‘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.…

Pokémon Jobs Are Kind Of Messed Up

There is so much dumb bullshit in the Pokémon universe that is not explained and will never be explaned. What’s it like inside a Poké Ball? Do people eat Pokémon? These are questions that, when we have asked the developers, they have been unable to answer. Not helping are a new addition to Sword and…

Poll: People In Japan Reveal Which Famous Game Franchises They Haven’t Played

Have you played every big-time game franchise? Are there any well-known game series you haven’t checked out? In Japan, a recent poll asked people about which famous series they haven’t played. There were 2,362 votes in this Goo Ranking poll. Here are the top responses. 16. Persona series – 44 votes 15. Taiko no Tatsujin…

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…

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…

Mario Kart Tour’s Winter Update Is A Bust

Mario Kart Tour’s big winter update went live yesterday and it feels underwhelming, making me question whether or not it’s really worth it to keep subscribing to the game’s $5 monthly subscription. The game’s Winter Tour is meant to be a festive bit of seasonal fun to close out the year. It sports Mario in…

The Sims 4‘s New College Expansion Is As Stressful And Gratifying As The Real Thing

Addison, the Sim I made to check out the latest college-themed Sims 4 expansion, has had a very bad week. She’s a Fine Arts major, taking a class about video games as an elective. Her schedule, as such, was a complete mess. Monday and Wednesday she had three classes, with barely any room in between…

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…

I’m Not A Top-Tier MMO Raider But I Love Watching Them Stream

2019 is the year of the online RPG, at least for me. Whether that’s the countless hours I’ve spent in Final Fantasy XIV or my curious wandering through WoW Classic, digital worlds have offered me grand adventures and dear friends. But a few experiences are still out of my reach: the toughest challenges, meant for…

The Donkey Kong Timeline Is Truly Disturbing

Are you sitting down? I’ve got something to tell you—something that may shock you. Between the events of the various Donkey Kong games, the Kong family was involved in a bitter and vicious war. Among its many casualties, this war may have claimed the life of a classic Kong character, explaining his disappearance from all…

Stop Wasting My Time And Just Give Me The Double Jump

Double jumps are a wonderful bit of video game nonsense, something that appears in game after game because they are, honestly, pretty cool. Double jumps, as my colleague Heather Alexandra wrote, make video games better. I have never once played a game and thought, this would be better without a double jump. I have, however,…