Culture

Flight Simulator Pilots Make 16-Hour Flight From LA To Dubai In Real Time

One of the big draws with Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator is that it recreates the entire planet to scale. What that means is, if you want, you can fly from one airport to another in real-time. And few airports are further away in a single trip than LAX and Dubai International Airport. It takes around…

Streamers Furious After Ad Company Uses Twitch Donations To Advertise Burger King

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Twitch is that you can never entirely predict what sort of alchemical chain reaction a streamer and their audience will create together. Recently, an ad agency representing Burger King decided to cash in on this inherent unpredictability, seemingly without asking anybody. Streamers are, to put it lightly, not…

How Deathloop, Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man: Miles Morales Will Use PS5 Controller’s Fancy Features

At first glance, the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller doesn’t look like a huge level-up over its predecessor, the DualShock 4. The shape is similar, the layout is near-identical, and the iconic button quadfecta (Square, Triangle, Circle, X) sure hasn’t gone anywhere. But there are a few subtle improvements. One Sony has trumpeted in recent months…

Capcom Hands Down Odd Punishment For Street Fighter V Player’s Outburst

A poor experience with Street Fighter V’s online multiplayer during a recent Capcom Cup qualifier sent one top player on a childish tirade against both the organizers and the player who beat him. Capcom announced today that he will have to start the next tournament in the losers bracket. Victor “Punk” Woodley is one of…

Stephen King Baffled By Tekken Jargon

I love horror novelist Stephen King. I love fighting games. But it seems those two flavors don’t go together all that well. It all started last night when a random Tekken player, as they are wont to do, hopped on Twitter to demand changes from the developers. I won’t bore you with the competitive implications…

Spiritfarer Pokes Fun At Animal Crossing’s Jerk Raccoon, Tom Nook

Spiritfarer and Animal Crossing: New Horizons have a lot of shared DNA. Both feature anthropomorphic animals with distinct personalities. Both give you a space of your own that you can shape to your whims. Both demand a meticulous level of resource management. And both, more surprisingly, star a morally defunct raccoon salesman who worships at…

Latest Fall Guys Update Prevents Consecutive Team Games

Fall Guys is great, but if there’s one thing on which most players can agree, it’s that the team-based mini-games don’t quite live up to the fun of the solo competitions. The game’s latest patch relieves that a bit by making back-to-back group activities a thing of the past. Thanks to an update released this…

How’s It Going? RIP Summer Edition

It’s cold where I am, at least too cold to take a swim. Which is good because our pool’s been empty since a tropical storm flooded the yard (and our basement) earlier this month. Do we clean it out and fill it back up? Take it down and admit this summer blew? I should probably…

Hitman 3 Will Be An Epic Games Store Timed Exclusive On PC

Snuck onto the end of a Hitman 3 location reveal, developer IO Interactive announced that Hitman 3 on PC will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for the first year. “In January 2021, you’ll be able to play Hitman 3 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Google Stadia and PC,…

Creepypasta Spins The Strange And Unsettling Circumstances Around Cancelled Tomb Raider Game

As I was doomscrolling (heh) Twitter early this morning (a deeply unhealthy part of my morning ritual) I came across a thread written by Xalavier Nelson Jr., former PC Magazine writer and Narrative Designer on ‘90s internet simulation Hypnospace Outlaw. Nelson’s thread hooked me from the very beginning, promising a never-before-heard story about a video…

Sony Says PS5 Is Definitely Still Launching This Year

We still don’t know how much the PS5 will cost nor its exact release date, but in a new interview Sony executive Eric Lempel said the ongoing global pandemic hasn’t changed the company’s plans to launch the console later this year. “We will launch this year—that will happen—and from my end we will absolutely make…

New Souls-Like Looks Cool Even If It Might Never Come Out

Overnight, Chinese developer Game Science Studio released a 13-minute gameplay video for a project it’s working on called Black Myth: Wukong and it looks amazing, even if it’s nowhere near coming out. An action adventure game that appears to be inspired by the Chinese novel Journey to the West, the trailer features a monkey warrior fighting…

Control Publisher Posts ‘Explanation’ About Next-Gen Upgrades That Doesn’t Explain Much

505 Games tried to explain why owners of the existing version of Control won’t be able to upgrade to the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions in a blog post today and didn’t succeed. Last week, the publisher of Control announced a new version of the game called Control Ultimate Edition that would include the…

Spelunky’s Sublime Music Keeps Me Addicted To Dying

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s new, daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Ever play Spelunky? No no no. We are hipsters here, so obviously I meant the original freeware game from 2008. Ugh, whatever. Just come in already. I don’t recall how I first found Spelunky, but…

Shinjuku Gyoen Garden In March 2020. Tokyo, Japan. By Jimmy W.  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!

Neat Stuff I Found While Cleaning My Room

I’ve spent the last week or so finally combing through the clutter of my living space in anticipation of adopting a kitten. This gave me a chance to really take stock of the various crap I’ve collected over the last few years, much of it gaming-related, and the various points in my life in which…

Oh Great Ganon’s Back

January Sun is an artist at Bardel, an animation studio that’s worked on everything from Magic The Gathering to Viva Pinata to Space Jam Oh, and just so you know, in one of the Zelda pics below that’s older Link meeting younger Link after some time travel shenanigans, not Link and his son/dad! You can…

Supreme Is Releasing A Mortal Kombat Arcade Cabinet

I have seen Supreme collab on some real dumb shit in my time, from cookies to literal bricks, but this upcoming Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet is something else. The label showed off its Fall/Winter 2020 collection earlier this week, and among stuff like this: Was this: Yup. It’s a Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet, including the…

Flight Simulator Creates Terrifying Citadel In Melbourne, Turns Buckingham Palace Into Apartments

Between using actual satellite data and some fancy algorithm work, Flight Simulator has done a pretty good job recreating the entire planet. But there are some areas where the whole thing just falls over, with terrifying/hilarious results. Example 1: Buckingham Palace. It’s one of the most identifiable landmarks on the planet, but as theBBC (via…

EVE Online‘s Alien Invasion Is Disrupting The Game’s Biggest Trade Route

Logistics and shipping routes aren’t things that typically come to mind when people think of video games, outside of the Trucking Simulator series anyway. But in EVE Online they are a way of life: Ship components, weapons, ammunition, and all other manner of trade goods have to be loaded into massive cargo vessels and painstakingly…