.427.The man who currently holds that record isn’t happy with it, though. He knows he can do it faster. Meet Darbian. During the day, he’s a software engineer. At night, he’s a speedrunner who has spent months trying to…

Leap Of Fate Is Cyberpunk Binding Of Isaac

Leap of Fate popped up in Steam’s “popular new releases” section this week, so I decided to give it a shot on a whim. Surprise: it’s rad. Think Binding of Isaac in an occult-tinged cyberpunk setting, with a really cool structure, and you’re there. OK, that’s kind of… a lot. Maybe it would be better…

The Internet Reacts To Miitomo, Nintendo’s First Mobile App

Miitomo, Nintendo’s Mii-driven social network, is tearing up the app store charts right now with millions of new users on day one. The app’s explosive popularity is simple to explain: it’s hilarious to use. Folks on social media are sharing all sorts of images created with Miitomo, from jokes to memes and everything in-between. Here…

Privisa Is A Beautiful New Animated Film

Privisa is an upcoming animated feature film made in Poland, which is all about a kid who just does not want to grow up. From the creators: It tells the story of Wilkan, son of the great hunter Borzymir who is about to get his first haircut. He finds out that the elders of the…

North American Counter-Strike Has Its Best Moment In Years

Counter-Strike is not exactly a sport where North American teams dominate. North American Counter-Strike is something of a joke in the CSGO community, known more for drama and sloppy team play than stunning site takes or bodacious bomb defusals. But that might be changing. In a stunning upset against the best CSGO team on this,…

Ryan Gosling? Enhance.

Oliver Fetscher is a freelance artist from Sweden. If you ever needed help picturing what Ryan Gosling could/would look like in the new Blade Runner movie, here you go. You can see more of Oliver’s work at his ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so…

Nevermind. Ferhod used Valve’s Source Filmmaker to recreate a moment most every Fallout player has experienced. Alternative titles include “NOPE” and “There’s not enough mini nukes in the world.”

Players Feeling Abandoned After Strategy Game RUSE Removed From Steam

Remember RUSE? It was a Ubisoft-published strategy game about espionage and subterfuge that came out in 2010. Critical consensus pegged it as decent, but not amazing. Despite that, it’s maintained a consistent, occasionally growing Steam player base for six years. Unfortunately, it appears that admittedly itsy bitsy slice of the player pie (a few hundred…

Track: Theme of Payon | Artist: soundTeMP | Album: Ragnarok Online Original Soundtrack Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Track: Sentient | Artist: Perturbator | Album: The Uncanny Valley

16 Killer Cosplay Shots From WonderCon

WonderCon, one of the bigger cosplay events of the year, went down over the weekend in San Diego. Photographer Martin Wong was there taking pics of some of the best of them Below are some highlights, but you can see the full gallery on Martin’s Facebook page Note: if you know/are any of the cosplayers…

WarCraft Statue? Nah, It’s Giant Cosplay

Remember Steven K Smith’slife-size Orc build we featured a while back? It’s now finished, and holy shit. It could literally crush a human. The scale. The detail. The fur. This could have walked onto the set of the WarCraft movie and nobody would have batted an eye. You can see more of Steve’s amazing work…

Observe The Future Tank, At Play In Its Native Habitat

Inka Shu is an artist based in China who works for Tencent. You can see more of Inka’s work at his ArtStation page To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine Art…

Overwatch Cosplay Will Never Forget The Butt Pose

One of the highlights of this year’s Sakura Con was this trio of Overwatch cosplayers. Note, just in case someone wants to take up arms, that these pics were snapped before the whole butt pose thing blew up, so this is just a homage to what was at the time a victory pose, not cosplay-as-commentary.…

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Is Now On Steam

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the Nintendo 64 was the first game that made me feel like I was really soaring through a Star Wars movie, my X-Wing buoyed by glorious trumpets and gentle flecks of Bantha poodoo. Now it’s on Steam. The arcade-y flight game, originally released on Nintendo 64 and PC back in…

16-Year-Old Hacker Sneaks Game Onto Steam Without Valve’s Approval

Watch Paint Dry is a 45-second-long game about watching paint dry. It was made by a 16 year-old guy who’s not even a game developer. Despite not going through Greenlight or otherwise receiving Valve’s holy lambda of approval, it got onto the Steam store. This might sound like the beginning of a horror story—an odious…