Culture

Released 19 Years Ago, Surfing H30 Is Rockstar’s Worst Game

Today, Rockstar Games is a company known for hugely successful video games like GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2 and L.A. Noire. These games tend to sell really well and get rave reviews from critics. But it wasn’t that long ago that Rockstar Games was publishing less critically acclaimed and beloved titles. Such as Surfing…

Nintendo Was Worried Donkey Kong Country Was “Too 3D”

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the classic and beloved Donkey Kong Country. To celebrate this milestone, some of the developers behind the game took part in a series of interviews about the game, its development and its release. And according to one developer who worked on the game, Nintendo was actually worried the…

Salazzle Will Spank Those Who Disobey Her

Every Pokemon is interesting and worth talking about. I don’t play a ton of Pokemon, but I do enjoy the universe and I love learning more about the creatures in it. So, Here’s Another Pokemon! It’s Salazzle! Salazzle Details Type: Poison/Fire Average Height: 3′ 11″ Average Weight: 48.9 lbs. First Added In Generation VII Some…

Pennywise Is Excited About Getting His Ass Kicked

Hello! This week we get a nice birthday gift from Mads Mikkelsen, eat an apple in front of an apple Pokemon, watch the trailer for a new Half-Life game, wish for a double jump and get ready to beat the shit out of Pennywise. Great Kotaku Content From The Past Week The first time I…

Old World Of Warcraft Glitch Created A Terrifying Instant Death Bear

World of Warcraft contains countless fantastical creatures with otherworldly powers. Legendary dragons, skyscraper-sized fire elementals, several different kinds of boar—the list goes on. One beast from the game’s distant past, however, put them all to shame. I speak of the Death Bear of the Arathi Highlands, though I fear that simply by uttering his name,…

Death Stranding‘s Nominations At The Game Awards Can’t Help But Raise Questions

The Games Awards is the largest video games awards ceremony of the year in large part because it’s full of new game announcements, but the industry takes the awards seriously as well. This year, with Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding nominated for a number of awards including Game of the Year, viewers are openly wondering whether…

Visual Novel Sets Out To Buck Trends By Being Less Sexual, Gets Blocked By Steam Anyway

From the start, the lead developer of Crime Opera: The Butterfly Effect, Sean Bester, wanted his game to be different from the other games in Steam’s sea of often sexually-tinged romance and horror visual novels. This meant it would have very little sex and nudity, with the focus instead on a “mature” mafia tale. That,…

Visionary game designer Brad McQuaid died this past Tuesday at the age of 51. He co-created the pioneering MMO EverQuest and continued to work in the genre until his passing. His death was announced earlier this week on the forums of Visionary Realms, where he was serving as creative director for its MMO Pantheon. “Brad was…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for rock climbing, and going on a long run, and being a generally very sporty dude. It’s also for playing video games while nursing all the aches and pains getting into fitness at 37 is giving me. I’m totally charmed by this weekend’s Fortnite fishing competition, even though my efforts to participate…

Reports: Resident Evil 3 Remake Planned For 2020

A Resident Evil 3: Nemesis remake is in the works from Capcom, according to two new reports. It will reportedly release in 2020. Capcom released a remake of Resident Evil 2 this year, which was received warmly by fans of the franchise. Given how difficult it is to play Resident Evil 3 at the moment,…

Bring Back Destiny’s Self-Resurrection, You Cowards

Once upon a time, Warlocks in Destiny could channel the fiery energy of distant neutron stars or however that universe’s space magic works to instantly bring themselves back to life. Then they lost all their powers in the switch over to Destiny 2. They gained a bunch of new ones, but self-reviving wasn’t among them.…

‘Jedi Master’ Should Really Be The Easiest Difficulty Setting

You know what video games have gotten all wrong? Difficulty setting names. This week on Kotaku Splitscreen, we discuss. This week we take a deep dive into Jedi Fallen Order, the great new Star Wars single-player action-adventure game from Respawn. We talk about its influences, its difficulty, and whether Uncharted and Metroid can really harmonize.…

Track: Everlasting Nothing | Artist: Beck | Album: Hyperspace 

Late Night Eats. Nishi-Ogikubo, Tokyo, Japan. By Patrick Lehrmann | Flickr 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 Internet Reacts To Tesla’s Cybertruck, Which Looks Like A PS1 Car

As our colleagues at Jalopnik report, Tesla revealed the Cybertruck. It looks like something out of Total Recall—or better, yeah, something you’d drive in a PlayStation 1 game. People have opinions! There are the serious car takes, like this one on Reddit: As well as the inevitable video game-related opinions: The video game comparisons certainly didn’t…

The Mandalorian Is Built On Classic Star Wars Art

The show at large is leaning on a lot of cues from 1977, so of course the first round of concept art released for The Mandalorian is doing likewise, with very strong Ralph Maquarrie influences. Below is a wide range of art from the show’s first two episodes, which means yes, there’s some Baby Yoda.…

Civilization VI On PS4 And Xbox One Works, It’s Fine

I’m not here to review Civilization VI again, or its two expansions. I’ve done that already. What I am here today to tell you is that all that stuff is now available on PS4 and Xbox One, and against my best instincts and predictions, it’s absolutely fine. Prior to playing, and as someone who hadn’t…

Let’s Watch Nolan North Play The Last Of Us For The First Time

The Last Of Us has one of the most powerful beginnings of any video game, which makes it hard to stop watching this unusual new Let’s Play of the game. The 77-minute video, uploaded to YouTube yesterday, is hosted by the actors who played the lead roles in that intro scene, while the game is…

Borderlands 3 Update Finally Makes Menus Less Sluggish

Borderlands 3 got a big update today that, among a bunch of other additions, makes the game’s menus system less hellishly slow. When Gearbox’s loot shooter came out in September, it had a lot of performance issues. Split-screen was a mess, the frame-rate frequently dropped, the inventory system would occasionally eat people’s gear, and most…

Half-Life: Alyx Takes Place Between Half-Life 1 And Half-Life 2 [Update]

Half-Life: Alyx, you might be dismayed to learn, is definitely not Half-Life 3. But it is a new “full-length” Half-Life game, Valve said today, and it’ll be out in March. In a press release, Valve said the game—first announced earlier this week to surprise, confusion, and memes from fans—has been “designed from the ground up…