Culture

New TMNT Game Announced, Rust Servers Wiped Out By Fire, Microsoft Officially Buys Bethesda And More

This week on Morning Checkpoint we find out what secrets still lurk in Bloodborne, learn how much money Roblox is worth to Wall Street, check out a new trailer for Outriders, eat a bad burger (again) and hear horror stories from game devs who worked through the recent winter storm. Great Kotaku Content From The…

How Plague Inc Evolved Once A Real Global Pandemic Came Along

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…

Xbox FPS Boost Coming Soon To Fallout 4 And Other Old Bethesda Games [Update: Now Available]

After launching the FPS Boost feature in February with a handful of games, Microsoft has announced that five more games, all from Bethesda, will soon be enjoying FPS Boost support. This news comes from the latest episode of The Official Xbox Podcast. In its opening section, Xbox Live’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb and Xbox senior…

Mario Kart Speedrunners Are Racing To Blow Themselves Up With Blue Shells

Do you know you can hit yourself with a Blue Shell in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Speedrunners do, and they’re going all out to blow themselves up with the first place-targeting item as quickly as possible. Skilloz, the current world record-holder for the hilariously named “Blue Yourself” category, uploaded a video yesterday (h/t Polygon) showing…

Game Artists Not Happy That Developer Is Selling Their Nearly Decade-Old Work As NFTs

The question at the heart of this week’s incessant NFT debate is one of ownership: How, in the digital age, can one really own anything? And when somebody purchases a glorified gif or jpg for mind-boggling amounts of money, what do they even own? Not rights. Not the sole copy of the image. So what?…

Genshin Impact KFC Crossover Events In China Shut Down Over Covid-19 Concerns

A weekend crossover event between the wildly popular Genshin Impact and Kentucky Fried Chicken had to be shut down at Shanghai and Hangzhou locations after apparently violating China’s ongoing covid-19 prevention measures, the fast food chain announced on Chinese social media site Weibo today. Genshin Impact-themed KFC restaurants across China attracted huge crowds overnight as…

Warzone Is (Slowly) Teasing A Zombies Event

With the arrival of Call of Duty’s Season 2 on February 25, zombies took the story spotlight. Black Ops Cold War got a great Zombies “Outbreak” mode, and Warzone’s Verdansk map got a ship full of the undead. Warzone is slowly being infected by the undead, leading up to a potential new mode or map.…

Feels From Heals: Healing In Final Fantasy XIV Is Super Rewarding

The first thing I did upon setting foot in Foundation, the hub world central to Final Fantasy XIV’s Heavensward expansion, was sign up for the Astrologian and Dark Knight job class. This is extremely out of character for me because I only play damage dealers in MMOs, and Astrolgian and Dark Knight are healer and…

April Fallout 76 Update Will Finally Let Players Have Multiple Camps

Camp building is at the center of Fallout 76 and the game’s April 27 update will finally let players create, store, and manage multiple campsites, a massive boon to the game’s more industrious architects. Called “Locked and Loaded,” the April update, which also includes a new loadout manager to quickly swap between character builds, will…

G.I. Joe And Cobra Face Off In World Of Tanks

Following up on last year’s bizarre crossover between World of Warships and Transformers, Wargaming and Hasbro have partnered again for the somewhat more sensible pairing of G.I. Joe and World of Tanks. We have the obviously evil red and black tank versus bulbous and friendly green tank, as the Joes’ B.T.T. (Breakthrough Tank) trades ordinance…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for being happy. The weekend is also for cyanide. Combine the two, and what do you get? Man, I don’t know. While I try to figure it out, I’ll be playing Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse, a point-and-click adventure about a horrible boy named Coop who is horrible. Seriously, he is just the…

Loop Hero Will Soon Let You Save The Dang Game

The deck-building, dungeon-making roguelite RPG Loop Hero is getting some much needed quality-of-life improvements in an upcoming update, the game’s developers announced yesterday. The most important of these fixes? Finally letting you save your game. Technically, Loop Hero does that already, saving all progress automatically as you complete expeditions. But there’s no way to save…

Burning Rangers‘ Music Makes Me Want To Kick A Fire’s Ass

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s ongoing hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re setting the morning on fire with the rock, pop, rap, and techno-jazz of Sega’s Burning Rangers. And then we’ll put it out, which is only polite. Way back in 1998, during the final months…

Track: These Days | Artist: Nico | Album: Chelsea Girl

Bloodborne’s Doll Used To Have A Lot More To Say

Everyone’s favorite video game archaeologist Lance McDonald is back with a new Bloodborne video. This time around, he’s exploring unused dialogue for the Doll, the 2015 game’s level up-granting NPC. And while the alternate voice acting is neat, it’s what she used to say that really piqued my interest. Bloodborne, like most From Software games,…

Another Paradox Game Jumps To The Tabletop, Blows Past Kickstarter Goal

After the so-so Crusader Kings effort, another Paradox strategy title—Stellaris—is on its way to board gaming after successfully meeting its Kickstarter funding goal. Not that the goal was ever in question—for a major board game on Kickstarter it rarely is—but still, at time of publishing almost 6000 people have backed it/pre-ordered a copy, for around…

I Am Sorry, Christopher Nolan, The Ideal Way To Watch Tenet Is On A Game Boy Advance

Film director Christopher Nolan spent much of 2020 pleading the world to risk illness and death to go watch his ho-hum movie about special agents who can play with time in a theater, because that was the place it needed to be seen. He was, of course, wrong. As WULFF DEN shows in this video,…

Borderlands 3‘s Next Expansion Delayed To April 8

Gearbox announced this morning that it has delayed the release of the upcoming Borderlands 3 expansion Director’s Cut almost a full month due to the severe winter storms that recently swept through its home state of Texas. The update will now launch on April 8. “Thankfully, all of our team members and their families are…

Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty Guilted Me Into My First 100% Completion

I started playing Oddworld: New ‘N Tasty and oh god, I’m going to have to save all 299 of these Mudokons, aren’t I? In 2014’s Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty, you play as the Mudokon Abe, an overworked, underpaid alien wo’rking for a company that destroys the ecosystem and drives indigenous creatures extinct—so your typical Amazon…

A Bunch Of Bethesda Games Are Joining Xbox Game Pass Tomorrow

During today’s conversation about Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax Media, the panel announced that a grip of amazing Bethesda games will join Xbox Game Pass tomorrow. Some of the games in the above image were already available on Game Pass in some form or another, but there’s a bunch of new stuff getting added as well,…